Craziness.

In light of extreme social business, mucking around in lab like it's my job (oh wait... it is my job), trying not to sleep through class, and having to clean up my piles (piles are my way of life; if I had to describe my overarching philosophy on how to live in one word, "piles" would be it), I have sucked it hardcore at blogging.

I have been maintaining my fitness though. I went on vacation in NH, and I snowboarded and x-country skied my way to only gaining like 2 pounds despite eating and drinking like wo'. Kind of exciting. But then, if you x-country ski 8 miles in a day, you have to devote pretty much the remainder of your waking hours to gorging yourself if you want to gain weight, which leaves no time for the hot tub. And you always want time for the hot tub, especially if you've been x-country skiing. You know, every time I go to Waterville Valley, I have a snowboarding revelation. Last time, I took a lesson and the instructor pointed out this little thing I wasn't doing, and I suddenly stopped catching my edge and falling on my face! Very exciting, especially because my face doesn't have the padding my butt has.

This time, I ambled over to their on-mountain board shop, and the snowboard guru Steve said, "Wow, you are riding with a tiny stance for someone of your height. Let me fix that for you." I said, "Ok!" He widened my stance by what might have been inches, and suddenly standing on my snowboard felt as natural as getting en guarde for fencing! The strain on my calves, ankles, and all muscles in that general region disappeared, and I could use my muscley (read: huge) butt and thighs for balance and steering. It was so great to suddenly not suck any more!

(For any interested parties, there will not be any half-pipes or ramps in my future. I will persist in riding like an old lady.)

But anyway, after taking a lot of time off of the gym and fencing, it turned out to not matter at all because I was sliding, riding, and skating over vacation. And I started jumping rope more, which is hard as balls, people. Hard as balls. It is awesome for bounciness for fencing. Oh, and according to this month's Vogue, another of their "shape" issues, this one model Doutzen Krouse jumps rope like a mofo. The author of that article was musing about why, despite NOT being super madd crazy skinny, Ms. Krouse is so popular. Um, maybe because she looks like she won't pass out halfway down the runway? Perhaps because she looks like she could kick ass, but in a beautiful ladylike manner? How about because she looks incredibly healthy?

Duh.

Anyway, the above is a picture of me kicking ass in a not very ladylike manner. I am in the foreground to the right, blurrily charging down the nice lady on the left. Check out my ass. It is huge. It is powerful. It sticks out. J. Lo better watch it, cuz I don't need no implants. I have fencing.

I am living in HELL.

There is a grant proposal due. It is a sizeable one. $2 million. My adviser left it to the last minute, it seems, in true academic fashion. So, I shall backtrack on my lovely evenings.

Last night, I stopped looking at the clock in lab when it hit 10:30 PM. It was too depressing and sad. Why was I there so late? Because I had to proofread 25 single spaced pages. But it wasn't just for grammatical and spelling errors, oh no. It was to also improve the flow, so I couldn't bang through it. I had to read, reread, and figure things out. To say it was not one of my better evenings would be a bit of an understatement. I've been proofreading this damn stupid thing since last week in pieces. A paragraph here, a section there, a 6-page chunk...

This sneak-attack by my adviser of editorial duties destroyed my plans on Friday night, as well as his perception of me. I had no idea I'd be in lab until 8:30, so I had gone to the gym for an hour in the afternoon, ate lunch at my desk, and waited for him to send me things to review. That was at noon-1 PM. 4:30 rolls around and still nothing. I ate a light lunch because I was planning on meeting some people at this supposedly awesome Mexican place for happy hour - which included half-price appetizers... and nothing attracts this grad student like half price allegedly amazing Mexican tapas, tequila, and mezcal.

So, I asked if I could do the editing at home over the weekend. The answer? Absolutely not. This was bad because I was getting hungry. When I get hungry, I get wild-eyed, irritable, and slightly insane. Not conducive to being intelligent or editing, for that matter. Then I finish, I'm about to pack up and leave, when he walks in and asks me to do a literature search. What???!?!! A literature search? That could take days!

But I did it. And as I was getting ready to pack it in yet again, he asks me to add two words to my search. A mournful hopeless "noooooooooooo....!" resounded in my head, echoing around the inside of my skull and resonating in the very empty pit of my stomach which growled menacingly. I had to drag it out of my adviser, what he wanted from this literature search. I was left to my hunger and evil thoughts for 1 minute, and then he walked back in to lecture me on how I disengage too easily, how he knows I'm very social, "do the emailing" (that is a direct quote), "have a nice boy to care for" (another direct quote), how I'm never going to make it in academia if I don't care about what I'm doing because it's so competitive, and it's very obvious I have no personal emotional involvement in what I'm doing, etc etc etc. I managed to resist the urge to let out a primal scream of rage, leap on the lab bench, and start hurling glassware around.

Instead I decided to pretend I wasn't angry and just pass it off as him throwing a hissy fit at me simple because I was the only one around. This worked for about 4 hours, and then I got a splitting headache. I finally got to eat at a quarter to 10 that night, which was awful. I couldn't form a complete thought. The splitting headache lasted all day Saturday, departing for the 2 hours I spent fencing, but then it came back and lasted into Saturday night, when I finally admitted that I was furious and I hated the state of Maryland and DC and the university and academia and it was a damn good thing my idiot adviser thought I'd never make it in academia because I want to get the fuck out anyway and go back to industry where people are pleasant, social, professional, and I get a bloody great paycheck for all my brains and trouble, and I hate it I hate it I hate it.

The headache promptly evaporated, and I realize now that I am doomed to a life of constant bitching and if I don't bitch, it is hazardous to my health. I gave Danny a chance to dump me now, now that he knew, but he declined. I think he secretly finds it amusing.

But sadly, the editing did not go away. Monday was a snowday (more on this later), Tuesday was me sitting like a huge fucking idiot waiting for the editing to start up again, but nothing hit my desk until the early evening, which sucked because I blew my gym time sitting like a moron at my desk because I didn't want my adviser to walk in and not see me there, and it was (technically) 33 pages of single spaced science shit. I really despise scientific writing. I got to sleep at 12:30 last night, and all I did was walk in the door, grumble, take a shower, and go to sleep.

Thank you, grad school, for doing your best to prevent me from ever having anything roughly resembling a sex life ever again or ever seeing my bf awake or him ever seeing me awake again. YOU BLASTED FUCKERS.

Along with grad school, I think DC is in it too, this whole making me miserable by thwarting my every move thing that's been going on. Because a bunch of my friends, Danny, and I had Monday off, we decided to find a happy hour. The bar that we couldn't get to on Friday because of my editing escapades sounded promising, and we hiked out in the cold and wet to find that IT WAS CLOSED ON MONDAYS. W. T. F. But then, we thought our problems were solved when we saw a big sign for half-priced Blegian beer! Turns out - we realized this after we got our check - it wasn't half-priced on Mondays. Only Stella Artois was half-priced on Mondays, but seriously, who'd pay $8 on a normal night for a lousy fucking Stella? Only in DC, people. Only in DC. So I was thwarted again! I was drunk, but thwarted. It inspired me to canvas yelp for happy hours the city over in my downtime between editing, but I can't find anything worthwhile. It's all the same, specials on shit beer (Budweiser, Miller Light), and the same shit for snacks; nachos, fries, quesadillas, burgers, wings. It has been a sad, sad week.

Now I'm sitting here eating a burrito that has too much cheese and not enough beans and salsa. I want a Maker's Mark manhattan (or eight) made by the older bartender with the suspenders who works at Clyde's in VA. I hate everything about that place except that guy and his manhattan. They have heinous "art" on the wall - think a ginormous nude mural, airbrushed to meet today's standards of denying the fact that people have nipples, penises, vaginas, body fat, and the like. It's as if Thomas Kinkade got drunk and started painting nudes. It is SO BAD. Good thing I was drunk when I was there.

Too bad I'm not drunk right now.