non/a's Journal

3:42pm: i apologize for all the spam in my comments. of course this is related to the fact that i still have 6 email accounts and i haven't checked the one that this is linked to in 40 forevers. hopefully, i've fixed the problem.

i'm thinking about deleting this account all together. although, after realizing that some of my friends still post here, i might not.

i don't really have much else to say. i'm hoping that i can get out of school in 1.5 years, meaning 2 really, but i'm going to have to do a lot of work before then. the good/bad news is that after writing my myspace adieu to the austin party scene, i have successfully stayed off the downtown streets. the bad news is that sometimes i feel like i don't have as many friends as i did before and that i'm getting old. probably for the best.

let's see, i went to LA for Christmas and NYE and went to Mexico City a a week and a half ago. um...let's see, my wardrobe is really suffering and my random plans include a luchadore masked bike ride and starting a trashy celebrity book club. we're going to start with courtney love's autobiography/diary/scrapbook, "dirty blond."

i'm currently involved in productive procrastination...i've organized my finances and set up a dental appointment. p.s. if anyone has any advice on home plaque treatments to save myself from the embarrassment of 5 dental work free years, please let me know.

4:48pm: someone with a baby or friends with babies or has ever been to a baby shower, please tell me the best presents to get in the $80-120 range for my boss. thanks. i don't know where to start.

10:20pm: bike
I got a new bike. I bought it off ebay. It's a vintage Pinarello Treviso in Opal road bike. I don't even really know what to do with it, but the bike shop people seem to be ok with explaining things to me. I've come to the realization that I'm really great at falling in love with intellectual pursuits and inanimate objects. I recently serenaded my bike with Boyz II Men's, "I'll make love to you." I spent my tax return and some change on it, but it was worth it. It rides like a dream in comparison to my touring bike...also white and vintage. i'm keeping the motobecane to ride around town on though. the other bike's just for long distances and triathlon training. it has mountain bike clip pedals though, which i've never used but i'll get used to it.
it's supposed to be sunny on Sunday. woo! two, i'm already focusing on the rest of my life much better now.

i think my new myspace headline should be "vintage white bikes and black dresses."

i'm training another emily for the danskin sprint triathlon.

i think i've finally decided on a tattoo.

i think this emily and i might go on bicycle tour through maine and canada in august.

i can't decide which is more mysterious...mathematica or the maker.

7:24pm: melt banana is playing on my birthday. it's kismet. just remind me to look really bad or to bring some really cute asian girls with me so i can avoid all the fetishists out there. strangely, pretty girls make graves is playing around my birthday again.

9:20am: ice storm 2007
well, i survived. i keep having to tell myself not be angry at myself though (since i'm going to have to do set up my cells again because i think it's better that i do a practice run) and that i can't control the weather.

vancouver was cool. i got to see lots of people and meet lots of husbands. (my lab mate assures me that most of the people he knows in grad school however are not married. considering that my boss just bought "real furniture" i suppose that delayed benchmarks are the norm.) i kept commenting on how funny it was that we kept doing conventional things mixed in with talks of what are we going to do with our PhDs. i helped ana make pillow shams, bought baby clothes, and giggled as she coupon clipped. officially, i only use coupons for cigarettes. usually, it seems like buying the generics is cheaper than using a coupon on something. that and making your food from scratch.

my original flight on monday was cancelled and i stayed in portland an extra day, which wasn't bad because i got to see some batesies. i foolishly left on tuesday morning (although it snowed in portland that day so it may have been for the best), only to find that my flight had been cancelled by the time i got to chicago. luckily, my friends put me in touch with their friends and i got to take advantage of chicago's museums and shopping. i saw a kimodo dragon! but it had a food coma. and i've decided that bearded dragons are cuter than i remembered and i might consider getting one since they're a good starter reptile. i don't know. i also decided at the shedd aquarium that puffer fish are really cute. on my way to the airport in chicago, i decided to walk to the blue L line. unfortunately, i misremembered the address by 1000 and it appears that chicago blocks are much longer than nyc blocks. i think i must have walked 3 miles dragging my bag in 26 degree weather. oi.

luckily, classes were mostly cancelled, and i made it back without much consequence except for a delay in my research. actually, the delay had more to do with forgetting that i volunteered to help with recruitment weekend.

so that's it. time to make the ice storm 2007 fugee shirts.

9:04pm: pre-semester rush
somehow there's always this pressure to hang out with people and secure those new friendships before the semester starts and i start looking cockeyed from my hovel of papers, notes, junk mail, and diet coke cans. i have to say that i have not had a diet coke in a few days and i don't feel like i'm going to kill anyone. shocking. i finally decided to seek professional help to quit smoking and take a quitters class, unfortunately it overlaps with a meeting and i'm going to have to see if they won't put a black mark on me forever if i try to get out of it.

this semester should be a new challenge. i think i've been working my way up to it though. i don't know when i'll have time to get my undergraduate to do work, but it's ok since he's usually overbooked anyway. no more weekends off and general lab slacking, which i did a reasonable amount of last semester even if i did have a lot of f-ing homework.

since i make new goals for myself every 3 months, i can't really call these new year's resolutions, but my goals for this semester are to stay on top of shit, stay in more, and train for the triathlon. and potentially quit smoking. i think that's enough.

4:40am: i'm in a dangerous purge mood. friends, clothes, books...nothing is safe. i just need to remind myself not to put anything in the trash but to put it aside before i dump something that i will only talk about when refering to my major purges as a mistake...like my childhood yellow schwinn breeze or my stereophonic record player. the good news is that i found out that there are services that will shred your papers for you! see, now here's a case where i wish i'd procrastinated longer. i'm happy to know about it, but i've logged at least 10 hours of paper shredding in the last year. i did finally opt out though. i haven't gotten junk mail in days.

it feels pretty good actually. tragically, i feel like i might have a full day or two ahead of me in terms of true organization though, which i'm not sure i will get done. maybe i should think about moving in may when maren leaves so that i have a reason to pare down my crap.

my purge mode is nicely complemented by my recent phone converstations with an old friend and my near future return to the pacific northwest. i'm pretty excited. i'm hoping to hike the gorge and the northwest trails and maybe sit in a coffee shop with a book or something. oh yeah, and definitely get an elephant ear at saturday's market, see if the 24 hr church of elvis is still around, and potentially go to uwajimaya.

6:05am: thanks for the reminder
ok, i really need to stop wasting time on craiglist, even though it has been a while.

i will not respond. i will not respond. i will not respond.

3:13pm: hurrah
i am officially off academic probation! i think i can cushion my GPA a little more too after i get my undergraduate biostats class approved by the track representative, which will hopefully happen because it used to be on the site as an option. YES!!! i might even TA next semester if there are still openings. it was a long and hard process, but i'd like to thank everyone who read about my gripes in the last 3.5 years. now, i just need to cross my fingers and hope that our third review will be a positive one and i can put the paper that's been the bane of my existence for 1.5 years to rest.

other than that we are planning a bike ride around town to see all the lights tonight and my mom's bringing back brazilian rum from sao paolo which is apparently hard to find in the USA so we can make real capirinhas. and i got another edition of Wholphin DVD magazine. just when i thought they'd sunk.

and i've decided that besides focusing on work and passing classes, i should train for another triathlon. the captextri is near my birthday and actually has 3 lengths, so if i don't feel ready for the olympic lenth, i can always register for the sprint which is the same length as the danskin. i really need to learn to breaststroke and do some open water swimming in groups before then though. and i may need to consider getting another bicycle since mine is cute but really heavy.

5:53pm: scrouge
i'm always in such a bah humbug mood around the holidays. i'm going to try to remedy that by wrapping gifts tonight and going to a hipster holiday sing-a-long featuring members of voxtrot, loxly, what made milwaukee famous, etc. maybe i should bake some cookies or something.

the real question is where am i going to find an oversized christmas themed sweatshirt? i really need something with a moose on it.

12:00pm: R and R
yeah, i realized today that i only have 1 month to try and help my boss write a grant and save my project. fuck. i don't think my project is in that much danger, but funding would help. no more movie watching...stress.

in other news, my family is coming to austin for christmas. (hmmm...and i just realized that my silkscreening paints might be locked up at my friend's house for the holidays. oi.) i still haven't figured out what the real deal is though because my mom didn't mention anything about bringing her bf, but my sister claimed she was.

ack. why is there always so much work around the holidays?

2:53am: duh duh duh
i got extra sick from 2 sparks and 1 beer last night. i just figured out why. although...give me a break...i *was* hungover all day. i didn't put a bowl of water on my heater and i was extra dehydrated. actually we only started using the heaters recently and i forgot to do that last night.

1:12am: i've decided that the most disturbing scent to smell on your solo ride home late on a saturday night is...bubblegum.

12:26am: biologists read this
someone finally put every late night bar conversation with biologists on craigslist.
they just need to get to a place of power to start making field specific novelty shirts.



my other favorites include, "i'm having a dipole moment," "actuaries do it with models and discretely," and one that my friend where the derivation is 69.

12:03am: thanks to modern technology, people in texas can appreciate the tradition of christmas with a snow show. sun lamps in maine and snow show's in texas...

4:40am: dude
greetings from LA. ok, i now have seen enough of LA to say that the only thing i like about LA is sawtelle...home of giant robot and more karaoke parlors than bubble tea shops. i basically walked around thinking, "my people!"

the conference has been going ok. i definitely have the problem of not paying enough attention, which doesn't go well for 20 minute talks. the conference is in universal city and apparently we arrived just after the playboy executives. the good news is that we're here at the same time as the fitness competition. i keep missing out on when they walk up the hill in their tighties though. it explains why we saw some giant balloon dude walking around in neoprene though.

let me recount the antics of wednesday though. firstly, i missed my bus but 1 minute. my roommate was kind enough to pick me up though. while i was waiting for her to roll up and save my ass, i tried to light a cigarette with a match on a windy day. my hair blows into the flame and it catches on FIRE! so i'm sitting around at 9am in the middle of campus and my hair is on fire. all i can think is stop drop and roll, but i can't because i'd have to roll on my face, so i have to put it out with my hand. i'm ripping burning hair out of my head. i've seriously lost two inches of hair. then the flight is too late and i don't have enough time to relax before getting on a bus. the bus is stuck in traffick because they're shooting a movie and have closed off some roads. when i get to universal city, i decide that it must be possible to go through a parking lot to get to the sheraton. i though on the map it said that i was going through the sheraton parking long. so i get to the back and i go up 2 flights of stairs to the exit. i think i see a walkway, so i get out and the door locks behind me. it does not have a doorknob. the first thing that happens is i step in a puddle of water in my vintage ferragamo suede wedges. there are 6 foot curved gates everywhere and my choices are jump a deep ditch and hop over the parking lot gate or scale the hill. i thought i saw a walkway, so i decided to scale the hill. again...in my vintage ferragamo suede wedges on my way to the opening event. i should have realized that i was in LA and that people don't walk and that the further away i got from the the parking lot the more fucked i was. but i didn't. it was not a walkway, but flood protection. at some point my foot went through something that i mistook for being solid. so i walk along the sloped cement giant gutter through mud and debris to the front of the hotel. i eventually realize that my only option is to scale the other half of the hill. i did consider calling someone, but there weren't any roads so i'm not sure that anything could have been done. so i scale the other half of the hill. luckily, the fence is shorter and totally hoppable. i only have to get through the hole in the hedge and overcome my fear of tripping and falling on my ass to complete the story. yeah...i can't believe that happened.

thursday was pretty chill. i met daphne and debbie for lunch and proceeded to eat more sugar that i have in quite some time...french toast followed by a cupcake. we met up with mark for drinks in the hip part of town, los feliz and slept through the morning sessions...which kinda sucked because it was neuroglycobiology and pathogenesis.

so i put up my poster in the space of a poster that had been withdrawn. i forgot to mention that our abstracts never got submitted due to the fact that i missed something in the instructions and apparently my labmate didn't read anything. (we also had to make his poster for him and teach him the analysis overnight. owes me. owes me.) anyway, when i was making the poster, i had the suspicion that this was the case since we weren't in the searchable database. it turns out that despite the fact that we both got travel awards requiring us to submit an abstract, this did not mean that our abstract was submitted for a poster presentation. don't ask me why. so at the poster session, i leave for a bathroom/cigarette break. i come back and my labmate tells me that some guy was taking photos of my poster. ok...not cool. why the hell does this keep happening to me? we had a lot of industry interest again, which is good i guess.

the good thing is that i totally scored free tickets to the banquet. all my chatting out of boredom with the society staff totally paid off. then i dragged my table to the city walk to go try to see body builders. it was $20, so we didn't go, plus i didn't think people would be into it. in all fairness, i was not the only person leading the group on fruitless entertainment quests. my labmate spotted some kid krumpers (seriously, tweeners and under) and we tried to follow them, but lost them in the crowd. i totally would have shelled out for that.

my sister finally picked me up and we went to karaoke. the awesome part was that they claimed their mic was faulty so we got to sing for free...well, drinks and a big tip.

i guess i should conclude my novel now.

11:34pm: tired
it should not have taken me this long to write retype part of our paper and finish the figure legends. too tired. i was helping my labmate quite a bit though. he better get my back at the conference. i need someone with a shoo stick.

i need to go home before i'm too tired to leave. argh. i still need to make my f'in poster.

i should go.

8:52pm: why are you so cilia
matchmaker matchmaker make me a match. please note that i made myself pigtail holes and that i didn't have time to finish my LED crest...dammit.

7:04pm: so i went to the new ginormous asian supermarket this weekend and couldn't resist buying 3 types of canned fish.













YUM!

12:50am: dammit, it was totally a christian conspiracy, just like eHarmony. the twelve steps involve getting closer to God (the capital G kind).

12:48am: So I found the workhaholics anonymous website. I think I answered "yes" to at least half of their symptoms quiz. Or at least, yes at one time. I think I'm a little more tolerable now.

10:58pm: ok, from the lack of response, i think i must clearly be a little loopy. i might as well admit now that i posted that in case someone needs to do web research to document my concerns for the expose if anything does happen. for the record, i am not afraid of strangers jumping out of bushes...statistically unlikely.

anyway, on top of all the travelling difficulties, my cells committed suicide. highly unusual. their's no sign of contamination. they just imploded or something. goddam it.

6:35pm: sanity check
am i paranoid schizophrenic or is it really not ok to come home to an empty house with just your roommate's crazy ex-bf? this is the guy that force fed me cake at 10am. it was a violent force feeding. (ok, it wasn't like i was tied up or anything, but everytime i tried to say something like, "good morning," i'd get a spoonful of cake shoved in my mouth.) this is also the guy who ran off with kendra's car sans license and sans insurance. she had to call me to make sure it was parked in the driveway over the summer. this is the guy who got a license somehow with fake identification. this is the guy who supposedly ran a business reselling used computers down in mexico. this is the guy who keeps showing up unannounced. and he's chauvinistic. i can't stand that.

yeah, all of these things alone aren't a big deal, but i don't feel safe (not just physically but my identity and my property, as well) with someone who clearly has no regard for safety or boundaries.

i am willing to admit that i can be unusually paranoid and that i'm socially retarded, so i turn to people on the internet to help me construct the appropriate level of caution. (hopefully, i haven't biased anything by having only paranoid friends) am i insane?

9:43pm: holy shit. what?!? now you can post to LJ using text. great. although i guess blogs already read like RU ready. i'm one of those old people who needs a dictionary of acronyms.

anyway, i was really posting to the void.


dear tom of myspace,

please figure out how to let indie bands make downloadable ringtones. or tell me how to do it.


thank you.

10:54pm: Diamond Hunting, anyone?
apparently, two people have found canary diamonds in murfreesboro, arkansas. in the last month to month and a half. i think this means that now is the time to relive my childhood.

many you have probably heard the story that either starts or ends with "eggs, grits, and soy sauce" about my father's OCD and the audubon gem guide. that was the trip in which we headed to murfreesboro, tennessee and didn't realize that it was the other murfreesboro. there's a cute home video out there somewhere where i'm in the trunk with a box full of charms blowpops minus the one in my mouth. if you haven't heard the story, the only good thing that came out of it was that we discovered waffle house and grits.