Wack.

I had to work on Sunday.  This means rolling out of bed, grumbling, donning various stretchy spandexy items of workout clothing, and trying to pretend I'm driving into the glorified truck stop of a college town for a workout, and oh yeah, by the way, I'm also going to drop into lab and do some work.  Me, working on the fucking weekend for the equivalent of minimum wage 4 years ago, Pushing The Boundaries Of Humankind's Knowledge.  

What utter bullshit.  

This fall, I'll be starting my fourth year of graduate school.  After a particularly impassioned rant to my advisor, he is 100% on board with my need to publish something, anything at all really, so I can start to gain some science cred.  We had a weird discussion Friday.  He said I should shoot for a publication in JBC, the Journal of Biological Chemistry (full disclosure: I had to look up the acronym when he said "JBC" because I'm useless remembering shit like that).  He described JBC as "reputable, but crappy."  After trying 4 possible definitions of "crappy" in a bid to figure out just how fucked I am, it turns out he meant conservative, un-groundbreaking science, and I had a moment.  

A moment, when I almost did a double-take to his face, because people, NO ONE outside of maybe 20-something people in the whole world give a rat's fart about what comes out of this lab.  Like, hello, you are the principle investigator of this lab, are you not?  You dictate the direction of all of our research, am I right?  Have you NOTICED how completely arcane the subject matter is that you are studying?  Let me put it this way; we are not curing cancer here.  But a publication is a publication.  I don't care, but to describe JBC as crappy because it publishes conservative science?  Whaaaat.

Anyway, that's why I was working on Sunday in a foul mood.  I slouched in wearing my nubbly Adidas slide-on sandals (they are truly magical; it's like having a foot massage as you walk), and I noticed this professor as I walked down the hall towards my lab.  He is always sitting in his concrete cube looking ancient, and if he's not in there, he's shuffling around the building staring at the floor/walls avoiding any and all eye contact, still looking ancient.  One time I spoke to him because his -80 C freezer was beeping in a way that signaled its imminent failure.  Mainly I was glad it was his freezer and not him.  I see him literally ALL THE TIME, and try as I might to just make eye contact and smile, nary a word passes between us.  

So he's sitting there, on his office door is an NYU sticker, and I thought to myself, "Hey, we share an alma mater, maybe I should start a conversation," because I was wearing an old pair of NYU standard-issue shorts, and, you know, we could bond over the purple or something...  And then I thought, why bother him?  Obviously he's here, sitting in a concrete bunker sans even a window on an uncharacteristically gorgeous, cloudless, warm, dry Sunday in late July, for a reason.  As I plated my cells, I mused on why the hell he'd opt for a weekend like this.  Maybe he's henpecked.  Maybe his plumbing is getting fixed.  Maybe this is a form of mental illness.  

That's when it struck me.  The academic ideal IS a form of mental illness.  What joy can someone get, closeting themselves away from the rest of the world WITHOUT EVEN A WINDOW every single day for the rest of their life?  What kind of person does it take to do that?  Who do you have to be to be willing to obsess over one problem literally for the rest of your life?  Because that's what you're SUPPOSED to do if you're a good academic.  

Granted, the stereotypical tweed is lovely, but that's quite a price to pay to wear tweed.  And no one does, at least not here.  It's bad sneakers, even worse khakis, and polo shirts.  Unless, of course, you opt for socks and sandals and ill-fitting jeans and the odd Hawaiian top.

I did make it to the gym after doing the plating and prep for Monday.  Hopefully soon, I'll be writing a paper.  Hopefully not too long after that, it'll be thesis + graduation time, and I'll be done with this idiosyncratic hodgepodge of questionably sane people before I start looking as antique as my fellow NYU alum down the hall...

Car stickers.

I very strongly suspect that all those people who run marathons "for themselves" are for shit. If that was truly the case, if they were genuinely running just for themselves, why bother putting those obnoxious as all fuck "26.2" stickers on their cars? And with the huge number of vehicles I see locally as well as on the I-95 northeast corridor sporting said proclamations of athletic expenditure, the premise that this unprecedented increase in marathoners is bolstered by strictly personal improvement is absolute bunk.

I was cut off in the Trader Joe's parking lot by some asshole with one of those stickers. Rotten bastard.

Oh, and all those other stickers loudly advertising obscure acronyms for various locales. How pretentious can you get? I really don't care how well-traveled some random stranger is if the best they can do is put a sticker on their car because they're going to cut me off anyway. Seriously, I want to get a random letter generator and make bullshit stickers that mean nothing. And cut people off.

Rainrainrainrain...

This rain is unbelievable. If you, like me, are situated in the mid-Atlantic/northeast region of the US, you are most likely growing mildew, like the 3-toed sloths in the jungle who move so slowly that their coats turn green due to algal growth on their fur. The only pro is that I'm hoping this trend will reappear this winter, with appropriately cold temperatures so there will be mountains upon mountains of snow instead of acres upon acres of mud and militant mosquitoes.

In anticipation of the winter and the snow, I found a cool pattern for a nifty-looking hat. Also, a while back my mom got me like 5 skeins of this random shiny mohair blend wool. ("It was $2 a skein!! I mean, $2! What a bargain! Here's five, I got another 5 for myself.") The lacey pattern looks very nice, and I think the shiny filamentously fuzzy yarn will rock. This will likely take me until it's cold again, anyway, given the amount of time I can actually dedicate to knitting.

Maryland really, really sucks.

The other day, I thought to myself, "Damn, it is humid out here, and it's only the beginning of June. What's this stupid swamp going to do in August when it's run out of humidity because it spent it all in June? How can this place possibly get even more humid than it already is?"

Well, Maryland weather happily obliged, answering my question quite enthusiastically. It can get more humid by actually forming clouds at ground level. It can be raining AND be misty/foggy AND be wicked sticky and warm. This brings me to another thing pertaining to the humidity; we do not have an exhaust fan in our bathroom. We do, however, have a window. But this window's sill happens to be below chest-level for me, and it opens from the bottom. So, I can't use while I'm physically in the shower with the lights on in the bathroom, we can't use it when it's freezing cold in the winter because who the hell wants to take a shower with an open window in the middle of a cold, cold night in January, and in the heat of the summer, I'm not sure where it's more humid, in the bathroom or outside. And who wants to waste the air conditioning?

So, we can only use this supposedly ventilating window if I'm dressed/not in the shower for a couple weeks before it gets wicked hot and a couple weeks before it gets too cold. This window is supposed to be a substitute for an exhaust fan. It is not. Our ceiling is covered in mold, and we have even begun to grow mildew in the toilet bowl. Dear lord, it is revolting. Oh, and we've already asked them to replace the dry wall around the tiles in the shower because it's gone completely moldy. We have requested an exhaust fan. We shall continue to request said exhaust fan and complain about the blatantly sizeist "ventilation window" that I can't use if I don't want to flash the inhabitants of this bloody stupid place.

Which I don't want to do. Ever.

You know what we have here that sort of comes with the territory of living in a fucking swamp? Mosquitoes. Stupid fucking mosquitoes. Mosquitoes and mold. Welcome to Maryland. That's what they should have on the license plates; mosquitoes and mold. They have a heron on one of them, and I haven't seen a single fucking heron since I moved down here. But mosquitoes? Oh yes, tons. Everywhere.

Feminism these days..

So, feminism... is it over?  

Absolutely not.  The past couple days I came across some articles online that really got me furious.  The first was a bullshit article from askmen.com entitled "Why Women Can't Be Bosses."  It's amazing that shit like this can even get aired.  What's even more amazing is that according to the comments, this trash can get 44% approval.  It's mind-blowing.  The only thing I could think of was, "Wow, our patriarchal society is literally imploding before our eyes.  The 'dudes' are getting desperate."  I realized that this utter crap will soon be turned on me full force, when I enter the workplace as a dynamic female scientist with a PhD.  

And then I came across another gem, scans of a how-to book for anti-choice evangelists to bring the undecided over to their ban-abortion stance.  The thing that gets me is not their stance on abortion, because if you don't want one, that is 100% fine with me.  What's really disgusting is the constant reminders to fake concern for the woman, which implies that it's not natural for these dregs of humanity to consider the woman as a human being outside of her capacity to bear children.  Plus, there are gross scientific mistakes in it.  Eclampsia, for example.  Bedrest does NOT cure it.  If it's really severe, the only "cure" is an abortion.  

One good thing coming from this Dr. Tiller murder is that women are coming out of the woodwork and sharing their late-term abortion stories.  If it's a case of a detected anencephaly (the brain of a fetus failed to develop; see the wikipedia entry on it), conjoined twins, an infection due to leakage of water, thank goodness these women are speaking up.  My grandma told me that when Roe v. Wade passed, she felt an ineffable sense of relief despite being married with children.  For her, it meant that a huge burden was off the female population.  I believe that 100%.  

When I was 11 or 12, my mom told me that if I ever got pregnant, she would take me to have an abortion if I needed one.  It wasn't an invitation/permission to be wild and act irresponsibly (she made that very clear), but it was something that made me feel much more comfortable.  I had a backup, no matter what.  After that, my grandma told me that if I ever needed an abortion, I didn't even have to tell my mom or dad; she'd take me and wouldn't even tell my grandfather.  It was like huge, deep, soft pillows were always underneath me as I wobbled along growing into a sexually mature adult.  I didn't behave irresponsibly, but I always knew that no matter what, I always had a back way out.  I could always reclaim my life and walk away from a man, the same way men could walk away from an accidentally pregnant girlfriend pre-Roe v. Wade.  I would never be beholden to him.  I'd never be that person, as long as I took care of the being smart in school/productive in life thing.  I was on equal footing.  I could throw myself into the fray, and I was going to come up grinning no matter what because I was equipped to handle everything, even if I made a mistake.

It's just so... I don't know, improbably nauseating to think that there is a group of people who want to take that away from future generations of women.  Oh, and the anti-contraception argument?  I'm chalking that up to a crazy Puritanical I-must-suffer-life-is-a-veil-of-tears attitude that I can't for the life of me ever hope to identify with.

And I'm not sorry about that at all.

Lady Gaga

I officially love her.

Her music is pop with a dark kinky undertone, and I can listen to it without hating myself for liking it. She is absolutely fabulous, the best thing to happen to pop since Madonna back in the day. Lady Gaga has the most incredible fashion sense - it's like burlesque collided with Thierry Mugler, 20's theater, David Bowie, and a million other influences. It is bizarre and jolting, and I love the way it throws me off-kilter and generally surprises.

Oh yeah, and her music is nifty, catchy, and I will absolutely love listening to it now and in the future.

New York represent! :)

summer un-vacation

This is the end of summer vacations for me.  I thought that when I was working for Pepsi THAT would be the end of summer vacations.  But with top-notch BBQs (really, they were very awesome) every other Thursday and half-day Fridays, it wasn't half as draggy as grad school.  In grad school, everything's closed.  The co-op, where I can get my bean burritos and dried fruit and nuts to snack on should I get hungry, is closed.  It's so sad.  However, despite the lack of students and good hippy vegetarian non-mall-foodcourt food, there are still rarely enough treadmills in the gym.  I got stuck to the stinky guy who smelled like sweated-out garlic and curry and wayyy too much aftershave.  At least the smell kept me concentrating on not losing my lunch instead of how boring running is.  

Maybe I should just be thankful that I wasn't behind someone who had the running farts.  (You know, with every step, thhbthtbh, thhbthtbh, thhbthtbh... don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about because you do.  And if you don't, you're lying.) 

Anyway, I'm strongly resisting any kind of routine (which suits me).  That being said, I need to fit in a good sports bra shopping escapade.  Last weekend, when the gym was all but deserted Saturday morning, I sloped into the weight room with my jumprope.  In between sets, I jumped rope for 1 minute, and there's nothing quite like jumping rope in front of a full-length mirror to make you realize some pretty idiotic things.  

(1)  I look COMPLETELY RETARDED jumping rope.  

(2) I need better sports bras because if I put this off for much longer and continue jumping rope, my chest will be in my pockets by age 40 and in my shoes by age 60.

(3) I have some pretty tight calf muscles with some nice definition.

(4) The same cannot be said for my thighs.

However, I'm used to looking completely retarded and the rope jumping is a pretty brilliant and difficult workout so I won't stop.  Instead I'll keep jamming in gym time between experiments in lab, trying to fence, and generally hoping for the best. We shall see...

Oh, and I got my blades today!  They're all shiny and pretty and new, and I'm gonna hook them up and mess around with them!   I'm so excited.  :)