Concrete Bunkers

I work in one.  A concrete bunker, that is.  My lab, along with being located in a really shitty part of Maryland, has no windows.  Initially, it seemed like a good thing; not being able to see out into the shit, but I've decided it sucks.  Part of it is that my desk is too small for me.  I can't stretch my legs out.  If I back my chair up so I can, I'm in everyone's way because then I have my back against the lab bench.  Usually it doesn't matter, but if I'm sitting there writing which is what I've been doing for the last two days, I can't even look up and see out the window, or down the hall, or even across the lab.  I stare at concrete barely 3 feet in front of my face.  

Like I said, it sucks.  

So I took myself to the student union in hopes of scoring a nice cup of hot tea and installing myself in the coffee shop, which has huge windows and good-sized tables.  No dice.  Why?  Because in typical fashion, the university has closed its most useful parts (like the coffee shop), leaving the shittiest bits open (like McDonald's, Chik-Fil-A (or whatever that revolting place calls itself), Steak-Escape, etc.).  But I managed to find a chair, table, and I'm pretty comfortable.  

Now, I have a question for any writer types who read this rag.  What do you do when you get all installed in a coffee shop or whatever, you've got your tea/coffee beverage of choice, the computer is open, you're ready to go, and all of a sudden, you have to go to the bathroom?  Seriously, do you gather your accoutrements, put your coat back on, shove your hat, scarf, and gloves into your bag, take your drink, and awkwardly lurch into the bathroom, dropping something that you'd rather never touch the floor of anywhere but your apartment?  Or do you just develop an oversized bladder/colon?  Or do you turn to the least skeezy looking person in a 4 foot radius and ask them to watch your stuff, hastily stuffing your wallet into your pocket in case their respectable appearance is a front for robbing broke student types in coffee shops?  

Questions for the ages, people...

Back to school, back to school...

Vacation was over this Monday. I am writing a paper so I can get published and be all cool like that. And by cool, I mean totally the opposite. Actually, I got back to lab, and after the niceties of "How was your holiday?" were exchanged between my PI (principle investigator, academic science equivalent of "boss") and I, he asked how I did in the class I took.

I took this class taught by one of my committee members (my second favorite committee member besides my actual boss) who is as bizarre as they come but slightly less bizarre and downright nasty when compared to my other committee members. Towards the end, I got caught up in the insane quantities of grading of the class I TA'd for said boss, and I ended up turning in 6 out of the 10 HW assignments I had to do 1-2 days before the final. Somehow - I don't know how - I managed to hold 'abject terror and anxiety' at bay, only briefly succumbing at times to 'low-grade panic.' That's roughly the difference between a red terror alert (where we're supposed to carry at all times pitchforks and torches, or gasmasks and baseball bats, or garlic and crosses, I forget exactly what) and a green terror alert (which involves subtley eyeballing anyone on the subway carrying a bag of any kind or wearing a coat who isn't an obvious shade of white).

Anyway, my PI asked me about how I did. I told him the truth. "I.... didn't look. ... Yet! I didn't look yet." He starts chuckling. "I was on vacation! I didn't think about it! I was relaxing!" I get a full out laugh, then he suggests I check sometime soon. Turns out I got an A. Haven't told him yet, but yeah. An A!

Seriously, I think he keeps me on as his student for the entertainment value. The way I see it, if I don't get a piece of paper from the university telling me I'm either on academic probation or my career as a grad student is over, that's fine with me, and I don't give a shit. Biochemistry is particularly draconian. If you get below a B in any class, you're on academic probation. There is no averaging your GPA, and if you slip up again, you're out of the program.

So, everything is back to normal. I managed to get myself a parking space for this upcoming semester that's closer than a 10-minute walk to my building, which will hopefully make the 8 AM class I need to take a tiny bit easier. At least there's less of a bleary-eyed stagger between my car and the classroom, which means there's less of a chance of me spilling precious drops of the inevitable mug of coffee. Happily, though, my 8 AM class does not interfere with 50% off bottles of wine night at one of my favorite bars. Hellz to the yeah, people.

Oh! And my insurance goes down by $200 because I've turned 25 this upcoming pay period! Huzzah! And there are Saturday morning fencing practices at the club, followed by lunch and drinking, so really, everything is quite nice.

Organization! Organization! Sis-boom-bah!

In yet another hopeless attempt to become more organized, I am going to bring all rants that apply to graduate school, personal angst, my lack of anger management skills, and pretty much anything else besides food .... here.  

Despite this unnatural attempt at cyberspacial cleanliness, I assure any and all readers that the humongous pile of dirty, semidirty, and clean clothes remains to the side of my bed, and the bag stuffed full of junk mail with my personal information that I intend to shred/burn at some later date will continue to become more stuffed.  The bed of crumpled receipts, folded papers, emergency pads, and gum wrappers will remain in the bottom of all my bags.

Also, the clutter on my desk at work will likely not shift until I graduate, which is pretty funny considering I always had the second messiest desk in grade school.  It was a balancing act of supreme precision, achieving a relaxing level of crumpled papers without crossing the line into the dangerous territory of having the contents of your desk dumped out onto the floor in front of all your classmates by your teacher.  Old habits die hard.  

Actually, I was always kind of jealous of those girls who had the coordinated pencil cases, binders, folders, pens, pencils, scissors, etc.  We always had salvaged remains from the office buildings where my dad fixed elevators, and let me tell you, corporate America does NOT indulge in Lisa Frank or Hello Kitty office supplies, the heartless bastards.  And my brother and I weren't allowed to use permanent markers because of the fumes, and we were forbidden from doodling on the binders anyway, because if we messed them up, we wouldn't have any new things for the following year.  ...Not that they were new when we got them, or would they be any newer the next year, but ours was not to wonder why...

So, a long story short, I've always been terrible at organization.  I don't have a calender book, yet I somehow manage to remember everything despite terrible forgetfulness.  Imagine how smart I'd be if I actually wrote the stupid things down and freed up all that brainiacal hard drive.  Instead of starting there and doing something concrete that might actually change my life for the better, I'm starting here!  In cyberspace!  Doing something that neither benefits my current research nor my future!  

But it makes me happy, and it's better than nothing, no?