The Test(es). Heh heh heh.

I think the exam went well.  And if it didn't, I don't really care as long as I did well enough.  I recently discovered that despite really needing a good grade in this course I'm enrolled in, the name of it is a mystery to me.  Biophysical chemistry or biochemical physics or something like that.  

Really, as long as I do just well enough to not have to take it again, I'll be thrilled.  

Today one of my classmates stopped my instructor and I on our way to my makeup exam to say that he had this idea at 4 AM on Saturday night to describe human relationships in terms of the Gibbs free energy equation.  If you don't know what the Gibbs free energy equation is, look it up on Wikipedia because I've thought about it far too much for one day, and I have no desire to think about it anymore.  Fuck Gibbs and his free energy.  Anyway, his analyses of human relationships as summarized by him in the stairwell were really lame, and the idea was too ridiculous and geeky even for me.  That shit was funny in high school.  This guy looks like a disheveled, vaguely homeless, 11 year old version of Jerry Lewis covered in animal hair of some kind.  And he made sure to let the prof and me know that he has a girlfriend.  How do these people who look like they don't ever wash have significant others?  

Anyway, the prof asked me what I thought after that dude left, and I said that would not be a reason for staying awake at 4 AM on a Saturday morning.  

To totally change the subject, I've been editing my advisor's grant proposal all day, and as much as I love words, I hate reading right now.  In fact, I've had it with typing too.  I'm going to bed.  

Eyeballs

Holy crap, being sick was a bad thing not just because of the actual sickness or the wackiness from the antibiotics, but also because I missed 2 out of the 3 weeks of material that was taught for this exam. Dr. T. was kind enough to let me take it tomorrow instead of yesterday, but I am so not feeling this last-minute studying BS.

The first time I got the notes was Monday. 2 weeks of information in 3 days. Oh man. My eyes hurt. They're totally bloodshot and I look like a crazy person (well, more than usual). I had to run an experiment yesterday which took all day staring at fluorescence traces on the computer followed by staring at my notes all night. Today involved a 1-2 hour edit job for my PI and madd crazy cramming. How programmers and the like stare at things only a couple feet in front of their faces all day every day is beyond me.

So, this whole living in a concrete bunker means that at the very least I won't get skin cancer from being in the sun too much. But then I'll have low levels of vitamin D, so I'll die depressed and miserable. With bloodshot eyes. Good thing they close the eyes of corpses.

Modern medicine sometimes really, really works.

I spent 3 days with a nasty fever, when on the third day, I decided something must be done, and Danny took me to the doctor.  Walking down the hall, riding the elevator, and then walking out to the car was grueling.  I hauled myself into the waiting room, and somehow managed to hand the receptionist the correct piece of plastic from my wallet to update my insurance information and address.  (Either that, or I allegedly live at Victoria's Secret, or DSW, or something.)

The doctor gently poked, prodded, looked, and listened, and determined that I needed Big Guns.  And by Big Guns, I mean really heavy-duty antibiotics.  This was not good news for me, because I am allergic to - are you ready for this? - penicillin (and all derivaties thereof), sulfa drugs (and all derivatives thereof), and doxycycline (and likely all tetracycline drivatives as well).  Modern medicine and its bid for new antibiotics has not been much of a boon for me, save for what my doc refers to as vitamin Z, azythromycin.  

But judging by my fever and the narstiness accumulated in my nose and chest, a Z-pack wasn't going to cut it.  So I got Levaquin, which was described as well-tolerated by the doc.  I read about it, and holy fucking fuckers who fuck, the side effects sheet covers pretty much anything bad that can happen to your body, from the run-of-the-mill diarrhea to insomnia to suicidal thoughts to hallucinations to heart failure to liver failure to renal failure to spontaneously rupturing tendons - achilles and anything else - to numbness, tingling, and/or tremors in your extremities to hypoglycemia.  

Seriously.  

So I called back, and I was like "DUDE!!  Wtf?"  (Just with a stuffed nose and with a lot less energy.)  The pharmacist said the worst side effect is paranoia from reading the insert (har har, I thought... what a joker), and the doctor said that it really is very well-tolerated for the most part.  So after whinging and moaning to Danny, my mom, and my dad, and being a huge paranoid baby about the whole thing - I'm blaming my illness - I took my giant 750 mg horse pill, and prayed that my head wouldn't spontaneously blow off my shoulders because if it did, then that's one more horrific thing they'll have to write on the insert.  

It didn't.  The worst that happened was at 1 AM, I had to bolt to the toilet.  I sat there feeling like my insides were about to explode (I admit I was pleased it wasn't my head), and praying that becasue I was sitting on the toilet, my insides wouldn't choose to explode out my mouth.  But everything was under control, and aside from the gastrointestinal fireworks, I got an excruciating case of cotton mouth and insomnia that lasted until 4 AM.  

Which, when compared to the terrible things on the insert, was not bad.  (I half expected my spleen to exit my bellybutton, do a little ad-libbed soft shoe, recite some dirty limericks, and inform me it would be taking up residence in a locale far more exotic than my abdominal cavity.  I am quite pleased to report it is still in its proper place.)

However, I still called the next day to see if the cotton mouth, insomnia, etc. could be fixed, and I was told to cut my pills and take 2/3 of one every day until they were all gone.  I am happy to report that aside from ocasional feelings of extremely friendly silliness (which I am totally chalking up to the medication - I'm silly naturally, but believe me it's more than usual), I can take this antibiotic!  

Actually, despite all my hypochondriac tendencies and resistance to taking the damn pills, it's been sort of a comfort.  Levaquin is a seriously heavy hitter.  It's what they give people who've been exposed to anthrax, and it's always been a back-of-the-head idle concern of mine about what would happen if I was exposed, given that so many antibiotics are out of the question for me.  I loved the time I lived in NYC, and even though I hate it, I still have to live in the DC metro area.  Both are large metropolitan regions that are prime targets for terrorists, biological weapons, etc. and I want to move back to NYC the first chance I get... again, putting myself in a position where if there was a serious attack and people got exposed to anthrax, I'd likely be one of them.  So, you know, here's one less thing I'm even minorly worried about.  

And I'm feeling better.  And my head hasn't spontaneously blown off my shoulders!  What a bonus.

Arrgh.

I am so sick right now.  Holy shit.  I feel like crap.  And they chose today to drill up the parking lot immediately below my windows, so I closed them, and now the apartment temperature is slowly climbing into the 80's.  Which doesn't help because my temperature is hovering between 101 and 102 F.  

Fuuuuuuuuuck.  I have the plague.

Rock-Climbing

If at any point you start to feel like, "Hey, I'm looking pretty good!" the ultimate way to keep your pride in check is to realize that it's time to do laundry, all your normal gym clothes are rank-smelling, sweat stained, and unfit to wear so you have to wear spandex (death!) over your compression shorts and under your climbing harness.

First of all, compression shorts are amazing pieces of clothing. They're amazing if you have a problem with continuously pulling your hamstrings or other muscles in that general region. As the name suggests, they compress. I'm 5'11" and have weighed everything from 135 to 168, and there has never been a time when they have not generated a fat roll above the waistband or cut into the back of my thighs. Normally, I just think "Oh..." pull on thin warmups/baggy shorts and get on with it because this is a workout, not a fashion show.

But I was going climbing with the bf, and I needed to wear something. My legs weren't in a bare-able state, so spandex it was. I pulled the black spandex leggings on over my uber-strength Champion compression shorts (that almost come up to the bottom of my sports bra), topped the whole thing off with a wife beater, and I was pleasantly surprised enough to think, "Ok! Not bad! I'm hot!" We're not talking Doutzen Kroes hot, but it was still pretty good. And we drove off to the climbing gym.

After tossing our things in a locker, I tightened my harness, picked out my not-so-badass route on the wall, and up I went. The harness has a tendency to enhance the male - shall I quote Anchorman? - crotchal region, cut into thighs 75839 million times worse than compression shorts, and make your girl parts go numb if you're not careful. And I didn't much care, until (a) things down south were getting numb, and (b) the best climbers tend to be petite waify ladies with uber arms and shoulders, sans giant fencing butt muscles.

You know that feeling of "oh holy crap, what on earth am I doing here?" It flashed through my mind. First of all, I'm like 8 feet tall compared to every other lady in the place. Second, there's a certain rock climbing chic that I can't do mainly because I am 8 feet tall and all those tank tops would barely cover my chest, never mind make it all the way down to the waist band of my pants. Third, I am the opposite build for this sport. Rock climbing is good for upper body strength, which is why I do it at all (that, along with making Danny happy, and belaying him), and if I could somehow climb with my buttocks or thighs, I would be awesome. But given that my opposable thumbs are on my hands, I have to use my arms to do this so I suck. I had one moment of glory when I did a pullup on the wall, walking my feet up the vertical surface as I attempted to heave my bulk 2 feet closer to the ceiling. Danny told me it looked cool. It felt idiotic, but whatever. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is the closest I will ever get to doing a real pullup.

But I just felt ludicrous, mostly. It was a what am I doing here, all spandexy and pear-shaped, with this stupid harness outlining my already noticeabley large butt and cutting off crotch circulation kind of day. But I climbed until my fingers were red and sore, and beyond feeling idiotic it was a fine few hours. I ran and ellipticalled afterwards, throwing in some weighted step-ups so my lower half wouldn't feel neglected or hated on too much.

And don't even get me started on the barefooted (ewww!!) shirtless (and many have physiques that should definitely be contained in a tshirt) climbers who literally CLIP THEIR TOENAILS WHILE SITTING ON THE FLOOR IN FRONT OF EVERYONE. Gross. So gross. Oh lord, and the climbing jargon. They don't even have the brain cells to steal the word "gnarly" from surfers in full. In context, the phrase would be, "Dude, that move was gnarly!" In brain-dead climber speak, it would be, "Dude, that move was totally gnar-gnar!" Gnar-gnar. I will soon no longer be able to stifle the urge to choke someone who says that in my presence.

I really hate climbing culture. Everyone bills it as noncompetitive, but that's a huge lie. It's passive agressively competitive. I much prefer the lecherous, bacchanalian, hyper-competitive, in-your-face fighting culture of fencing. It's honest.

One bacterium at a time...

I have been working from 9 AM till 2 PM nonstop. I've grown some E. coli, made 2 sleeves of plates (like petri dishes; what you grow bacteria on), mixed up 2 kinds of buffers, labeled a bazillion tubes, added buffers and E. coli to the tubes, osmotically shocked them (grown in high-salt environment, you plunge them into low-salt environments) at regularly timed intervals, and plated them. So, now I have to make more plates for tomorrow and label more tubes and make more buffers.

I put a skull and crossbones on my plates so no one uses them. I didn't stop for like 5 hours because I am science MACHINE.

Last night was sea chanty night. This means Danny and I went to this pseudo-Scottish pub with some friends, get some beer and food, and listen to weird older men with creative conformations of facial hair sing sea chanties. They even have a songbook. Actually, there's this one dude who occasionally comes with his violin (is it considered a fiddle in this case?), and at some point during the evening, whips it out and proceeds to passionately play the instrument much to the chagrin of anyone within earshot. He closes his eyes, brandishes his bow, and moves with his music. And by moves with his music I mean jerks and thrashes around like a spastic chicken. He may suck it hardcore, and I may feel like a nasty young'un for being as tickled as I am, but it's very entertaining.

The sea chanty regulars appear to be primarily older men who look like slightly saggy and swelled up versions of their former Dungeons and Dragons playing selves. I doubt any of them really spent any time at sea, although maybe one or two are scientists who possibly study various aspects of the ocean. Or maybe a couple spent some time in the merchant marines. But the truth of it is, I get the feeling they're indulging their RPG pining in a way that's deemed socially acceptable so their teenage children will continue to talk to them. Some of them have chinstraps (full beards without the moustache), some have moustache straps (full beards without the chin part; I don't think that's what they're called, but men's facial hair coiffure has never been a specialty of mine), there are mutton chops, huge full beards sculpted into a point at the chin, and everything in between. They conjure up fake British/Scottish/Irish accent amalgams to sing. One man brings his own tin flagon from which to quaff his beverages of choice.

It was great.  If I sing along but do it sarcastically, does that make me as insane as they are?  

I really like the gym.

If someone told me I could spend the rest of my life going to the gym, eating, and sleeping, I would be in seventh heaven. Knowing this has made me doubt my academic/professional choices more than once, but eh. I've started, things are going in a good direction, and the odds are I'll be happy I've done what I'm doing in the long term.

So, I changed my Monday lifting routine. I started out doing bicep curls, tricep extensions, chest presses, shoulder presses, and one other shoulder exercise (where you're standing and your arms hang by your sides and you lift them up and out to the sides keeping them straight), but I don't really need to directly develop biceps and triceps. Now I'm doing those lifts I just described, pairing them with the same thing, just to the front instead of to the side. I kept the shoulder presses, pairing them with this thing where you bend over, feet shoulder width apart, knees flexed, back arched, and let your arms hang straight down to the ground. Then you raise the weights to the side, keeping arms straight (kind of like an airplane?). They are a bitch. The last set I'm doing involves chest presses, and then this move where you put one knee and one hand on the weight bench, stand on your other leg, and pull your hand hold the weight to your chest, keeping your elbow high. The last part of the set is just tricep dips off the weight bench. Then I do abs and back.

I don't feel particularly tired after, which is good seeing as Monday night is footwork night. I just get ravenously hungry. The rice and beans, banana, and protein bar I packed needed to be supplemented with a spinachy thing from the food coop here. Spinach, whole wheat fillo dough, some olive oil, and spices. Not too bad. I plan on resting Tuesday, repeating Monday's lifting on Wednesday coupled with a fencing lesson at night, resting Thursday, lifting from the abs down on Friday (haven't exactly decided what's going into that workout), and going to a light practice/help coach on Saturday. Sunday is when I laze around and resist the routine urge to get dressed.

I need to remember to talk to Janusz (fencing club owner) about ordering blades tonight... someday in the hopefully not-too-distant future I want to start competing again. Don't tell anyone. :-P