Hodgepodge

I realized I forgot a title for this post. Honestly, making up titles for my posts stresses me out. How to be concise, relevant and not too boring and/or trite? Tricky. Um, yeah. This time I've defaulted to a Jeopardy! category.
==============
People are starting to head back to Amherst -- so this is when things start getting weird. It's strange not packing up and preparing to do the same. I also think I can no longer connect to the Amherst server via VPN, which kind of blows because I have some stuff -- e.g. the archives to this site -- on my W: drive still. I think the SSH client still works though. My Amherst URL could kick the bucket at any point as well.

So things have improved significantly since last week. Managed to not have any more rats in my very small pilot study die on me; I also found it possible in my infinite intellect to not switch up my rats while running ICSS again. Also, turns out the data that I thought were completely worthless are actually somewhat promising once I took out the data from animals with bad cannula placements. The downside is that the sample sizes become really small when we do that. The upside is that we're ordering new rats and trying to bolster our stats and, if it works out, my PI thinks it could be really big, like -- brace yourself -- Nature Neuroscience big.

!!

I'll try not to get my hopes up too high.

(Oh shit, Mariners just won on a walk off HR against the Yanks. blasdlkjf. It's okay, the afterglow from the 5 game sweep over the Sox will tide me over)

went to NY this weekend which included the odd combination of a bachelorette party (and my first trip to a strip club; much fun -- female strippers, thankfully) and my cousin's baby's 1st birthday party. As always, it was good going back; I like boston, but I'll always need my New York fix. It's just too bad it's so exhausting driving to and fro. I'd better get used to it, I think I'm going back for two weekends in a row next month, albeit for very exciting reasons: US Open men's semis with my sister and the Yankees-Red Sox game in the Bronx!

Confessions

Two really bad days at work in a row. I feel pretty shitty. At least I finally got my flute. And my phone charger.

Now for something completely different:

Every time I walk to Harvard Square from my apartment I cut across harvard yard to shorten my trip. And every time, almost without fail, there is either a giant Asian tour group or an Asian family dragging their little 10-year-old kids to take pictures in front of John Harvard.

And I must admit that I always laugh a little (on the inside) when the parents see me bustling along and look at me approvingly, assuming I am a student there.

But if only they knew that I went to a little liberal arts school (and, moreover, entered as an anthro major,) neglected to even consider Harvard and can't stand most of the people I know there.

I have to say I'm glad my parents veered on the less demented side of the demanding Asian parents thing. I have a feeling it's not the same for those poor kids who are being taken on tours of Harvard before they should even remotely be thinking about college.

Business as usual

So this paper that I may have had my name on if it got accepted for publication might not actually pan out. I actually have no clue as to how the whole publication thing works, but the data for our part of it doesn't look terribly promising, and I'm sure Biological Psychiatry is not interested in non-significant results regarding this protein. Dangit, hours/days/weeks on the microscope for nothing. I guess we'll see; we're having a meeting next week, maybe we can salvage something?

I realized I still haven't put up pictures of my apt. All in due time, my friends; i.e. when I finally clean up my room. I still have at least two boxes of possessions unpacked. Quite frankly, they're unpacked because I have no clue where to put anything. I do like our apartment, but its a tad short on space for 3 people.

In more pleasant news, I was in Amherst and Lenox(Tanglewood) this past weekend. Barbecue was eaten, Esselon (new cafe on Route 9 from the Rao's guy, awfully good, do check it out) experienced, dinosaur tracks and mammoth bones gaped at and decent though slightly disappointing Mahler listened to. All in all a good time despite the fact that it left me missing Amherst more than ever.

I wonder at what point I stop thinking of myself as a student. I realized that whereever I go I think about whether I can get student discounts etc. Not because I think I can get away with it, but because I actually just continue to consider myself a student. Such deep-seeded denial.

Sometimes I read over htese posts and I wonder what the heck I was thinking when I wrote them because they're so scatterbrained and random and flagrantly uninteresting to anyone except myself. Obviously 16 years or so of formal learning has not taught me to put together a coherent statement.

One of my roommates is going to Germany for a week this month for training. Then she gets to go back (plus go to France and Hungary) in December for the company's annual Christmas party type thing. Why doesn't my job pay to send me to Europe??