seasonal obscenities

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!

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!

the fun(ding) game

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...

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

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.

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.