good times, good times

last night i drove out to my alma mater to be part of a panel about biochem majors and careers in biotech, in which i was invited to participate. it felt strange to have reached a point in life where other people want my advice, opinion, and perspective; the same way it was weird to finally have been "of age" to get married. i'm still not sure i'm over that one. i expected to be the youngest panelist there, sitting in my frayed jeans next to a bunch of pharmaceutical bigwigs with matching pearl sets. nope; i was the most senior. by 4 years. yikes! people deferred to me. i did a lot of talking. i hadn't prepared anything, nor had i thought about being nervous; and i wasn't, but speaking in front of 40 young women who are all paying (or pretending to be paying) rapt attention to my every word inexplicably made my face feel extremely hot anytime i said something. i bet it was really red.

so, that was cool, and weird, and oddly rewarding; and i wanted to have a disclaimer that read "no really, i am just a kid too, i may seem like i know a lot but seriously, i'm sure you guys are doing just fine." i bet it was a little unexpected for them to hear me talk about how i nearly flunked out of freshman chem and how i never did any internships because i was lazy, and how i had been a classics and then english major way before i ever gave a damn about science. i guess i would have felt a lot better if i had heard someone "successful" show signs of weakness to me when i was 18. but maybe i was just not as cocky as i should have been.

anyway, afterward i got my real treat, which was half the reason i allowed myself to be roped into this 17-hour day with 4 hours of driving: dinner with my freshman year roommate, courtney. she was what i'd consider to be the only good friend i made in college, and i haven't seen her in about 5 years, maybe a little more. we didn't talk at all until about 6 months ago. and we all still look the same; it's messed up. and it was like not a day had passed. over beers and burgers with her and her sister, we relived a lot of memories (and lack of memories) from our first semester of drunken debauchery. my, my - were we ridiculous. i realized i need to see her, or at least email her, far more often. i think sometimes we forget all the good times while we're in pursuit of new ones; now and then it's just so nice to be reminded of the good and the bad, and how far you've come, and the journey along the way.

no apologies

kz and i did indeed neglect to post last night; what a shame, with only 1 day left!
but we were engaged in something way more fun than blog posting, after a delicious dinner of burgundy steak tips and scotch. and i'll take that over anything else any day.

open wide

when my dog jamie was a puppy, she would tool around the house and yard with her mouth 2/3 open, nose in a wrinkled sneer, snarling and mouth-breathing as she searched for a good place to clamp her toothy maw shut. she was like a little heat-seeking baby jaws looking for the perfect exposed ankle or forearm, and would settle for your toes if you weren't quick enough.

sometimes i feel like an emotional baby-jaws. like i'm primed and ready to be pissed at something and have to wait for the issue to present itself. this usually manifests itself around the same time each month - now how about that? today i'm trying to figure out if i want to sink my teeth into how stupid the homework questions were, or how dry the assigned journal paper is (nevermind that it's a seminal piece by watson and crick. i hate it). or maybe that my dinner salad, crafted expressly by me, positively sucked with gorgonzola instead of my usual goat cheese. what was i thinking? and why is gorgonzola cheaper than blue cheese, when clearly that would have been preferable? why am i still hungry? why does my ankle hurt - what new contortionist injury have i uncovered? how am i going to find time to have my windshield fixed again? and that's if the exhaust install goes smoothly. how the hell am i supposed to find exhaust wrap with an empty bank account and a barely functioning cell phone?

i know my problem; a lousy night's sleep. so i'm off to gnash my choppers from the cozy confines of the futon while i think of more stuff to supplement my internal bitching monolog.

30-second skip

sometimes i wish i could just loop a finite series of time, like a weekend, and hit 'replay' as many times as i'd like. this coming from the person who has, on at least two occasions, attempted to tivo-style pause or rewind an unfolding scene outside the window using the ubiquitous air remote thumb clicky action, so that i could show it to kz. for the first second of attempting to freeze life, like in that prolific episode of 'duck tales,' i seriously expected it to work until i remembered i was no longer watching tv. sad, i know. sadder still that it can't actually be done.
i wouldn't mind reliving the past few days of quiet relaxing time, crisp sunny mornings, and uninterrupted spurts of marathon novel reading on the couch, contented by kz's arduous clicks on the keyboard behind me. our regular weekend breakfast at the local diner, and rowdy dinners out with my brother kendyboy and his roommate. i could definitely deal with some more of all that before i face my monday.

flavor of the month

back in the day when i used to put away more ice cream than i do now, i remember frequently ingesting pints of jeremy's microbatch. this genius dude made ice cream flavors like sticky cinnamon bun, apple pie, tiramisu (the best!) and cream stout back when the most exciting offering was phish food from ben and jerry's. nowadays i think you can find reincarnations or variations of these flavors, but in like 1999, that stuff was a rare treasure. and it was way better than any of today's impostors, which are too sweet and have never managed to find the right balance of flavored ice cream and chunks of mixed-in bits. jeremy just had it all; i found his pints in supermarkets from upstate NY through western mass and boston. i can't be the only one who drowned the tears of misguided collegiate relationships at the bottom of those pints.

my point? they just don't make ice cream like they used to; which may be why i find myself consuming, at max, about 5 pints a year. sure, i dig the green tea ice cream, and really do have a soft spot in my heart for toscanini's burnt caramel. but what i really wish is that jeremy would resurrect his microbatches, and include an oolong-tea fortune cookie flavor. with bits of fortune cookie in it. then i just might be more satisfied with the options in the churned frozen dessert department.

cheshire cat

i've eaten 4 days' worth of calories in 36 hours, my cold is seriously on its way out, i've started an extremely satisfying historical fiction bodice-buster, my apartment is totally clean, i have absolutely no homework in the world i could possibly do but a multitude of unwatched dvd's, and it's only friday still.

i feel so content.

fyi:

that so totally counts. 12:00:00 on the dot.

but blogger's clock is running a few minutes fast... here's an atomic clock screenshot:



so there.

HAH.

giving thanks

dear jesus,

i'm really glad to see that my pajama pants still fit and that my farts smell like pumpkin pie.

with humble thanks,

sabominator

eat it

after a grueling 2.5 hour molecular bio exam this morning, i hauled ass back home to clean up the apt in anticipation of my little brother's evening visit. on the other end of a 32 oz margarita and a double scotch (lagavulin 16, thank you) - my first non-cold medication good time in 2 weeks - i present to you, my readership, an icon of chocolate art; a freestyle exploration into confectionary masterpiece. the handmade solid chocolate torte topper i crafted this afternoon, using only a block each of dark and white chocolates, a spatula, a toothpick, and a ziploc bag (i don't even have a double boiler, motherfuckers):

just luck i guess

i'd like to know how it is that whenever i walk into a public restroom and one woman is exiting, and it smells like poop in there, i always manage to pick the one stall, out of three or more, where she definitely dropped her deuce moments before. i am never able to pick, even by following an olfactory gradient, one of the non-warzone stalls. how do i know? when the seat is warm. bleh.
i mean, with those kinds of daily odds and my never-fail stall selection, i should play lotto.

and i can i have an andy rooney moment and ask why, oh why, do these tennis ball-sized, 8 fl oz poland spring water "bottles" exist? do you need to carry such a not even thirst-quenching paltry amount of water? a colostomy bag could fit more. i usually see wee little asian women with them; maybe their bladders hold less, i don't know. but seriously, how many more plastic trees do you want to kill, and landfills do you want to create? invest in a re-usable sippy cup if you're a hydration pussy, i say.

don't mess with me

only my second time shooting ever, and i put that down with a .45 at 20 yards. before i realized it had sights on it.

the one in the bull's eye was my first shot. how about them apples?

but really, it was so fun. i think i want to do some more of this. mad props to our friend who hooked us up with some instruction and showed me how to shoot an MP5 one-handed. so you can do that with a submachine gun - who knew??
i feel so badass.

ad iterum

i wish i could say i did something more today than cough, croak, whine, cry, nap, procrastinate, and complain. i wish i could say i got a lot of studying done and am totally prepared for my wednesday exam that quickens my pulse and parches my mouth with fear and dread. i wish i could say i cleaned the house, and watched some of my birthday NCIS DVDs, and epoxy-ed my windshield, and bought chocolate for my thanksgiving torte, and mailed my brother's care packages to iraq. i wish i could say i did anything at all useful.

but i can say that despite feeling so downtrodden and ill, i basked in kz's company and comfort all day, and his kind words and support were like a ray of sunshine in a hurricane. and then he cleaned the kitchen, too. and made me shrimp and salmon for dinner, and cuddled me whenever i was cold and teary.

i may be sick, and i may be stressed, but i am so in love.

:)

when it rains...

the timeline of this irony is just too great to not be shared.

last week, i submitted an insurance claim and paid $75 bucks to have my winshield replaced on one of the rare days when i had a spare 5 minutes. i'd been driving with a crack longer than a foot across my windshield for quite some time, and had it replaced solely for the purpose of passing state inspection, which is due this month.
my priority was to get the inspection passed before the next rock got kicked up into the glass on 495.

this week, i failed inspection for a leaky exhaust in the midpipe region. fair enough. today, my only goal was to locate the leak and ascertain whether we could patch it or had to replace the whole shebang. i was hoping for a quick patch, because once you get into the time and money spent on replacing components, fuck it i say, let's do some aftermarket headers too.

beginning of day: the survey begins with kz ripping off the heat shields and trying to patch the midpipe only to find that the flexjoint is leaking too. meanwhile, i rainX my new pristine winshield and start replacing the wiper blades to get that streak-free effect. somewhere in there, the hood gets opened with the wipers up but with no blades attached yet; and the spring-loaded metal snaps down onto the glass. the result: a starbust shatter the size of my palm.

end of day: i have a broken windshield, epoxy on my shopping list, and new ssautochrome headers and downpipe shipping this week.

i seem to have made little progress other than net loss of money and time. hmm.

outliers

i have paid for yesterday's defamation of broccoli with nothing short of my voice. i only omit squeaky, cracked sounds in a puff of green-phlegm scented breath. it's hot, i know.

when i'm this ill, i have a hard time coping with minor annoyances i often encounter, to no effect, when i'm healthy. in lecture (yes i dragged my ass to school), i could see how that chick i made fun of so many months ago was brought to tears by an inattentive professor failing to answer her question. for the love of god, good sir, please just fucking explain to me, temporally and spatially, whether an activator can begin a sequence-specific transcriptional recruitment cascade whilst the DNA is still wound around the histone. if you start talking about acetylation in a feeble attempt to out-manuver my question one more time, i will breathe my plague upon thee.

normally, a middle-aged jerk in his woman's minivan can drag race me from a light and not get the better of steve, the wunderauto. but when i'm high on dayquil and attempting to keep it under 20 over, he cuts me off across 3 lanes and parks in the employee lot with me. yesterday: i would have tracked him down and verbally berated him. today: i cry.

running late always sucks, and ordinarily if i had a group of old coworker-friends (whom i miss dearly) gather to meet me for lunch, i would figure they could suffer my being stuck in traffic gladly for the mere chance to gaze upon my smiling countenance. today: i thought maybe they would leave before i got there, and i would have no friends. i cry.

usually if it's an erratic old woman tailgating me with the highbeams and driving like richard pryor (when on fire from freebasing), i just roll with it. and flick her off. today: i flick her off. and i cry.

i think it's time for some sleep.

this just in

studies have shown that broccoli is infinitely more palatable when smothered with melted cheese. this comes as no surprise to doctors, who are still struggling with the american propensity for adding fat, preservatives, and sugar to once healthy food products in order to make them likely candidates for rapid ingestion. confounded but not defeated, they state, "hey, at least it's fiber."

brought to you by sabominator's dinner.

update: still dying of the plague

please send:
sudafed
chocolate chip cookies
clean sheets
the die-hard trilogy, preferably in HD

miserable yet productive

the evil sore throat rodents have built a nest in my nasal and sinus cavities. nonetheless, today i:
-was totally with it in a seminar class discussing assembly of transcriptional complexes
-found a new lab to join where i'll be doing some bitchin synthetic organic chemistry and channel inhibitor design
-got a new driver's license with my now-legal truncated last name
-looked sick, somewhat old, and definitely more brunette than blond in my license picture
-got my car inspected
-failed inspection
-spent some time researching cost and ease of installation of aftermarket headers and downpipe

todo list:
-take tylenol
-sleep, sweet sleep

for the record

whoever gave me this sore throat, i hope you rot in hell. if i had tonsils, they would be the size of tennis balls. if i could swallow, it would hurt. some nasty little animals are having a yard sale back there, and the item du jour is green and brown phlegm.

i wish i had something else to fixate on today; like maybe how good it felt to turn in my notebook, run my last gel, and bid my erstwhile coworkers adieu. except one of them, because he and i are still not talking or making eye contact, and i didn't tell him i was leaving, and i let everybody else but him have my buffers and reagents. so there. it's also really fun to deliberately, and in the most painfully obvious way possible, ignore someone right in front of your mutual boss. it tasted almost as good as the robitussin i just took.

easily entertained

so, today i was going to clean the house, stock up on household supplies, study for hours on end, start in on some furniture refinishing, buy new wipers for my new windshield...
but instead, i watched tv.
nothing much else stands out, except for when kz and i finished some DVR recorded shows and went back to live tv, which had us on the HD channel watching 'sunrise earth,' this nature show that's pretty slow and quiet and features a lot of landscapes, running water, and slowly progressing angular shadows. it's pretty zen; picture one full minute of airtime dedicated to an antelope licking his own ass. but it was showing bears, so we wanted to see what the little fuzzies were doing, and started rewinding at 4x speed. now we finally saw some action - bears trundling backwards through a stream, and backwards through the grass, and backwards up the hill, and backwards across the mud...and as they were rewinding backwards like demented insects, i was dubbing a voice-over action sequence consisting mostly of "dobedobedoo...doobedobedo..." in time with their hurried backtracking. hilarity ensued and we did this, over and over, for about 5 minutes, after which i had to stop because snot was coming out of my nose because i was laughing so hard.

so...what did you do this weekend?

you want weird?

i always find it weird when i'm smiling or closing my mouth after spouting a long diatribe and i have dry tooth syndrome, when my lip gets stuck on one of my big front chompers and then i have to lick it and make a cleft-palate retarded face just so i can get my own mouth closed. it's hot.

i also have always thought it's weird, and more than minorly annoying, when i'm in mixed company eating snack food and the chicks always daintily dip only the very end of their tortilla, or celery stick, into the dip du jour, as though they were dabbing a pinky in a $300 jar of night cream. it's motherfucking dip; you're supposed to dive in with a scooping motion until your knuckles are wet and toss that dripping load of calorie-packed french onion sour cream straight into your gullet; not delicately bathe your chip like an invalid sibling. you trying to make me look fat or something?

but you want to hear seriously weird - today i went to a small gathering (<30 people, i'd guess) of friends and acquaintances, and it turns out that the wife of a friend of kz's is actually someone i went to high school with and haven't seen in 9 years. that may sound like no big deal, but when you go to a very small boarding school in the northeast, you don't expect to meet a chinese girl you once lived a few doors down from, who married to a dude who lives in DC, showing up a decade later in lowell, of all places on this green earth. i mean damn, now that's weird.

tainted love

this morning, kz and i shared some giggles over reading a forum thread with youtube links to a plethora of 80's chick rock. you know - the bangles, tiffany, blondie, belinda carlisle, and many other one-hit wonders whose names you never knew. why the 80's was so abundant with those, i cannot say. anyway, some people posted other "omg look my favorite 80's ballad" links to stuff like ac/dc. which is totally not in the same vein as the others; it doesn't fit at all. they just didn't get it.

later i was flipping through channels trying to find one of the 7 or so law and order repeats which are on simultaneously at any given time - though usually, i've seen all of them already. and i happened across the intro of the show 'charmed,' which i've been unfortunate enough to have viewed the last 3 minutes of multiple episodes while waiting for something that doesn't suck to follow. so i'd never been privy to the theme song before - an utterly butchered, heartless and nauseating rendition of the smiths' 'how soon is it now.' completely unacceptable, to have so wronged one of my favorite songs of any musical era. it was pretty much the most painful thing i've ever experienced since that time i thought it would be a good idea to tweeze the hairs off my big toe. they totally didn't get it either.

how's that for a solution

so, i quit my lab today.

once i decide i've had enough shit, then i'm done and i never look back or question my decision. and i feel great. and i'm going to sleep so well tonight, finally.
i don't have another lab figured out yet; i have a few potentials, but it looks like i'll have to go door to door and ask for some charity. but i don't mind.

it's so nice to just make a decision, follow through, and take your first deep breath in weeks. one of the only things catholic school ever taught me was that business about accepting the things you cannot change and courage to change the things you can. everything falls into one of those two categories; it leaves you with no excuses in life. and that means there's nothing to fear.

mr fix-it

problem: clamoring menstrual gnomes. chilly, rainy, grey day. lousy traffic. serious interpersonal problem with coworker, bad enough to make you purple and silent with seething anger.

solution: rare steak tips. large glass of red wine. 88% dark chocolate. snuggles.

the hierarchy of social snubbing

so there's this little leprechaun-like crazy man who takes out the trash at school. he is quite wee, and stooped, and bent like a C. he has a swirly frown face (eduard munch style) and walks like a hobbit. he only makes strange grunts around people and mutters to himself as he drags the cart down the hall; you can't decipher his speech, but you can tell he's giving someone one hell of an ass-whooping, only in absentia.
nobody ever moves out of his way unless it's in fear; nobody ever thanks him for taking the trash out, or says 'excuse me' when they bump into him or his cart. except me. it's like he doesn't exist at all, except for the faint sneer you read on people who catch him in their peripheral gaze.

one time i spilled some coffee in the break room, and the little man was upon that puddle like a flash, helping me clean it up in silence, and scurrying off wordlessly as i thanked him. i was reading a journal in the alcove one afternoon at dusk, and i heard his muttering off down the corridor and then, a light was suddenly turned on above my head so i could read in the ever-nearing night.

it's true, when i see this little dude, i sometimes think to myself, "heh, he totally has a wang. weird." the same way most of you do when you see someone with a grotesque physical characteristic - whoa, those people like, do it. that midget has a midget penis. whoa. but, still, you probably acknowledge their existence when it becomes appropriate to do so, and engage in exchange of proscribed social normalities.

this morning when i was driving, i was behind a guy in a grey honda who kept jerking from one boundary of his lane to the other. i thought maybe he was having a seizure until i saw both his arms up about his head. combing, and brushing, and preening, and primping, and mussing. not for a moment; for 4 straight miles on 290; i clocked it. and as i pulled even with him, trying to think of a gesture that would convey, using only one hand, "stop playing with your fucking hair you moron and please just drive so we don't all die on the way to work," i saw that he had a buzzcut.

i mean, what the fuck? and i bet everybody spoke to him at work today, said hello, and excuse me, and thank you.

society should re-assess.

plain old happy

sometimes it is really nice to realize that the love of your life is so complimentary to your entire being. how his qualities and skills, and even his shortcomings, are a puzzle piece that fit in with your own.

we were just discussing the science article kz linked to on his blog, and i had just learned some details about retroposons and DNA repair, so i was all interested in it (and, as a certified CHO, do not share his concern over resurrecting the virus in a BL3 rather than a BL4 lab :) ). we got into a long discussion, as happens frequently; and somewhere in there i mentioned i might someday like to be an editor for a scientific journal, since i miss working with language these days. and he was so supportive, it was incredible. we began to discuss our relative merits, and while he was expounding on my work ethic and attention to detail, i was marveling at his ability to pick ideas out of the ether and synthesize them in a way that would never occur to me. the same way couples sometimes romanticize about growing old together when they are feeling mushy - and we do that, too - we also love to forecast how someday, our fields will intersect and we will find ourselvs working on a multidisciplinary project using computers to model and analyze greater problems in biochemistry or biology, and how much we would each bring to the table in that collaboration. and i get really excited about those visions, and like to daydream about them; perhaps that's how some of my peers feel about acquiring a house with their mate. that sounds nice and all, but i don't feel wistfully hopeful about it in my free time. so i think this is our version. and i think we'll do it, too.

we also made some comments about how exciting it will be to make smart babies someday, and have a real family (we have a fake one now with my menagerie of bears and hippos; we are slightly retarded and deranged in our anthropomorphism of the poor creatures, and in how we emote through them, but it's cheaper and cleaner than having a puppy). but the moms shouldn't start knitting, or anything. eek.

anyway, it's just really nice, is all. and i make a lot of complaintative blog posts and people might think i'm nothing but piss and vinegar, but that's not true. i'm on cloud 9 with a stimulated brain and a bunch of stuffed animals; if i could distill this for you and sell it as an elixir, i would.

futon fiasco

so, we just broke our bed. i won't get into details.

i know i'm old now, because i look around at the busted futon, the other futon in the office which is 6" too short for kz, and our 2 pull-out sleeper sofas in the living room, all of which are less than comfortable...and i find my throat tightening with despair, thinking, 'where the fuck am i supposed to sleep?' i have a bad back, a bad knee, and a bad shoulder. i'm very particular. i need a good night's rest before facing the day. even as a kid, i couldn't camp out or crash on a floor in a sleeping bag.

this is jesus telling us it's time to get a real grown-up bed.

further festivities

a big thank you to all who came out for my birthday dinner last night (especially nick and libs, who completely surprised me by coming all the way from western mass). maybe it shows my age that i couldn't finish my scorpion bowl, but it was a great time! i also brought roberta , my amazing one-of-a-kind farting hippo, custom built expressly for me by kz. apparently jethro, my mini hippo, was just a teaser. the chinese waiters were definitely puzzled as to how they might cook this strange animal, and what market price would be.

going to see borat on opening night afterwards, with mackey and iggdawg, was quite an experience. the theatre was full of unwashed pubescent bodies reeking of axe body spray, hormones, and pretense. it was warm and humid like the armpit of some feral beast. the posturing and chest-tumping ignorance was palpable; some of the ill-educated remarks were eyebrow raising. but the movie was great; an expose of american culture (or lack thereof) with a brilliant highlight on our charmingly ingrained bigotry. it also made me realize that we have quite a few pentecostals in this country. and they vote. holy shit.

speaking of voting, this morning we went to our regular weekend diner for breakfast (where i promptly announced to our waiter, who seats us every week, "guess what: it's my birthday!" i think i'll be guilty of these self-promotional proclamations far into middle age. it was nice to hear him say that i looked good for 26, but weird to have reached an age where looking good "for it" is a compliment). while i was in the middle of working through my egg scrambler and tomatoes, i wrinkled my nose at a strange scent...middle-aged man, wearing a suit, pattern baldness, and on a mission. it was that exact kind of cologne. then our incumbent congressman appeared at our table and reached out to shake my hand. i wouldn't have known who he was, had kz not pointed out that he was "coming right for us" moments earlier. kz, who is rather immune to stardom and politico clout, was rather nonplussed, as he's met this dude on several other occasions and conversed with him. i had no choice but to shake the papery, warm hand of an elected official, and thinking only of all the many down-home old folks and contractors and sticky-fingered children whose hands he'd shaken before. gross. when kz attempted to engage him in a short conversation, his deliberately patient but obviously hurried, patronizing remarks made me realize there wasn't much behind the curtain. and he was kind of short. it was weird. i kept remarking on how weird it was for the next 10 minutes or so. i'm not used to meeting figureheads, nor to having them act like i matter for a 5 second period, and then flit away to the next constituent. it's kind of schizophrenic, and i'm all set with it. it's really all rather dirty. if only i'd brought roberta out with me; then i could have told the congressman exactly what i thought about his campaigning in the middle of my birthday breakfast.

!!

OMG!!! since marissa died in the last season finale, ryan became a cage fighter and they totally insinuated that he slept with her mom!!!

OC, i never saw this coming.

a good day

is when your worst dilemma is whether to take a nap or watch the OC.

i may have worked pretty late last night, and stayed up till 12 watching CSI with kz to let my steak tips digest, and forgotten to set the alarm somehow (this occurs about as frequently as me missing an oral contraceptive dose...that is, once or twice per annum), but somehow everything turned out not just alright, but downright well.
i awoke to the bird-like chatter of puerile screeching and instantly said to a snoozing kz, "why can i hear children?" knowing full well that the school bus usually leaves moments before i do each morning. ordinarily, hitting the snooze button more than once is enough to set my quills on end and cause me to feel rushed and behind. this morning, i dreamily got ready without increasing my heart rate and bid kz a cheerful adieu, leaving 20 mintues late. it sounds like no big deal, i know; but to the compulsive rush-hour traffic maven and clockwatcher, this would ordinarily be like a hemorrhoid on your wedding day.

i somehow made it to worcester in 45 minutes flat. my best time, to date, has been 50 minutes - and that was at 11 am, without traffic. simply astounding. i was early for class!!! and had time to get a leisurely student union coffee. which was a new flavor - caveat emptor, this has never turned out well in the past - but the roasted pistachio cream was surprisingly pleasing on the palate.

then, we got our last exam of the past trimester back, and i actually SCORED ABOVE AVERAGE this time, including acing my prospective PI's questions. looks like i'll be passing the first third of this year, and won't have to repeat it. i can't express the relief i felt. maybe i can: upon hearing the news, i was finally able to poop for the first time in 5 days.

then i left early, because i felt like it. and i hit up old navy on the way home to buy myself jeans that aren't on sale, and even an impulse purchase or two, because i can, since it's less than 24 hours to my birthday. then i found out i left my headlights on again (i swear, i have accessory gnomes that play tricks on me), but it didn't kill my battery. i mean, how great is that?

so now i get to kick back and watch teh oc, before donning my new jeans to go out to dinner with 10 or so of my friends, and then go see borat on opening night.

being about to turn 26 kicks ass!

battle of the sexes

yes i'm still fucking in the lab. i would just post when i get home for the evening to fulfill my daily quota, but i fear it might not be in time to count as nov 2...
but i exaggerate. hopefully i'll be sitting down to a kz-prepared dinner of steak tips by 10 pm. that would be ideal.

no rotten tomatoes today, other than some frustrating interactions with people in my would-be thesis lab. sometimes i just curse this place with fire and brimstone; after only 3 months here, that seems a little premature. i swear that it happens only when our tech and i both have PMS, i've spent too much time in the coldroom (4 deg C - runny nose and teary eyes city), and the other grad student gets up on his soapbox. the heart of the conflict: chick dialog.

i contend that it's perfectly normal for those with the XX chromosome to narrate their day or make sudden outbursts relating to the various states of their bowels, appetite, uterus, credit score, relationships, and degree of alertness. it's even more normal to winge about the above with another member of the XX club. it may annoy male onlookers; just tune us out, really. he contends that some things are just inane and should not be discussed, particularly in the hearing of men, particularly him. he finds the self-directed monologs to be egocentric. i find his attitude to be pompous and, by forcing his own measure of the relative quality of conversation topics upon the rest of humanity, to be the very definition of egocentric.

i see no compromise here. other than to say that dude, friday is going to be so welcome.

frugality fails me

pumped up from my foray to the gym after class, i decided to hit up shaw's for some natural foods aisle bounty for lunch rather than subject myself to yet another day of hard boiled eggs and blue cheese dressing, rung up by weight, from the school caf.

i shit you not, i spent about 5 min obsessing over a pint of baby tomatoes for $4, or a vine of strawberry tomatoes ON SALE for about a buck less. less tomatoage in that carton, sure - but of a higher quality. and better value.

fast forward to me washing them to accompany my cottage cheese lunch. i had to discard 9 of the 15 tomatoes because they were squishy and rotten. i know i can be a hard sell on tomatoes - one wrinkle, one blemish, and i'm all set, thanks - but these were legitimately rotten. dismayed that my pecuniarily influenced decision had been the wrong one, i tried to enjoy my remaining tomatoes, which were valued at approximately $0.75 each.

i was talking to a classmate i don't know too well, about a serious scientific matter, when i popped a fermented one (the last one! of course!) and tried to hide my expression of horror as its rancid skin exploded in my mouth and a fountain of mouldy goo sprang forth, making me gag. and i had nowhere to spit it. and what could i do, let rotten tomato run down my chin as i tried to gesture, "hey i have a rotten vegetable in here, i need to bail?" plus she probably would have pointed out that it's a fruit anyway.

so i swallowed it. ugh.