from nova's twitter the other day

"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

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

books and beer in a bath.

two thousand and what?

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

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

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

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:

tessa says

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

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.

it's fall in seattle

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.

bryce a. lewis, 19 years old

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.

it's friday

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.

monday monday monday

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!

now with words

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.

fry day

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

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.

a sunday post

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.

1,111

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 dayweek.

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

it's sunday.

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.

things i am worried about

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.