previous post is a lie

I don't have anywhere to live once I move, oh faithful readers. But I do have some good leads.
I think the name of this generation should be the Carpal Tunnel Syndromes (which would be a good name for a rock band). I've been doing data analysis for 2.5 straight weeks, and my wrists hurt. A lot. Have you tried to buy a mousepad lately? They're really hard to find. And there's like 2 choices. I assume that's due to laser mouses instead of the rollerball kind. Anyway, in spite of my sweet wrist-rest mousepad, this is painful.
You should all read The Overachievers. Even if you aren't one. And then you should talk about it with people.


Peace.

Hooray! House!

I have a place to live in the fall. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera.

Maryland is really pretty, if humid. So, there's trees everywhere, and hills too. Big trees. This is quite lovely. Except for the roads. These roads, you see, don't run north-south and east-west. The direction you start out is probably not the direction you'll be going in about 5 minutes. These roads definitely don't intersect at right angles. And don't even think about missing your turn, going another mile, and looping back around to where you should be. That might land you in Pennsylvania. Now in the OK, you can see where you're going for a good way off. You know: Oh, there's the gas station over yonder a piece (or: I can see the gas station; it's in the distance). And by seeing destination, you can usually get there. Now in Maryland, you probably aren't going to see your target, for all the trees. But if you do, the road you think leads in that direction does not. This is really my way of saying that I got lost a lot for the first 2 or 3 days.

Also, I really like being able to get the Washington Post. This makes me quite cheerful

Peace.

housing hunting

Next on agenda for the move: somewhere to live.

Therefore, the great housing quest begins Friday. This could be interesting. Living expenses are ridiculously high compared to the OK. There's some less expensive (and more rural) places east and north a bit. But that would require about a 30 minute commute.

Thoughts on commuting?

I'm only writing this because I'm waiting for Guns, Germs, and Steel to finish importing so I can listen to it on the trip. I figure driving around, not knowing where I am will be a recipe for longer-than-anticipated drive times. So, some education is in order.

Watched Be Kind Rewind tonight. It was pretty great. You should look at various "sweded" movies on the interweb. And I went bowling with Norman and Jessie. And I didn't completely fail at the bowling endeavor. There were even a couple of strikes and spares in there.

It's time to remove the laundry from my bed so I can go to sleep now.

Peace.

late lab night.

Well. . . Here I am in the lab at 11:30 PM. Neat. It's been one of those days. Everything went well. Then due to tangled cables, everything went badly. After that was fixed, everything was fine again. Then my hand slipped, and it all went to crap. And then there was recovery. And things improved. Unfortunately, improvement didn't happen until about 5:30 PM. So, there was the 3 hour experiment, followed by rinsing and perfusion that is still going.
All that said, I've got a damaged experiment that barely worked, and I'm here at 11:30, waiting, until at least midnight, maybe one.
And I still want to do this for a living. I don't know what that says about me. I'm simultaneously tired and caffeinated.
I really wanted to give up and go home after damaging the spinal cord. Somehow, I was convinced to give it a chance to recover and maybe get a decent motor pattern. I could only get one clean form of scratch and no swimming. I actually need the swimming example. And I had a really nice one pre-slippage. But I take what I can get. It's days like this that it's so tempting to cut corners. Like right now, I want to cut this perfusion short by about 150mL just to go home a little sooner. But I know that going off protocol for one experiment, even just a little, is a big deal. And it's worth the extra 15 minutes (or 4 hours) to have usable data.
But I still want to go home.
Until then, I'll just keep catching up on podcasts.


Peace.

shiny new blog, shiny new degree

I've had my old blog since I started college. The time has come to retire it. 

So here we go: THE GRAD SCHOOL BLOG.

The functions will be to document life in a doctoral program and let people in Oklahoma know what's going on in my life more often than the en masse e-mail updates that I'll be sending out. 

Peace.