randomesque

2010-05-04T00:02:00.000-07:00

yup, i think it's time to resurrect this blog.

it's funny... it contains a lot of my past, past with which i may have wanted to disconnect with for some reason or another, but... can we really part with our own pasts?

our lives are the sums of our decisions, and you can't un-make decisions. this blog contains a lot of my decisions... so it is a big part of my life. i feel the need to reclaim it.

especially after googling "kat reinhart" and realizing that there are other bitches out there with my name making worse decisions than me. lol.

__________

it won't truly be "uncensored"... like i thought it would... back when the internet was a secret place that no one knew about...

but on the other hand, i think that it's better than just hiding all of my thoughts in paper journals that no one else gets to read. if you have the time to go through my archives, feel free... it's all shit that i wrote. the real kat reinhart, please stand up...

moar to follow. hello world, i'm glad to be back.

i hereby proclaim this blog... undead.

2010-05-03T23:24:00.001-07:00

(eom)

2008-09-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, Tessa left a comment on this blog asking if it is dead.

Yes and no. My writer's block has combined with so many years of blogging here at the same place to leave me unable/unwilling/unwanting to update this one.

So I'm starting a new one: Kat in Oregon.

Pls update your bookmarks/RSS feeds/etc.

2008-02-06T18:55:00.000-08:00

where in the world is osama bin laden?

morgan spurlock? motherfucking hero.

from nova's twitter the other day

2008-02-06T10:32:00.000-08:00

"is anything more subversive than being an optimist in the face of harrowing adversity?"

i like it.

more posting later, quite likely. but for now, work to do.

forget r&r

2008-01-06T16:14:00.001-08:00

what you really need when you're under the weather is b^3:

books and beer in a bath.

two thousand and what?

2008-01-04T16:15:00.000-08:00

so suddenly it's a new year, i haven't blogged in decades, and i'm home early from work because the persistent cough i had over vacation has turned back into something that makes me not feel good; the hacking and the mild nausea from the post-nasal drip has left me completely exhausted. i managed to crawl from the bed to the couch around 8:30 this morning, and then proceeded to sleep until 10:30, roll into work around 11, and then leave promptly when i was done with all i needed to do (timepoint + group meeting) and take the bus home. i'm planning on hopping back into the sack for a few hours here in a second, but i thought i'd blog in the meanwhile, since i never seem to do that anymore.

2008. january. three times i've written and deleted this paragraph, and i just can't figure out what to say about 2008. i guess i'll just leave it at this: everything is lined up for a year of hard work that pays off. my goals for 2008: get into grad school, get at least one paper, and preferably 2 or more (plus a lead author one), accepted to a journal; maintain good relationships with all the amazing people i've met in the last year or four; and keep my fingers crossed for the right set of conditions to make another attempt at the mountain that kicked my ass last spring. in short: to do more of the things i'm constantly thinking about doing. will that apply to blogging? we'll see.

and now, since i'm far too tired and lazy to write more paragraphs about what i've been doing, i'm going to forgo sentence structure and just start listing things.

been reading:
middlesex, by jeffrey eugenides. (quite possibly the best book i've ever read; read it together with mutants by armand marie leroi for maximum impact)
night watch series, by sergei lukyanenko. just an awesome fantasy world, fun read but not fluffy.
do androids dream of electric sheep? by philip k. dick. not sure if i'll finish it; probably not dick's best story, but with the new cut of blade runner out i felt like i needed to at least give it a try....
requiem for a dream by hubert selby, jr. fucked up book. almost definitely won't finish it; almost as unitelligible as naked lunch. more readable to modern audiences than finnegan's wake though.

currently listening: live at kexp volume 3. it's good. you can't buy it anymore.

lots of new flickr photos up, but i'm too tired to go through them and post a few right now. expect some photoblog posts soon. in the meantime just go look at them if you want.

ok. i think it's naptime.

turkey day

2007-11-24T11:42:00.000-08:00

thanksgiving was pretty successful, i'd have to say.

gregg cleans up alright, it turns out... despite all my worrying, he managed to come through and not just survive my family but even managed to impress them. Macallan scotch and being a closet Coug for the win.

all in all not a bad turkey day.

giving thanks

2007-11-22T10:11:00.000-08:00

it's that holiday again, the one on which we are supposed to reflect and give thanks for all that we have. i have plenty to be thankful for, to be sure, this year more than others, it seems. i'll spare you the list, but needless to say i do not live a life of need.

this year, thanksgiving is going to be an adventure; not only am i bringing the new boyfriend to meet my family, but we are having a huge dinner with 18 people. i've never had a thanksgiving that large, and i'm not sure i've ever seen 18 people crammed into my grandparents' house, but it'll be fun.

we're going to have:
my grandparents (all 3 surviving)
my parents, my brother, my sister
myself, the boy
aunt and uncle (mom's older sister and her husband)
aunt, uncle and cousin (mom's younger brother, his wife and their 6-year-old)
aunt (dad's younger sister), her 11-year-old daughter
aunt's fiancee and his 24-year-old son.

and that's just the people, that's not the food. there'll be more than enough food, i hope.

should be interesting.

early november

2007-11-09T18:32:00.000-08:00

and we're a third of the way through november now. past the midpoint between the equinox and the solstice, so more than a quarter of the way through the dark part of the year, and coming into the darkest. i kind of enjoy it, though, when it's pitch black by 5:45. except for the whole commuting in the dark thing... makes me glad i have good lights on my bike. (thanks in no small part to a certain someone who makes sure i am well illuminated.)

i've never been particularly prone to seasonal affective disorder; in fact, some of the deepest depths of my depression were during the summer. the lack of light doesn't seem to affect much other than my sleep schedule; however, with other factors at work on my sleep schedule these days i have found myself out of bed by 7:30 and out the door before 8:30 most mornings, instead of ignoring the alarm clock through 10 snooze cycles and bombing down the hill at 9:00, then pretending to be on time to work. plus, the mornings are still nice and light right now, so it's like i'm wasting daylight if i'm not up and at 'em before 8.

grad school application deadlines are rapidly approaching; i'm trying not to panic. they'll get done, i'm sure, it's just a matter of sitting down and writing. and filling out damn online forms. harvard wants not only a transcript, but also a form-based enumeration of all the classes i took in my major field of study, in related fields of study, and in mathematics. plus $90, by credit card, for the privilege of applying to their university. it is where i want to go, though, and i'm really excited by the research going on there, so I'll buck up and pay the fees. I'll just bitch and moan about it in the process.

it's a three day weekend, which is awesome, and which also means that my new sweetie and i will have a day off in common this weekend. this has never happened before; it should be fun.

and, completely unrelated, here's a picture from the latest episode in bicycle hooliganery:

seasonal obscenities

2007-10-31T09:14:00.000-07:00

my morning commute is fun, but it can be harrowing at times. today was no exception - i had no fewer than 4 close calls on my way in. one or two of them were my fault - i was not paying attention and was irritated at lights for being red - but the others were caused by drivers being inconsiderate. like when the bus decides to pass me just as the road narrows and cars are parked in my travel path, forcing me to move left. or the jackass whose boat was hanging out into the intersection long after the light had changed.

being that it's halloween, the phrase which popped into my head to yell (i usually don't actually yell, i just mutter, or think rude things at drivers) was not the usual "eat a dick!", but the more seasonal "eat a VAMPIRE dick!"

i don't know where i come up with these things. i think that riding with other aggressive riders makes me more inclined to ride like a bat out of hell, which will probably come up and bite me in the ass someday. until that day, though, i just keep in mind: rubber side down!

tessa says

2007-10-29T17:51:00.000-07:00

i need to update my blog. so here it is, blog update. :p

she's probably referring to something specific that she wants me to post about, but i think i'm going to be oblique about it and not say anything direct. ha! take that, tessa.

in other news, life is good, the weather is getting cold but not too terribly rainy, and i have a shitload of work to get done in the next week. it's coming along, but essays refuse to write themselves. which is kinda frustrating, especially when there's other stuff i'd rather be doing.

also in other news, my cousin krissy got engaged over the weekend! congratulations to her and her fiance, corey. i think they'll probably make it. he is a great guy.

it's wet

2007-10-19T22:25:00.000-07:00

and suddenly october is half over, and november is quickly approaching. it's been wet, warm and wet, the last few days, and we've had some decent winds too. this is what happens in seattle during la nina, evidently.

i'm really falling in love with this city all over again this year. it makes me very sad that i will probably be leaving it in less than a year.

we've entered a season of lots of work, work and stress. it seems like it happens every fall, things just get busy and hard. but at the same time, i'm really enjoying life, and trying to live every moment of it. it's put me outside on my bike a lot, but at the same time it's keeping me from a lot of the work that i need to do.

but for now, i'm going to go enjoy the fact that i can sleep in tomorrow. one of my favorite things, sleeping.

reduce carbon!

2007-10-09T20:59:00.000-07:00

so i just had an extremely nerdy revelation: all this talk of "reducing carbon" is, well, accurate.

we want to reduce carbon. as in, the opposite of oxidizing it.

now, i don't know how many of you remember high school chemistry and the concept of REDOX, but i'll try to make it simple. When we're talking about carbon (which cycles throughout the atmosphere, from plants photosynthesizing CO2 into sugars and other organisms breaking it back down), oxidation is the process that animals do (breaking it apart from other atoms and attaching it to oxygen), and reduction is the process that plants do. Anything that takes energy from carbon-based materials, be them hydrocarbons such as those found in gasoline, or simple sugars or even proteins that animals eat, is oxidizing the carbon. It's outputting CO2. Processes which remove CO2 from the atmosphere (which, last time I checked, all the environmentalists were advocating) are reducing carbon.

So Al Gore is right when he says that we need to reduce carbon. We need to reduce more carbon than we're reducing right now, that's for sure.

block

2007-10-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

why is it that when i most need to write, i am least motivated and least able to focus on writing? i know it's not panic time yet (which may be why i'm not particularly focused yet), but i still know i should be working on many of the things i have due in the next couple of months. instead, i just sit here staring at my keyboard, noticing just how dirty it has become (designed by highly trained engineers at apple, it seems, specifically to collect dirt and crumbs and skin cells) and not allowing it to be a tool in the formation of my thoughts into words.

cyclocross!

2007-10-06T15:46:00.001-07:00

So I rode in my first cyclocross race today, and I have to say: it was EXTREMELY fun. Aside from the fact that I had to haul myself out of bed at 7:15 this Saturday morning, it was a good time. My friend Matthew races too, and was nice enough to give me and my bike a ride to the race (up in Kenmore) so I didn't have to leave hella early and ride my bike there.

Cyclocross is a different kind of bike racing: instead of riding on pavement, you're riding on grass, dirt, gravel and even occasionally sand. Plus there are barriers, where you have to dismount and jump over (with your bike) and get back on and ride, all without stopping. I'm not so good at this part yet, so I did end up kind of stopping a little on the remount a few times, but I am getting the hang of the dismount. Not that I'm fast, but it was mostly just hella fun. The barriers and the varied terrain of course make CX slower than road racing, but the top performers are often the same people and are by no means less fit than road racers. Also, at this one at least, there was a beer garden (bonus!) and Matt offered to buy the first beer for anyone in our bike club that rode and finished the race (double bonus!) So after my race (which was first) and the mens' equivalent race (in which a few of my friends were riding, and which was second) we all stood around in the beer garden heckling and cheering on the later, faster, better racers.

The best part about doing a CX race is that you can eat whatever you want afterwards. Because really, spending 40 minutes (which was how long my race was; i think i came in around 39:00) at or near your maximum heart rate, riding a bike up and down hills and running and jumping barriers is a good workout and burns hella calories.

I ended up finishing 8th out of 15 women in my category; not a bad showing for my first race. My average lap time was 9:35, while the women who won were closer to 7:30, but... like I said, being my first race and being as out of shape as I am (trip to HI, no bike...) I think I did pretty darn well.

After the race, Matt needed to stop at REI, so I tagged along and once again demonstrated my inability to enter that store and exit without spending over $100. OTOH, I picked up some much-needed gear (floor pump; front light; new tubes) and only one overpriced fun gadget - a heart rate monitor watch. So now, if I'm wearing the chest strap sensor, I can see what my heart is doing at all times, and make my workouts more efficient. Hopefully the fun gadgetry will make me more inclined to actually work out, rather than just riding with my ~~beer~~bike club twice a week. I can see CX being a really fun way to keep in shape this winter... and who knows, after a few more races, I might actually get faster.

i love seattle

2007-10-03T08:10:00.000-07:00

because only in seattle can four semi-randomly selected members of a given bike club, standing around enjoying tropical drinks in chilly weather, discuss the latest xkcd comic and not have to explain to a single party present either the nature of the webcomic (because everyone reads it) or the joke (because everyone has experienced the ballmer peak, firsthand).

it's fall in seattle

2007-09-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

i left perpetual summer (albeit a slightly cloudy one) around 9:30 last night and arrived in wet, chilly autumn at 6:30 this morning. the sun has since come out, but it's very definitely the dark half of the year; yesterday at this time the sun was directly overhead and now it's clear over *there*.

the fact that the sun is out has made it harder for me to sleep as i was planning this morning; damn east-facing apartment. i did catch a few z's on the plane, but they were not peaceful cozy z's, they were uncomfortable and slightly paranoid. (i've been having wacky dreams the last few nights; wonder if it's the full moon.)

oh, and to add to the complaint pile: the one working USB port on my laptop seems to have given way, meaning all the pictures i haven't yet uploaded to flickr (and the rest of the 680someodd i took on the trip which i wasn't going to subject the entire world to) are in limbo on that computer. i guess i'll take it into a genius and see what they have to say... but according to brian it could be the motherboard, so it might just not be worth fixing. i'll have to get firewire devices or something.

anyway, i'm going to read now, in hopes that it'll eventually make me sleepy and i can get a nap in before critical mass this evening. it's been too long since i've ridden a bike; to get to go out and do it with a fuckton of people today is just too exciting to pass up.

it is a big island

2007-09-20T23:08:00.001-07:00

so i'm here on the island of hawai'i, the big island, so big that all the other Hawaiian islands could fit on top of it. so far i've seen the town of kailua-kona, and the northern half of the island.

the sun is huge here, especially at sunset. (the zoom lens doesn't hurt either.)

so are the waves.

the landscapes are so varied, within a half hour drive you can go from completely barren desert to lush green rainforest...

there are so many microclimates on this island it's amazing. you can see many of them at once from some lookout points... and the sunsets over the ocean are always stunning.

volcanic

2007-09-16T12:17:00.001-07:00

so yesterday i hiked across the crater of haleakala, the volcano that makes up the east half of maui. it was a pretty awesome journey, 12 miles across the crater of a "dormant" (not technically, since it erupted in 1790, but dormant enough) volcano. "haleakala" means "house of the sun", and according to hawaiian legend, it was the place where maui, the demigod, went to lasso the sun so that his mother could have more daylight.

i'm in the process of uploading photos from the trip, but the internets are slow here at the hostel since it's free wifi, so it might take awhile. so for now, have a picture of the sunset on friday night, off my friend Cass's parents' lanai in napili, on the northwest coast of maui:

maui.

2007-09-13T22:29:00.000-07:00

so i arrived here in maui about an hour ago, after a long damn plane ride and a quick trip from the airport to my hostel. it's a pretty sweet place here, i've got a bed in a room with 4 other women, and the common areas of the hostel are pretty well populated.

no time for photography tonight, unfortunately... we flew in at sunset, and being on the east side of the mountains it got dark pretty quickly. it's also cooled off; it was 90 and muggy when we landed, and the airport is pretty much all open air, which makes it a bit warm.

i'm probably going to crash out pretty early tomorrow, since i'm still on pacific time, rather than hawaii time. it's a 3 hour time difference, so it's like flying from new york to seattle. tired early, awake early (or so i'm hoping). maybe i'll be up in time to catch the sunrise? maybe not. we'll see.

anyway, i think i'm going to get a little reading or maybe some writing done, and then crash out pretty early. it'll take me a few days to get adjusted to island time...

bryce a. lewis, 19 years old

2007-09-10T23:09:00.000-07:00

was the cyclist killed by the dump truck on friday. he had just moved here from colorado less than a month ago, and was in love with the city. he loved riding bikes, and fixing bikes, and was also an artist and a musician.

he was just a kid. this is so fucking tragic.

i spoke with his roommate last night, down at the crash site. she is also the girlfriend of caleb, the other cyclist. all i could do was reach out to her... i had no words. i cannot imagine the grief she must feel, and all of his family and friends. not having known him, grief is not part of my direct experience with this tragedy, though i do feel a sense of loss.

as i stood there and snapped pictures of the memorial, i couldn't help but feeling a bit guilty for capturing this moment of grief... as the young woman knelt to light candles next to a sign which read "BRYCE WE LOVE + MISS YOU SO MUCH", a tragic and painful smile on her face...

and stenciled on the street, in the bike lane on eastlake and the right lane on fuhrman:

my conversation with lauren did make me feel better about the slightly activist nature of the response to his death: his family and his friends are 100% behind our efforts to raise the visibility of this horrible tragedy. the more people know about what happened here, the less likely it is to happen again.

ride safe, boys and girls. cyclists and drivers.

2007-09-07T20:50:00.000-07:00

overwhelmed. a strange, crushing emptiness pressing me into my chair.

cyclist killed by dump truck at an intersection I cross every single morning.

an intersection I can't reasonably avoid crossing. every day. a cyclist, riding in the bike lane, obliterated by a dump truck making a right turn.

what's the answer? what could have been done? do we need a special bike signal at that bridge, like there is by the fremont bridge? no right turns allowed from eastlake to fuhrman?

a dedicated right turn lane, with a dashed stripe and an arrow? (hey, now there's an idea!)

stupid fucking trucks to use their damn turn signals, and be aware of the fact that there's a bike lane?

or stupid fucking cyclists to slow down, ride more carefully and for fuck's sake don't ride without a front brake* in this city FTLOG!!??!11? (this is seattle, we have hills. this isn't a fucking velodrome.)

(*edit: he did have a front brake. he was not wearing a helmet, but it's unlikely a helmet would have helped in this situation.)

this hurts me. physically. fresh from my first major crash (bike vs. pavement, no other vehicles involved, thankfully), recovering from the inevitable loss of confidence brought on by some minor road rash and a bit of a bonk, only to have this happen. on a route i take every single day.

did i know him? have i ever seen someone on that bike at a ride?

how many more senseless deaths will it take?

christfuck. words cannot express.

it's friday

2007-09-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

it was brought to my attention last night that I haven't been blogging with much regularity recently. As I explained (and as my archives will attest), i tend to go through phases as far as blogging is concerned, and i've learned the hard way about divulging too much in this seemingly protected forum. When I'm blogging less, it generally means that I'm living more, and the past few weeks have been no exception.

August was a busy month, and the first few days of September have offered little reprieve from the insanity. Between putting together a show of my photography (all month at the copper vine, 1315 E Pine, check it out if you're in seattle! better yet, come to my opening, 6-9pm, next Tues. the 11th), taking pictures with my bike for the bike girls' calendar, taking the damn GRE, and work, I've been booked. Solid.

It's not goign to get better over the next few months, but it will be slightly less insane for a few weeks. I leave in less than a week for more than 2 weeks on islands far from any continent, during which time I hope to work on my tan and write my grad school application statements.

today, however, is no reprieve: I've got 17 batches of fish in the incubator, at various stages of treatment. If all goes well I should get a good dose-response curve from one of the mutants we've been working with, and possibly find a few heterozygous pairs of another. then I have to take down other fish for a screening run I'm doing next week, take pictures of fish slices so that the EM guy knows what he's looking at, scan negatives from this week's EM runs... oh, and see if the agarose I need came in, and if it did, run out on a gel the products from yesterday's PCR.

zomg

2007-08-24T19:19:00.000-07:00

someone needs to tell people to stop making webcomics. i do need to get things done besides read webcomics...

it was inevitable

2007-08-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

so this morning, for the first time ever, i made the classic molecular biology mistake: mixing up the leads on the gel box.

doh!

i heart auditory neuroscience

2007-08-22T21:06:00.000-07:00

i've been on a bit of a brian eno kick the last week or so. i just impulse-bought another of his albums: nerve net, from 1992. it's really interesting music. as you should expect from mr. eno. he's better than anyone at creating aural landscapes: check out his "music for airports". it is absolutely just that - listening to it you feel as if you're waiting for a flight or changing planes. "nerve net" is a bit less ambient and a bit more upbeat, but it's still very richly-textured, slowly-evolving ear candy. i'm a fan. more than that, i think that he's probably got a decent grasp on how auditory cortex works and how music really is formulas, and you can use these formulas to create a predictable outcome in the listener's experience.

i've been reading jeff hawkins' on intelligence, and i'm not quite far enough in to do much in-depth analysis, except to say that i think he's missing a huge point, but i will withhold final judgement until i'm finished with the book. but it's got me thinking about computational models of cortex, and ways to simulate how our brain works, or at least to understand it. hawkins holds to the theory that there's a common cortical algorithm; that is to say, all parts of cortex, whether auditory, visual, etc. use the same fundamental method to find patterns in the environment. it's an interesting idea, and i definitely think there's probably some truth to it. but to say that in an adult human, visual cortex is the same as auditory cortex is the same as prefrontal cortex isn't exactly going to be accurate. though it's been shown that developmentally, they are interchangeable. anyway... too soon to know for sure, i'll have to finish the book and then wait 20 years before i can really know whether or not he's right.

(side note: watch hawkins give a talk on how brain science is going to change computing. he's a big-picture thinker, that's for sure.)

the question that remains, of course, is what that cortical algorithm is, how it works. and, of course, whether it's still too early to understand the cortex fully, because we don't completely understand all the underlying structures, and since the cortex is like built on top of and inextricably intertwined with the "lower" brain structures, without a bottom-up understanding our top-down knowledge will be incomplete.

post-gre post

2007-08-22T09:23:00.001-07:00

(aww, hell. this is post #1134 to this blog. reminds me of the days of spelling out bad words on old one-line calculators.)

so... i basically took the GRE yesterday and told it where to stick it. i am the boss of that test. i pwned it, even. it's over now, which is awesome.

so it's time to shift my thinking away from the highly specific reality of the GRE and towards the much more nebulous world of science. in which i do PCR and occasionally write some stuff. yay, science. more later, on science, most likely.

pre-gre post

2007-08-20T20:54:00.000-07:00

so t -13 hours until i go take the damn GRE. i really can't wait until i'm done with it; at the same time i wish i'd taken preparation a bit more seriously... though i don't think i'm at risk of really sucking. whatever; it'll all be over soon, and like hell i'm going to pay another $150 to take the test again, no matter how poorly i do.

it'll be one more hoop down, i guess... and how many yet to jump through? i made a list today of the ETS codes for schools i'm thinking of applying to; i haven't really done much thinking or paring down of lists, or even writing emails to professors or anything. once the gre is done, i have to get started on that.

i've whittled it down to a list of ~~6 7~~ schools and 89 programs...
UW (2 programs?)
U of Oregon
UCSF
UCSD
Stanford (?)
Berkeley (??)
Harvard
Columbia

i've also been weighing relative merits of different schools and their respective environments. the west coast has the benefit of being close to home, as well as a much more moderate climate. the east coast has the benefit of being in the center of everything, but has disadvantages in being so far away and having so much weather.

in terms of ranking, or probability of me deciding to go there, assuming i get in everywhere on my list, right now the list stands at: UW, Oregon/UCSD (tie), UCSF/Stanford/Berkeley(tie), Harvard/Columbia. and since i'm not likely to get into harvard and noplace else... i'm not so sure why i'm applying to so damn many programs.

sigh.

photographic

2007-08-19T13:29:00.000-07:00

please stop loving me
please stop loving me
i am none of these things
-the cure

trying to curate a show of my own photography is a good way to ensure that i decide my camera sucks, my pictures suck, my eye sucks, my light sucks, and my show is going to suck.

i think i have the pictures picked out, but i'm panicking about resolution. i want to print at least 1 at like 12x16, but due to memory restrictions i shoot at 3MP, which means 2048x1536 pixels. when the shot is perfectly in focus that is ok, but. my shots are not always in perfect focus.

gah. i really overcommitted myself for this month. i'll be glad when it's over, when i have everything done. then next month - hey, i haven't mentioned this here yet! - i'm going to hawaii. fuck yes.

monday monday monday

2007-08-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

wow, that didn't feel like a weekend at all. flying out to spokane on friday night, wedding saturday, hangover and drive home sunday, not exactly relaxing and chillaxing. it was fun though, and it was great to see everyone on that side of the family - don't get to do that much.

and now it's monday morning, and i have to figure out what all i'm doing this week. besides riding bikes/buying bike parts/playing with bikes/fixing bikes. because i have to pay the bills... you know, that work thing.

contemplating entering a cyclocross race or two this fall, as if i didn't already have enough to do.

OK! time to work on writing. grant proposal + personal statements for grad school apps. whee!

the fun(ding) game

2007-08-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

So i'm in the beginning phases of writing my first major grant - an NSF graduate student research fellowship. It's basically about $120,000 over 3 years, most of which is stipend but also includes $10K for research costs and a fund for international travel for the purposes of research. So far, it's just a few ideas floating around in my head, and a bunch of brainstorm notes in a notebook. Hopefully before Nov. 7 it will be a fully-formed, scientifically sound, and relevant question.

Obvs I'm not going to talk about the scientific details of my proposal, at least until it's turned in, but suffice it to say it is generally about vertebrate nervous system development. And that it should be good. We'll see though.

Between now and the new year, I have 2 GRE exams, 5 to 8 grad school applications, and 1 NSF grant proposal to finish. And that's just stuff for work/school.

Before the 1st of September, I have 1 GRE exam, 5 photos to take (with me as model, not photographer), a show of my own photography to curate (all September at the Copper Vine), and a wedding to attend. And that's not counting all the data I need to collect on the fishies.

Fun stuff...

now with words

2007-08-07T15:56:00.000-07:00

Nothing more depressing than having 2 digits worth of money in my checking account. Paycheck should be coming through within a day or two, but in the meantime I can't really afford to buy food (or anything for that matter). Always fun.

Random thoughts: someone (someone we'll call M for blog-sakes) has been trying to convince me to get into cyclocross racing. I do have the bike for it, and evidently I have the body as well. It'd take some training (and it's too late for this season and so I would have to wait until next year) but it could be fun. After my top-7 (out of ~30-40) finish at Greenlake last month and my top-20 (out of 200+) finish at the Dead Baby Downhill this past weekend, I'm starting to think that he might be right; this could be something I could do. Ability and motivation are entirely different things though; I need the latter much more than the former. What I really need is to develop a little M-voice in my head, much like the old mom-voice, that says "hey! get off your ass and go _______!"

Wish I could leave work yet, but I have to go set up fish and I haven't found out yet how many I need to set. Fucking work. Oh wait, I get a paycheck for this stuff. Cool.

dead baby downhill

2007-08-04T03:54:00.000-07:00

fry day

2007-08-03T14:48:00.000-07:00

another week down, wtf? my second week of full-time work, y'know, like with a paycheck and everything. i'm pretty excited about that; cash flow is always a good thing. things are still a little slow as i'm trying to get into the swing of things. there's not a lot to do when you don't have fish; i have to come in on saturday to set some up. there's a 6-day turnaround between setting up breeding pairs and having larvae to screen, so it'll be next friday before the fish from tomorrow's cross are ready to be experimented with. but once i get into the pattern, figure out what days i'm doing what with which fish, my productivity should skyrocket. crank out that data left and right.

what else? lots of riding bikes. yesterday was a very decent ride, put in significant mileage and had a good time while doing it. went and visited mobius cycles downtown, and had fun riding around their lounge/art gallery space:

that's me on a fixie, trying to trackstand. the picture makes me look a lot better at it than i really am; i think i held that for about a second before falling out of it. oh well; once my old sekai is converted i'll be able to practice a lot more. :D

good morning sunshine

2007-08-01T10:19:00.000-07:00

it was a slow wakeup this morning, and i'm still running about half-speed. not good for a day i have to leave work early... oh well. i'm planning on coming back in for another few hours after dinner to get some things fully done before meeting tomorrow. but this afternoon is the bike protest to tell the city how we feel about their decision to not stripe bike lanes down stone way. we're anticipating a pretty huge turnout. should be good.

ok, time to work.

harry potter

2007-07-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

ok, you've had a week, so i'm going to write now about how i felt about the harry potter book.

my initial reaction to finishing was anger and disappointment. i felt cheated by some cheap plot tricks that were just too convenient, and i hated the epilogue.

that said, overall, i guess it's exactly what we should have expected from the end of harry potter. and i did like it, i really did. i ate that book up like candy, finishing it probably 28 hours after i bought it. it was satisfying, since who doesn't love an epic that ends well, but... and I guess I have had these feelings throughout the series... but I thought the end was a little too traditional-values. be a hero, grow up, marry a nice girl and have a flock of children. meh.

lol

2007-07-29T14:51:00.000-07:00

dreaming in stereo

2007-07-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

i had a dream about bikes last night.

it's not particularly surprising, since i spent all last night riding bikes.

i dreamed about the fixie conversion i am going to embark on with my old sekai frame. i dreamed that it had been turned into a singlespeed (not a fixie) and i remember being highly annoyed at the ability to coast.

critical mass/greenlake madness

2007-07-28T02:26:00.000-07:00

there were a lot of people at critical mass tonight.

it was my first time, and it was definitely interesting... it's the one night a month when we just really fuck up traffic.

and then there was... shenaniganery.

and imagery.

and this was how i ended the night: up the fucking stairs. with my bike. cyclocross boot camp, hell yeah!

great new music

2007-07-23T22:20:00.001-07:00

(not even a harry potter related post here. enjoy, those of you who haven't finished the book, and read faster, dammit!)

in our bedroom after the war, stars

i bought this album last night off of itunes on a kind of an impulse. i'd logged onto itunes with the intent of buying the new polyphonic spree, but after listening to a few clips and reading a few reviews, i decided that i was not, in fact, in the mood for that exact album (though i will probably grab it eventually), and clicked, based solely on the name of the album, on this one. i'd heard of the band stars before, maybe even heard a track, enough to know that i liked their stuff, but i'd never really listened.

and now i've had 24 hours straight of listening, and i am in love. it's the best album i've heard since the crane wife, and though it's not quite as literary as the decemberists, or quite as amazingly catchy as the postal service, it comes close on both. and it stands up to repeated (at least up to 5) listenings in close succession, a definite sign of a good album (in my opinion).

best. impulse. album. purchase. EVER.

and now, more long-exposure madness:

plant photo geek

2007-07-22T16:05:00.000-07:00

and, one that should only be experienced in the largest size possible: the new frond unfurls

a sunday post

2007-07-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

I'm posting again this morning because I want to put a post between my last one and the top. It's not really a spoiler, but it's just my initial emotional reaction to the end of the book, and so if you don't want to know ANYTHING AT ALL don't read it.

OK. now that's done, and I need to think of something other than HPatDH to write about.

Today is the end of my un(der)employment streak... I start at the lab full-time tomorrow. Getting paid pretty decently too, evidently. Pretty stoked about that. I have enjoyed having a break from science, but I'm really looking forward to getting back in the lab and cranking out data. Butt? Time to get in gear. OK.

My job for today is to get my apartment clean. Or at least semi-clean. Or at least fight the tide of entropy. Damn that law of thermodynamics, stating that things always have to get messier unless you expend energy to tidy them. Why can't it be the opposite? Oh wait, because that would indicate a contracting universe, and no one wants to head back towards the singularity that preceded the big bang just yet...

One more thing. Check out the world sunlight map, complete with real-time (updated every 3 hours) cloud cover data, for the entire planet. WAY cool. While you're there, note the huge low-pressure system hanging out in the northeast Pacific, right off the coast of WA/BC/AK. It's been raining here for days, and that system doesn't look like it's going anywhere. Dammit.

deathly hallows

2007-07-22T01:13:00.000-07:00

just finished.

will repress commentary for a few days, but it's going up by tuesday. be warned & read fast.

in a word:

(SPOILERISH)
disappointing.
(END SPOILERISH)

long-exposure madness

2007-07-20T11:21:00.000-07:00

i just want back in your head

2007-07-18T23:04:00.000-07:00

tegan and sara at the triple door, seattle, tonight

1,111

2007-07-18T17:31:00.001-07:00

eleven hundred and eleven posts to this blog. holy crap.

it's been a good week. i found out today that i for sure have a job, with a high likelihood of it turning into a full year-long appointment with benefits and a salary and all that good stuff. :D

and then today i got a text from a friend i haven't heard from since january, saying she had a sick friend and an extra ticket to tegan and sara at the triple door tonight! woohoo! it is my lucky ~~day~~week.

other really good things have been happening to me recently, but i'm not going to go into much detail here. suffice it to say i have met a number of amazing individuals over the past few weeks and have been having a blast. it's almost like a summer vacation should be.

on monday, it's back to work, back to science, but with a completely refreshed perspective. these past few weeks have done wonders for my mental health.

and now, have some pretty pictures:

slow sunday

2007-07-16T09:38:00.000-07:00

too true

2007-07-16T09:25:00.001-07:00

change "mario kart" to "mario party", and "segfaults" to "pcr" (because i'm a different kind of nerd)

it's sunday.

2007-07-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

it's weird, days of the week have so little meaning to me these days... i love it. but it's sunday, which means another weekend is over, and perhaps another shot at full-time employment this week. cross your fingers.

oh man. approaching full-on geekitude with the harry potter book release this friday. i will be there, and i will have a book at midnight. i should probably pre-order, huh. i'm more than a little stoked that the parselmouths will be there... i'm a little blown away by the sheer volume of wizard rock. really, some of it is quite good. and fun.

let's see... other things. i've really been enjoying this summer vacation i'm having here, for the first time in awhile. i feel like i'm finally hitting my stride with this city, after only 3 years here... today, i think i might have to stay at UW for grad school. we'll see, of course. the beaches of san diego sound mighty nice during the winter months here... eh. it'll figure itself out.

blog entry

2007-07-11T21:31:00.000-07:00

so i still haven't gotten the ultimate thumbs-up from the Powers that Be on the job situation, so i've been basking in the glow of unemployment for the last few weeks. OK, more accurately, part-time employment. but today was an Unemployed day, and also the hottest day so far of the year (it hit 95!) so I hit the beach. Madison park was (predictably) packed, but lying in the shade of a huge tree near the water and occasionally dipping in the lake made the day much more bearable than sitting in my sweltering apartment. (I need to get a fan.)

kitty is stretched out to her fullest length (she can actually be quite long when she tries) and is so lethargic she barely bats an eye at things that would usually cause her to jump up and run off.

the mountain was out at the beach.

and so were the butterflies.

When I grow up...

2007-07-09T12:33:00.000-07:00

So PZ has posted in reply to a question posed by David Ng - Do Biologists have Physics Envy? I'm going to have to disagree with PZ's reply with a resounding YES, I do wish I had a better grasp on physics. That said, I also think that all (ok, not all, but most) physicists should stop chasing elusive particles and seductive mathematical models and start working on problems posed by biology.

So, here are my replies to the 3 questions:

1. What's your current scientific specialty?
I just finished my undergraduate degree in Cellular, Molecular, and Developmental Biology, so if that's a specialty, then it's mine. However, that's a bit vague, so I'll narrow it down by saying that I'm most interested in developmental neurobiology, and that I'm also well-versed in the niche field of hair cell death by ototoxic drug exposure. I could go on here (for days, probably) about everything I find interesting, but really, I'll spare you. You get enough of that if you read my blog. :)

2. Were you originally pursuing a different academic course? If so, what was it? Yes. I started my undergraduate career at Stanford studying mechanical engineering. I burned out, dropped out, went through an "I'm going to be an art major!" phase, and then rediscovered my love of science prior to enrolling and finishing my BS at UW.

3. Do you happen to wish you were involved in another scientific field? If so, which one? Well, not exactly, but I do want to expand my knowledge base into other fields. I am probably going to apply mostly to neuroscience programs, instead of traditional cell biology or genetics programs, because I want to gain exposure to some more of the computational and physics side of things. I think it's important to start formulating our biological questions in ways that people more trained in computational sciences can understand and contribute to, and in order to do that, I need more exposure to math, especially network theory and statistical modeling, and to physics, including quantum physics and physical chemistry.

i ride my bike

2007-07-08T23:48:00.000-07:00

44 miles today. not bad. also: i got a spoke card which i did not promptly lose. woohoo!

now it is bedtime.

things i am worried about

2007-07-06T17:37:00.000-07:00

1) the cut on my big toe. i sliced it open on a razor-sharp tree stump at the park on Wednesday. it's a doozy, not quite stitches material, but I'm not quite sure how deep it is because of the angle of the cut. i have been keeping it clean and have my eyes peeled for oozing, because the last thing I need is a superbug infection in my foot. I need that like I need a lobotomy.

2) my knees. the surly is great, it really is, but the gearing ratio is not optimal for the amount of hill climbing i do. i need to start taking it easier, keeping my cadence up, and standing up when i get tired. i raised my seat by about a half-cm and moved it back a bit, which should help.

3) whether or not this job is going to come through. OTOH, i have been doing some phat networking over the last week or so, and am reasonably sure i'll be able to find another job in a reasonable amount of time, and i have guaranteed hourly work until then, so i'm not *too* worried. that's why it's #3.

hells yes.

2007-07-05T23:43:00.001-07:00

check out my ride today. oh plus the 11+ i did earlier today when I rode around lake union for the first time ever. i almost hit 40 today.

:D

add in beer, about 20 people, a fire, and the beach at Lincoln Park, and you have yourself a nice time. the .83 kids? they're alright.

and the highlight of the evening, the grand central bread dumpster:

How do you map a gene?

2007-07-05T08:43:00.000-07:00

One of the questions that's most frequently asked about my research, and one that I'm never able to answer concisely and satisfactorily, is this one: How do you map a gene? And although the answer is a bit long and involved, it's not too difficult conceptually, once you get a few basics out of the way.

The first thing you need in order to map a gene is some sort of variation in that gene, be it mutants vs. wild-type, or a polymorphism in the population (say, red hair vs. brown hair). You need to be able to sort out, based on phenotype, which individuals have the wild-type version and which ones have the mutation or polymorphism. Usually, this means you need an assay, whether it's based on morphology, drug treatment, behavior... however you do it, you need to sort your animals into two categories. One other important thing to keep in mind is that the mutants and the wild-types, in most cases, come from the same families: they are siblings, so they're genetically nearly identical except for the gene you're looking for, which is causing the phenotype you're sorting by.

The next thing you need is a library of markers of known genomic location. For zebrafish and many other animals, this has been published - and new markers are added constantly. zfin.org is one place to find these published markers. Here is a link to a map of these markers. Click on a chromosome button (referred to as LG, or linkage group, on that site) to see the map of the chromosome and all the markers. Click on an individual marker to see all the published information about it - location, sequence, who discovered it, etc.

Most of the markers in this particular map, which is one that I use extensively in my work, are known as Z markers, and are identified with a Z and then a number, such as z1234. These "markers" are also known as SSLPs, or simple sequence-length polymorphisms. This means that they are sites which vary in length between different strains and even individuals within a strain. This makes them very handy for our purposes.

SSLPs are usually found around sequences of di- or tri-nucleotide repeats, such as a stretch of AGAGAGAGAGAG base pairs. The reason they have length polymorphisms is that when the DNA replication machinery is copying these short repeated sequences, the enzyme is likely to "slip" and copy a few bases twice. These events happen fairly often (evolutionarily speaking), and randomly, and the end result is that there are many different length alleles in the population. Length differences are easily detected by PCR and gel electrophoresis. This gives us an easy way to determine a fish's genotype at a particular site. By comparing individuals to their parents, we can determine which chromosome is from Mom and which one is from Dad.

There's one more important point to make before I get into the nitty-gritty of actually mapping the gene. Mutations are made on a lab "wild-type" strain - in our case, we use the *AB line for mutagenesis. ABs are useful because they are fairly genetically uniform, and have very few lethal mutations hiding out in their genome. But they are bad for mapping, because the SSLPs tend to be the same length in all the fish. Once a family has been identified with a mutation, one of the carrier parents is outcrossed to another strain - WIK, in our lab - which has different SSLP sizes at most of the sites, and is actually known as a "polymorphic mapping strain" in many labs.* So once the outcross is done and another carrier pair identified - these fish are *AB/WIK genotype - the offspring of this cross are sorted by phenotype and then their DNA is extracted. We also get the DNA from Mom and Dad, as well as the founder grandparent fish, and the wild-type WIK animals used for outcrossing.

The first step in mapping the gene is to determine gross linkage, or to answer the question: What chromosome is the mutation on? In order to figure this out, we make pools of DNA samples from the mutant and the wild-type sibling fish. We then test SSLP markers on pooled mutant DNA, pooled sibling DNA, and Mom, Dad, and grandparent DNA samples. Here, we're looking for a particular pattern: Mom, Dad, and the wild-type siblings should each have two bands, or two length alleles for the marker (since they have both an AB and a WIK chromosome); the grandparent and mutant samples should each only have one, and it should be the same one (since the mutation was made on the AB background).

Here are some simulated ASCII gels. The lanes, from left to right are: mutant pool, sibling pool, Mom, Dad, Founder Grandparent. (Note: on all these gels, the single line should line up with the bottom of the double lines. It doesn't really work right in this font, but pretend.)
The first gel is a non-informative marker:
----- All the samples have a single band of the same size. We can't learn anything from this.
The second gel is an informative, but unlinked, marker:
====- Mutants, siblings, Mom and Dad all have alleles from both the AB and the WIK chromosomes. These are recessive mutations, and the mutation is carried on the AB chromosome, so it can't be here, since the mutants have AB/WIK genotypes.
The third gel is an informative, linked marker:
-===- Mutants have just the AB band, meaning they are homozygous at this location. This is good evidence that the marker is near the mutation.

So you test markers on each chromosome (zebrafish have 25) and look for the linkage pattern. Once you find a chromosome that shows linkage to the mutation, it's time to switch tactics and go for fine mapping.

For fine mapping, or determining where on the chromosome the mutation is, we abandon our pooled DNA and work with individual DNA samples. We need as many of these as we can get, so we keep breeding our mapping pair (Mom and Dad) and sorting out the offspring based on mutant phenotype. (Remember that recessive traits are found in 1/4 of a carrier pair's offspring... do a Punnett square if you can't remember how that works.) So 1/4 of the offspring are identified as mutants, and the other 3/4 are siblings. Of these siblings, 2/3 (or 1/2 of the total) are heterozygous, or carriers, and 1/3 (1/4 of the total) are homozygous wild-type, or don't carry the mutation. Most importantly, though, every individual identified as a mutant must be homozygous at the site of the mutation.

So what we do here is we test markers all up and down the chromosome we've identified on all of our DNA samples - mutant, sibling, and parents and grandparents. Due to recombination, not all the mutants will be homozygous at all of the locations we test - and the proportion of those who are homozygous (show up with just one band - instead of two =) is directly proportional to how close the marker is to the mutation. Recall that during meiosis, when germ cells (sperm and egg) are being formed, crossing over occurs between homologous chromosomes (i.e. your copy of 5 from mom and your copy of 5 from dad), creating new chromosomes with bits of each. BUT - we know that all the mutants must have the AB chromosome only at the location where the mutation is, so we use this information to narrow down where the mutation is.

Here's another sample gel. This time, individuals are listed vertically, and each column is that fish's genotype at each of 5 different markers.

mutant A - - - = =
mutant B = - - - -
mutant C = = - - -
mutant D - - - - =
mutant E = = - - -
wt sib A = = = = =
wt sib B - = = = =
wt sib C - - = = =
wt sib D = = = - -
wt sib E = = = = -

Based on these results, we can conclude that the mutation is closest to the third marker - since all the mutants are homozygous and all the sibs are heterozygous here. (In reality, some siblings would also have just one line corresponding to the upper band, but I can't really do that with the ASCII at my disposal.) By testing hundreds, if not a thousand, mutant and wild-type fish, you can find a pair of markers between which the mutation must lie. By testing markers that are closer and closer together, you can narrow down the region to a few hundred thousand base-pairs, after which the mutation is mapped, and now needs to be cloned. But that's another post for another day.

This all sounds pretty easy and straightforward, and while it's conceptually simple, it's a lot harder in practice. One challenge that has hampered my progress is finding polymorphic markers - markers with different lengths between AB and WIK fish. There are also challenges with breeding and identifying mutant fish - sometimes the fish don't "give" (spawn) well, and after about a year an old pair will just stop giving. It can take a long time to map and clone a gene, as I've proven by taking more than a year and a half to find this one... or you can also get lucky and find it relatively quickly. Like anything in science, it's probably 50% luck, 50% hard work.

So that's my post on how to map a gene. The details vary by organism, but it's pretty much the same in principle - whether you're mapping the cystic fibrosis gene in humans or a novel mutation in zebrafish, fruit flies, or yeast. This whole process is known as "positional cloning" - finding the gene by its position in the genome. It's labor-intensive and slow at times, but it's a powerful method for finding a mutation that could be anywhere.

(* I have my own theories as to why this line is so polymorphic, but they're all unfounded at this point, just based on observation and hearsay. There's a chance that I'll end up exploring this as a part of my Ph.D. work... but until then, I'm going to leave those theories out.)

1100

2007-07-05T08:33:00.000-07:00

this is my eleven hundredth post to this blog.

nothing more for right now; just that. i'm working on a science post, but it'll take awhile.* so right now, just an 1100 celebration.

*edit: i guess not so much.

nerd convention

2007-07-04T08:37:00.000-07:00

yeah, so i met pz myers last night at drinking liberally... he's every bit as scary as the rumors suggest. fortunately i managed to escape unscathed. we even got to talk science for a bit, after the throng of worshippers died down. there were also several candidates there, stumping for the primaries, so I had a chance to talk to bill sherman, who is running for county prosecutor... who says he will do "everything that's good, and nothing that's bad" if elected. well gee, you've got my vote...

flora

2007-07-03T08:44:00.000-07:00

surreal life

2007-07-01T22:16:00.000-07:00

every single night, the same arrangement

2007-06-30T02:25:00.000-07:00

just got home from seeing the Buffy Musical - Once More With Feeling... the singalong. it was AWESOME. we sat in the front row which meant that i got a drycleaning shirt and got to dance to the mustard song! amazing!

yeah. i'm a huge nerd... but so was everyone at the egyptian tonight. well, everyone except for my date, who was actually my ride home from the cabiri show, and whom i bamboozled into coming even though he'd never watched much buffy. i think he had fun. i certainly did.

quickie

2007-06-28T23:49:00.001-07:00

1) still not done moving. aaaargh. i'm almost done, i promise... just a goodwill/salvation army/dumpster run and maybe 2 things to come to my new place. then i give them the keys and say goodbye to that old place in the u district. and then they give me my deposit back, which i am very much looking forward to.

2) i have found myself involved with a rather elaborate stage production, going on this weekend. my friend john, whom i met in genome informatics this past quarter, is evidently the director of an aerial dance troupe that does "performative mythology". and i have to say, the show is fucking rad. sorry guys, it's sold out (has been for like a month, in fact)... so you'll have to take my word for it. but seriously cool. i'm not contributing in any meaningful way, because i just showed up yesterday, but i am actually able to help occasionally (rather than just get in the way) and i've met a bunch of new cool people. which is always good. they have me working the dressing room during quick changes - handing out costumes, hanging things up, pinning, zipping... cake. plus it gets me into the shows for free (though i had actually already bought a ticket)...

master of all he surveys

2007-06-26T22:54:00.000-07:00

i love capitol hill

2007-06-23T12:58:00.000-07:00

one more thing:

2007-06-23T01:31:00.000-07:00

09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0

upon walking home from the bar, largely sober and happy

2007-06-23T01:12:00.001-07:00

as i am walking home from the bar tonight, i feel almost like i am in another city, somewhere more cosmopolitan, more european. i've been transported to somewhere more urban and complex, more storefronts and apartments and more people. it's a strange dissociative feeling, like i have teleported to another time or place, somewhere in another life. i feel strangely like i'm in prague, or berlin, but at the same time, i know where i am and where i am going. and as i walk home over streets i've never walked, i know precisely where to go. unfamiliar, yet strangely perfect, like this really is home.

stupid design

2007-06-21T21:18:00.000-07:00

:D

(via pharyngula)

i forget that there's a bike beneath me

2007-06-21T17:59:00.000-07:00

it feels a little like flying. cruising down the trail, becoming one with the outdoors. i can't figure out how i survived this long without a bike.

the only problem i have with the new bike (predictably) is the saddle: it sucks. it takes about 10 minutes of riding before my seat is hurting. it's ironic that the saddle on the old bike is more comfortable than the one on the new bike, even though the old saddle is, as far as i know, stock on that 1970's bike. how funny would that be, to switch out the saddle on my brand new surly for the one on a 30-year-old sekai... heheheh.

mmmm. yes. do like riding. do want more please.

SURLY!!!

2007-06-20T21:28:00.000-07:00

*grin*

i discovered the real reason cyclists wear gloves. it's so when you completely bite it (usually in front of at least 5 people) you don't scuff up your hands.

of course i had to fall at least once, since it's the first day i've had the bike. i almost fell on broadway, but i caught myself on some dude's car. then i got to the corner of boylston and olive and realized i couldn't start going uphill from a dead stop in the gear i was in, and didn't want to go downhill away from home, and the street turned into an alley if i went straight, so i decided to turn around. and i didn't get my left foot out of the pedal soon enough and i just sprawled out on the street. yes, in front of several people. sigh. but i just bounced back up and went on my way... unscuffed even! hard to believe. but it was from a dead stop. so i'm just not quite coordinated enough with the clipless pedals yet. i'll get better i'm sure...

food is expensive

2007-06-19T20:20:00.000-07:00

i've been so spoiled living right by a trader joe's... everything at the QFC by my new place is about 25% more expensive (at least)! i rarely spent more than $30 on my weekly TJ's run, and that was when i really stocked up and bought beer or wine and maybe fish or meat. today, i spent $28, and i got none of the above... just produce and yogurt and a few other things... yow.

then again, i'm saving $190 a month on rent by not staying in that old place... something tells me i won't spend *that* much more on food.

first night

2007-06-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

so i have maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of my stuff up here in the new place, and i'm in for the night. i don't have a bed, so it'll be all camping stylee, but i just kinda wanted to get a feel for the place at night. i left my kitty at the old place, since i haven't moved the bed or the couch yet, and i figured it'd be better to let her be surrounded by familiar things rather than running around all freaked out while i try to move a bed and a couch in here.

things i like about the new place:
1) location, location, location.
2) efficient stylings of a studio.
3) rad 1960's architecture.
4) POOL! heated swimming pool in the basement!
5) tons and tons of closet space.

downsides:
1) small. tiny-ass kitchen - it's just like SINK STOVE FRIDGE. not much counter space; even less cabinet space.
2) single-paned windows.*
3) ...

*fortunately, the building is heated by boiler, not by electricity, so heating costs won't be sky high in the winter... it might be a bit drafty though.

anyway, back to assembling furniture, and then probably swimming. woohoo!

yay!

2007-06-14T17:06:00.000-07:00

the place is mine! i get to sign the lease tomorrow!

one more.

2007-06-13T23:05:00.000-07:00

7. dude. cake. who's up for it?

more (or less) quick

2007-06-13T22:15:00.000-07:00

5. i put $300 down on a shiny new surly today. it should be mine next wednesday... being the picky customer that i am, i'm having them swap out the frame on the complete bike they had on the floor for the slightly smaller frame they had hanging from the ceiling. it turns out i have weird proportions (very long torso/arms, shorter legs) and a bianchi wouldn't really work for me. it's cool though, the cross-check is a very solid bike for a decent price. here's hoping it'll last me years... i need to invest in some serious locks and chains now.

6. tessa... ask me sometime about the job i am applying for. i don't want to post it on the blog, but you'd be totally excited about it.

quick things.

2007-06-13T20:40:00.000-07:00

1. why did i step over horse shit on my way to bartell's this afternoon? really, there was horse crap on the sidewalk on 45th. what gives?

2. moving. i just filled 2 boxes in the span of 10 minutes. that was the easy stuff though... need to go through/get rid of lots of stuff.

3. moving... to capital hill! i'll be just a few blocks off Broadway. sweetness! and for less than i'm paying now! double sweetness!

4. in case you hadn't noticed, tons of new flickr pictures. i ordered a pro account, so expect photographic diarrhea. except awesome, not gross.

shutterbug

2007-06-09T10:08:00.000-07:00

my new camera got here last night, but i haven't quite figured out how to use it or taken any pictures worth posting yet*. i'll try to snap some shots at graduation, but it's raining*, so the camera might stay in my bag. but it's the sweetness... manual aperture, shutter speed, ISO, even manual focus. 15x optical zoom with image stabilization. 8.1 megapixels.

*okay, here's one.

a portrait of frida, with macro mode on, and relatively long shutter. hopefully i'll get good at using this thing... i'm excited :)

**it's like raaaaiiaaaiin, on your graduation day... or something.

food for thought

2007-06-07T22:41:00.000-07:00

watch this video. now.

watch some of the other ones on that site, too. then go to worldchanging.com and learn more.

kicking it hipster style

2007-06-07T18:19:00.001-07:00

i looked at the most awesome apartment today... i have my fingers totally crossed. trying not to get my hopes up, since there were tons of people looking at it, but i think i might have gotten my application in first.... so i might have a shot. it was this funky, cute little loft studio in old town ballard, in a building from 1902. it's a bit farther out, but by bike it is 20 minutes to the lab, on the trail or flat streets the whole way.

it's a tiny apartment, maybe 400 square feet, but it has super-high ceilings and a loft above more than half the apartment, meaning it has plenty of storage space. exposed brick walls... non-square floorplan (it's a triangular building)... climbing a ladder to get in bed at night... it just felt like home somehow. so i'm hoping he calls in the next day or so. that would make my life so much less stressful right now. and i'd have an awesome apartment. something tells me the kitty would like a loft to prowl.

cross your fingers for me... i have to have this apartment.

i'm done.

2007-06-06T21:26:00.000-07:00

well, i'm not done done, I have a paper due on Friday, but it's for a 500 level class and thus doesn't count; i'm done with my undergrad. FINALLY.

though the paper is definitely proving to be a pain in the ass. i've got everything i need conceptually, i think, but the words just aren't coming together. it's annoying.

so close, and yet so far.

wow... commenters!

2007-06-06T07:30:00.000-07:00

ok, this post about bikes has created by far the biggest discussion ever on my blog. thanks for all the advice guys... i think i am just going to go into freerange and see what they can do for me. (after graduation.) (and after john recovers from whooping cough(!).

ps jared and tessa, i saw you on the trail at the 25th crossing last night, brian was driving me home with my new shiny.

FAUX News

2007-06-05T16:59:00.000-07:00

I guess all black people look the same to FOX... check out this clip of them announcing the indictment of Congressman Bill Jefferson on corruption charges... the video in the background is of John Conyers, not Bill Jefferson. One black congressman, another black congressman... what's the diff?

They aired a weaksauce apology the next day, but didn't mention anything about who it really was in the video, or what the video was of... FAUXkers. (I guess they couldn't actually mention that it was footage of the AG* testimony, since that would be, like, fair or balanced or something.)

* Has anyone else noticed that Alberto Gonzales' initials also stand for Attorney General? And Bush's secretary of education is Margaret Spellings. I think he picks these people based solely on their names, or nicknames, and not at all on their qualifications.

whew

2007-06-05T10:48:00.000-07:00

biochem final: exactly like the practice finals. good thing i spent last night poring over the practice finals and their solutions. I think I ended up doing ok (by my standards, which = very well by anyone else's standards)

thinking about buying this bike. it was recommended to me by a friend... never heard of the brand, but he knows his bikes, so i trust him. or maybe this one. according to another friend, "you can't go wrong with bianchi." but the jamis comes in a female-specific frame, which is an advantage. plus it looks like it's got the horizontal brakes, which i kind of like... i think after graduation i'll go into a dealer and get fit. see what they have to say.

tuesday

2007-06-05T07:39:00.001-07:00

biochem final this morning... boy will it feel good to be done with it. i fear that i blew off classes this quarter due to senioritis and lab work. so hopefully the biochem final won't kick my ass *too* much.

t minus 4 days... huh?

i think i might go to the apple store and buy myself an imac this afternoon. it'd certainly make writing my paper more fun/easier. i'm going to get the 20" one.

another weekend come and gone...

2007-06-03T22:42:00.000-07:00

t minus 6 days until i'm a college graduate, a bachelor of science. weird.

i signed up to take the GRE in august. i need to get my ass in gear and start studying for that. bleh standardized tests.

two finals and one paper, and then i am officially done. paper's due on friday, but with a little luck i'll have it done before that. (not that i've gotten *anything* done this weekend, i've been kind of a waste. i blame the heat and the senioritis. i'm ready to be done.

OMG

2007-06-01T20:00:00.000-07:00

I CAN HAV PLAY NOW PLS?

(via

severus, please.

2007-06-01T15:14:00.000-07:00

Phoenix Rising, the convention of All Things Hogwarts, gets a great writeup at Salon. makes me kind of wish i could have been there.

it also makes me want to get a costume and dress up for the 5th movie/7th book this July... also, to go to a Parselmouths show sometime this summer. because what could be more fun than watching a couple of 19-year-old girls dressed up like Slytherins sing about how great it is to be wicked?

also, just in case there was any doubt:

I'm a Ravenclaw!

mawwiage.

2007-05-31T18:27:00.001-07:00

this is about the cutest damn thing i've read in a while. we should all be so lucky.

toosday

2007-05-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

i decided to ride my bike in to class this morning. bad idea. my hand is not really recovered at all, even though it's been a week, and it ended up hurting quite a bit. super-lame. this injury has seriously impacted my contribution to my Bike to Work team; i was already the slouch, even though I was commuting every day, since my commute is so short, but now I am contributing absolutely nothing. i feel so useless.

my handwriting has regressed considerably as well.

in other news: graduation is just 11 days away. insert slight panic. oh... you mean i have to get a job now?

noo shoos

2007-05-27T23:32:00.000-07:00

and new socks. hooray for target.

trip report: paradise to muir, mt. rainier

2007-05-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

so last Saturday i did the hardest thing i have ever done, physically speaking: i climbed halfway up mt rainier, from paradise to muir. i suppose it's technically more of a hike, but it's all in the snow and all uphill. very uphill.

so we left seattle around 5:30, and drove to Eatonville where we met up with the rest of our party: 6 in all. We drove to the parking lot at Paradise and spent about an hour or so getting our gear together, using the restrooms, etc. We were all packed up and ready to hit the trail around 9:10.

The first thousand feet or so wasn't too hard at all. Walking through well-worn footprints in snow, through the trees. However, after some gentle uphills and one small downhill, we hit the first steep part of the climb. I had to use my hands to help myself up the slope (probably not the wisest idea, since it made my fingers really really cold without me noticing) and was the last one up that part. (actually, I was lagging behind everyone nearly the whole time... I was the pacesetter of the group, that's for sure.) After the first steep part, we were just about above the trees, and the mountain opened up in front of us. Our "guide" (my friend's dad, who has made 18 successful summits) told us that at that point, we had seen the steepest that we would see all the way to the summit - except that there would be about 6 hours of that on summit day. yikes.

So we kept pressing on, onwards and upwards... a couple of times the sun peeked out from behind the clouds, or the clouds would sweep off of the summit and let us see the mountain for a minute. Then it was back to climbing, just pressing upwards and onwards. It was really long and hard, honestly, and I am not in good shape right now so I have a bunch of training to do before the end of June.

Finally, around 4 or so, we reached Camp Muir. It's just a series of shelters... one occupied by the forest service, one or two for the commercial guide services, and one for the public. It's little more than a hut built into the side of the mountain, but inside you can get warm out of the wind, cook up a nice meal and maybe even catch some Z's. On a summit attempt, you generally try to sleep until about midnight, then get up and on the way up to the top by around 1AM.

We, however, weren't attempting the summit, we were just training. So after we got warm, we went back outside to practice self-arrests with an iceax. Definitely a valuable skill to have, especially when you're all roped in together going up to the top. One falling climber quickly becomes three or four if you don't act quickly and correctly. So we practiced for awhile before we went back inside and got ready to head down.

This is when the story gets interesting.

So in order to increase the load we were carrying for training purposes, as well as speed up our descent, everyone had decided to bring skis or snowboards to get down on. Only by the time I had climbed 4800 feet up with a 45+ lb pack, I was not able to get up on my board. (I'd be lying if I said I felt great at this point too... I was worn out, tired, and a bit anxious, especially after the self-arrest practice. That didn't help much at all. So I physically could not get up on my snowboard.. I tried multiple times, but I just couldn't get up. Too much weight, thighs WAY too tired. So I unstrapped from my board and started walking down.

Only everyone else was way ahead, because they were on skis or snowboards. So I tried running a little, and couldn't keep that up.

And then I got the bright idea to ride down on my snowboard on my butt.

Word to the wise: Don't. Ever. Do. That. It worked great for the first hundred feet or so, but soon I realized I was going way too fast, and tried to slow myself down with my feet (my iceax was strapped into my pack). That just made me spin out and fall off my board... so now my snowboard shoots way out in front of me, and I am tumbling down the mountain. Somehow I manage to stop myself, but my board shoots off into the white (oh yeah, forgot to mention we are at near-whiteout conditions since we started the descent; visibility is probably around 100 yards, and varying all the time.) I get up and realize I'm not badly hurt, but my right hand has become completely non-functional. (Well, I can move it, but if I try to grasp anything with it it hurts, or just won't go.) I hope it's not broken. And I just lost my snowboard.

We regroup (fortunately, everyone saw me fall, and was right there to help once I stopped myself). My iceax comes off my pack and into my (left) hand; the map is consulted, and it's determined that we are heading off course, and we need to bear to the right. But my snowboard is off to the left.

Just forget it, they tell me. It's not worth risking your life for a board. Plus, hikers are pretty honest people, and when the weather clears up someone will find it. Just report it missing as soon as you get home. I know they're right, but it still is a pretty big blow to my spirit - losing my snowboard AND hurting my right hand at the same time. We keep moving down the mountain, significantly slowed by me being on foot... but in the poor visibility, we do the right thing and stick close together as we head down.

I should elaborate on the conditions at this point. It had been a warm spring day, with tons of climbers heading up to Muir or partway. The snow had been very slushy, and lots of footholes had been punched into the snow. However, the sun went behind the mountain as we started down, and the temperature was certainly below freezing, especially up near the top. So the snow was not only icy, but full of footprints. Not optimal conditions, especially considering the weather. And soon I'm not the only one having trouble.

Anyway, I'm going to spare all the trials and tribulations of the hike down the mountain... it was a grueling trudge, believe me. However - one very good thing happened as we were coming back down the steep part I talked about on the way up - I slid down on my butt ("glissaded") and turned to see everyone else come down, when out of the grey mist at the top comes a snowboarder... carrying a snowboard. as he comes closer I can see... yep, it's mine! saved! It turned out to be a park ranger, just doing a sweep of the mountain before turning in for the night, and he'd seen the binding of the board... way out on the Cowlitz glacier. Damn board got quite an adventure. So I didn't lose my snowboard after all... success! (However, we were still probably an hour from the parking lot, and I had no choice but to hold the board in my right hand, since I needed my left for my iceax. Probably not the best for a fresh injury... but what else was I going to do? My friend Rian had insisted on taking my pack soon after I took my spill... some sort of macho i don't know, but I couldnt exactly ask anyone else to carry my board. I was already the wuss, the wimp... the girl. Eh... I made it.

So we made it back to the road (we took a wrong turn at some point and ended up at the visitor center, not at the Paradise lot) and waited while a few went and got the cars. We finally hit the road around 11 and weren't home until after 1... a long damn day. I spent the next day in bed and in the bathtub... I could hardly walk.

So it was an interesting adventure, that is for sure. Now I need to get my ass in gear and start training if I'm going to summit next month... I can't wuss out now, that would be bad.

it bears mentioning..

2007-05-25T23:10:00.001-07:00

...that today marks the 30th anniversary, to the day, of the original theatrical release of Star Wars.

entirely coincidentally, I have the disc from Netflix and just watched it... I have to say, the DVD version just is not the same. I want to see the original version, with bad effects and obvious sets and no CG dinosaur-creatures. but i also have to say that it is a beautifully shot movie - some of the frames are just so awesome. I don't remember them having such attention to detail and simply beautiful frames in the newer films.

anyway... a childhood favorite revisited... it's never quite what it should be, but it's still one of my favorite movies ever.

aaaaugh.

2007-05-25T18:36:00.000-07:00

so i've been waffling on whether or not to stay in my current place after graduation - it's not the perfect apartment, and i'm getting kind of lonely on my own, but moving is such a PITA... so I was leaning toward staying, until I got home just now and found a notice on my door...

they're jacking my rent.

not by just a little bit, either. it's going to go up to $850. that's a $100 increase. EIGHT FRACKING FIFTY. do I look like I can afford that?

$850 for a 600-sf, 1br, 1ba, tiny little 1-person apartment. $865 if you include Frida's rent.

no. fracking. way. guess i'll be giving them my notice and looking for somewhere else to live after graduation.

DAMMIT.

2007-05-24T18:24:00.000-07:00

the mountain is out today... i keep staring at it. i think i'm fixated on it, and i won't be able to stop thinking about it until i summit. or at least attempt the summit.

my hand isn't broken, but it still complains if i try to type for more than a few minutes at a time. the doctor said to keep icing it and keep it wrapped, and try to stretch it out... man. not being able to use your right hand = the pits.

wow.

2007-05-22T21:09:00.000-07:00

should he be impeached? go vote, then see the results... almost heartening.

glacier

2007-05-21T21:48:00.000-07:00

check out that huge pile of ice crumbling off that mountain.

so's your face

2007-05-20T16:26:00.000-07:00

climbed up to muir yesterday... it was certainly a trip. there will be a longer blog post forthcoming with more details and stories and pictures, but for now i'm nursing my sunburned face (ugh) and limiting my use of my right hand. (yes, there's a story. a stupid one. but you'll have to wait.)

yeah, rainier showed me which one of us is boss. i'm postponing my decision on whether to go for the summit until i recover from ths trip.

lolcats

2007-05-15T23:02:00.000-07:00

icanhascheezburger is teh awesome.

i'm not an ambi-turner.

2007-05-15T17:20:00.000-07:00

so i woke up this morning with an excruciating pain in my neck and the inability to move my head in certain directions. it's better now than when i first got up... the first hour that I was up was nearly unbearable. i wasn't even sure if i was going to be able to make it out the door. i'm not sure what's wrong... a pinched nerve or a muscle spasm or what - but it probably has something to do with the fact that i've been sleeping flat on my stomach, with my head at a 90 degree angle to the right, for the past few nights. something tells me my body doesn't like that so much. putting on my shirt this morning literally made me cry, and i couldn't lift my messenger bag up and over my head without causing severe pain. oh, and i can't look more than 45 degrees to the left unless I physically support my head with my hands. if this is what chronic pain is like, then anyone who suffers from it has my complete sympathies. i have no idea what i would do with myself if this doesn't go away. my apartment isn't exactly non-ambi-turner friendly, and I can't ride my bike like this, either, since there's no way for me to check over my left shoulder and see if there's a car there about to kill me.

all under the boughs unbound

2007-05-12T10:54:00.000-07:00

The Decemberists' The Crane Wife is an album meant to be listened to on repeat. i'm not quite sure exactly why this is, but it has something to do with the seamless transition of the end of "After the Bombs" and the first sounds of "The Crane Wife 3"... like they meant to do it. HAHA we will trap listeners in an infinte loop of metaphor and legend!

so much shit to do this week - biochem midterm monday, symposium friday. mother's day tomorrow (complete with mom). 4 weeks until graduation - 3 weeks of classes left. homework due on wednesday and i have to find a windows machine to do it on. bleh.

and after graduation: 17 days until Rainier.

great.

2007-05-11T15:33:00.000-07:00

so the puppy next door? yup, it's a pit bull. awesome.

it stared me down as i was locking up my bike a few minutes ago. and not in a "puppy wants to play" sort of way, but more like a "these are my masters and if you fuck with them I WILL KILL YOU" sort of way.

greeaaaaat.