Atrophy of the Analytical

I met with the Russian professor today, (the one that gives me such a hard time in my thesis committee meetings) and he was surprisingly cordial. He helped me derive all these equations for my receptor trafficking studies and it all makes sense now! Okay maybe not, but by putting things in perspective, I have a much better idea of what is going on in my system. It makes me wish that I had figured out all these relationships BEFORE I actually performed my experiments, so I would know which parameters were important.



But anyway, the whole thing makes me realize how much of my physics training has gone done the tubes. Seriously, these are simple equations, and I really should have figured them out myself. On top of that, I am taking a statistics class, and yeah my math has definitely suffered. I feel sad that I can't think analytically anymore. :( And a professor from Wellesley just e-mailed me asking about how my major has affected my post-college career. And while I would like to say that it has enhanced it, I realize that it is a big fat LIE, and my physics professors would be ashamed.



Que triste. Oh well, Knut makes EVERYTHING better.

BINGO!

My friend Amanda is heading out into the working world of Flagstaff Arizona, so a group of 4 gals gathered Saturday night to wish her a bon voyage. We had dinner and plans to go bowling, but our plans were foiled due to a 1.5 hour wait for a lane. Clearly, they need more bowling alleys in the suburbs. Determined to have a good time, we settled on....BINGO. That's right, it's the new and exciting place to be for people in their late 20's.

So having no idea what was going on, we purchased a game set and our little ink daubers. Let me just say that first time Bingo is STRESSFUL. There was so much Bingo Lingo that we needed to learn (3 the hard way, wild number, flying elvis -still haven't figured out that one...), it was overwhelming at first, but after we figured out the whole electronic screen, it turned out to be a lot of fun! I have to say that you have to try it at least one. And I can see how it can get very addicting.

None of us actually ended up winning, but we had a good time (and the ink dauber was the best $1 spent in a while).

Exhausted and Lazy

After a morning full of meetings, I am tired and apathetic. Okay, I admit I am mostly tired from staying up late to watch Ninja Warrior on G4 and online Ugly Betty episodes. Luckily, I didn't give up slothfulness for Lent, because lately I have been nothing but. Examples:
1) I set my alarm clock for 7:00 am and snooze for 1-1.5 hours EVERYDAY!
2) After waking up, I'll take 1-1.5 hours just to putter around in the morning before heading out.
3) After 3:00 pm I feel like my brain is fried and either fall asleep or think about going home until I do.
4) I leave my dirty dishes in the sink for a week (I know it's so gross).
5) I neglect my leopard gecko Cornelius for weeks.
6) I haven't read a full scientific article in over a month.
This is really pathetic, I am the worst graduate student ever. Oh well. For now I'll just keep think about getting things done, and maybe soon it will cross over into reality.

Pop! Goes my heart

I watched Music & Lyrics with doctorsquared a few weeks ago and had this song stuck in my head for days. The movie was okay- exactly what you would expect, but this music video is priceless! The two of us laughed so hard, it was difficult to breathe.

Works-Not-In-Progress

I had to give a 20 minute presentation in front of my entire department today. Speaking in front of people is not something I relish, especially when I see people falling asleep (okay, so maybe this is retribution for me falling asleep in other people's talks, but still, okay I guess I can't blame them when the title of my talk is "The mechanisms of metabotropic glutamate receptor-mediated AMPAR trafficking". who cares?! To top it off, the two people who gave talks ahead of me, one of them showed fly eye pictures, and the other played a video with humping rats to the tune of "My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard..." I can't compete with sex and anxiety studies in rats, although I do not envy the girl, who has to sit and record the amount of times the male rat mounts the female, and time to ejaculation, etc.)

In any case, I am glad it is over. I have been more looking forward to babysitting this little guy in a couple of hours!!

Reliving Last Week

So we snowboarded for four days in a row, and I feel pretty comfortable on the mountain now. I still eat the snow doing black diamonds, but it surprisingly hurts less to fall when you are going fast than when you are going slow. It is more of a psychological challenge.

On the way back we ate at Murder Burger in Davis, or actually Redrum Burger now. We had to try the ZOOM (a big plate of fried zucchini, onion rings and mushrooms), even though my cardiac vessels were scared. And HB tried the ostrich burger which has a really good taste, different from any other burger meat. Basically, the rest of the week, we did a whole lot of eating (food in the SF area is soooo tasty) and watching Battlestar Galactica. It is such a good series, every episode is well done. I especially liked the first (or maybe 2nd?) show of the third season where Admiral Adama calls his son a fatass. Because Lee Adama is such a tool, even though he is hot. He makes retarded decisions and always gets bailed out of them by the cool people around him. But I digress.

HB introduced a new type of food to me: Bun bo hue. A bowlful of spicy noodle yumminess, and all this time I thought the best Vietnamese foods were the pho's and grilled pork and sandwiches. We also had delicious Korean tofu stew, awesome Mediterranean food, and Chinese comfort food. The last night, HB cooked his cabbage dish for me that he has been raving about all month. And it basically is just... cabbage that he sauteed/steamed with garlic and some green onions. It was pretty good with some rice and tofu.

We also watched the Friday midnight showing of 300. The crowd was crazy, we even saw people donning broom heads attached to bike helmets. Overall it was a good movie, very closely following the eponymous Frank Miller comic book, except for some added scenes with the queen and the Spartan counsel, which were kinda unnecessary. Of course any reference to the Greek city-states always reminds me of this class I took in high school. It was a two years humanities course, and when we studied ancient Greece, the teachers split the class into 5 competing city-states: Athens, Sparta, Argos, Corinth and ?I forget?. For a good grade, we had to literally do as the Greeks do (wear togas, build living quarters, etc.) I will never forget marching into 3rd period with a trumpet call (okay yeah, so no trumpets back then, but we improvised) screaming "What makes the grass grow? Blood Blood Blood! and offering "human" sacrifices to the gods (our teachers) Go Sparta!!!

It's Gonna be a Long Update

Because I am a loser and couldn't find the venue for North by Southwest this evening, otherwise I would be rockin' out to Margot and the Nuclear So & So's and Pigeon John. Which is weird that they are performing in the same place because they are so different, but I was REALLY looking forward to seeing them. oh well.

Sorry for the long hiatus, I was hoping to update my blog while in San Francisco, but I hardly spent any time on the computer. I had an awesome time with my boyfriend (I guess it's time to give him a name- HB). We see each other about once a month, and this has been going on for about 6 years now. I used to worry about lots of things concerning our relationship (what would happen once we actually ended up in the same place, are we insane, why didn't I apply to more med schools near SF, what if he meets a hot California girl, etc..) but I've stopped most of that now because it is both unhelpful and unneccessary (I think).

I arrived in SF, and we immediately headed up to South Lake Tahoe. We stayed at a discount motel, which was surprisingly clean and even had a fridge and communal hot tub. Saturday morning, we headed to the slopes at Kirkwood, where it was packed! with both snow and people. Saturday was not a good day. Even though I had taken snowboarding lessons in college and have gone about once a year since then, I had a hard time remembering how to do my S-turns. And, since the snow was mostly packed powder, it hurt to fall, and I fell aLOT. My butt took a brutal beating, and at times I teared up in pain. I hated being the whiny, wimpy girlfriend, but HB was so patient and encouraging. He really deserves a big sloppy kiss for his efforts.

Fortunately, I got better the next day and continued to improve. On Sunday, we snowboarded at Heavenly, which has the some of the best views of the Lake. I lost my cell phone on the slopes, someone found it and returned it for me only to lose it again the next day, and I wasn't so lucky the second time around. After a half day of snowboarding, we took a scenic drive to a mountain town called Truckee near North Lake Tahoe. We stayed at the River Street Inn, which is this little bed and breakfast by the river. HB went all out in the planning. He's the best! (Okay, since I feel like I am gushing a little too much over HB, let me just interject here some of the downsides of hanging out with him: He LOVES farting and toilet humor. He is obsessed with pooping and all things dealing with poop. Ever since he heard about the "dutch oven", I know he has been dying to do this to me, but he knows better. While this makes for some major stinkiness, there are some upsides, like I don't feel that weird about pooping or farting at his place, since he does it all the time around me)

Since this post is already too long, I will save the rest for tomorrow.

Snowboarding in 12 hours!

I am leaving today to visit my boyfriend in San Francisco!! We are going snowboarding in Tahoe for a few days. I have new gear (I serendipitously passed an outdoor sporting goods shop that had 25% off their winter clothing! Since I also fit into Large girls sizes, I was able to score some pretty good prices on some Northface stuff.) including a new pink helmet that I am excited about wearing. Now I can carve on the mountain with crazy, reckless abandon. Okay maybe not that reckless, as it is always a little worrisome to get back into things after a whole year of not snowboarding.

Otherwise, everything else is going pretty well. I met privately with one of my thesis committee members (Professor J) to clarify his position on my project, and he had some good suggestions. Even better, he also thinks Dr. Say-whatever-comes-to-my-head-without-processing-it-first went into an unnecessary homily. phew. So Professor J is probably the professor whose opinion I most care about on my committee. We have a long history- I rotated in his lab a long long time ago. He was the ultimate teacher, and he was the best lecturer in Medical School Pharmacology (I'll never forget that tolcapone- a drug for Parkinson's causes explosive diarrhea). Also he is just plain hilarious. He can say things that will make you realize the next day that he completely made a fool out of you. Outside of science, you cannot believe anything he says. He told my boss once that I work better with the threat of a stick instead of the carrot. I could go on about the crazy things he says, but he has really made my life in school here better.

But enough about school already, I am off to the west coast!