This last week has been a limbo.

Ever since my last Emotions class back last tuesday, I've wandered the streets and prodded my surroundings, gazing up and down things I hadn't quite caught the first dozen times I'd passed by them. Statistics has been a warm cup of apple cider that way, giving me some focus in this new shift. I never thought I would consider stats to be an old sweater, but I've been wearing it for days now, working and 98% completing my homework due wednesday. Longer one than usual.

What'll be filling up my time is this grant proposal for three years of funding from the NIH. It's a pre-doctoral fellowship with a decent purse of money. The catch is that you have to plan your research out three years and basically know what your thesis is going to be. Not much of a problem. It's also very competitive, but then I'm a very competitive candidate. I've known it's been coming for awhile, and it's due Dec 5th. It wasn't until after I finished the emotions paper, though, that I had all the relevant background information and the first experiment I wanted to do.

Although it looks like I'll need to revise my thinking some. Y'see, I'd spoken with my advisor, Dr. C, for two straight hours on friday, asking him if my experimental design as it stands was feasible. I'm going to have to break it up into two different sessions, as opposed to having it be one long, continuous THING lasting from 9-12pm for each monkey in the study (of which there'll be 32, I reckon). Small setback, I figure; I think I've got a few decent solutions to it.

Dr. C also suggested I do a few more mundane experiments first to check out just how these sub-sickness doses of this dead bacteria will affect juvenile monkeys. I'm surprised someone hasn't detailed that already, actually; I still have to see if someone has in the monkey literature. I figure if I do have to do that along with collecting their blood to look at their immune response, though, I can say some cheesy shit like the blood taking is actually an anxious stressor and record behaviors, see if there's some significant interaction between more anxious behaviors and heightened immune response. That'd be a small 2-3 publishable page paper and it'd be simple.

Besides getting down to the nitty-gritty on experimental design, though, he wanted me to read over several successful NIH pre-doc fellowships some of his past students had gotten. He said I should read them over this weekend and decide if I could really get through the whole grant. I'd already read successful applications several days ago, though, so I already knew that I could probably handle it. It'll just require condensing some parts of my emotions paper for part of it, while the rest will be stuff I've either written up before or figuring out new experiments to do after these first few.

It won't be easy, but then all I have now is statistics. True, statistics has a test the thursday after this one, but I'm not worried about it. The material for this section of the course was easier to follow and make sense of, and I got an A on the last section, so I'm content with it.

I know, I know, work work work, blah blah blah.

One nice social thing I digged on was this past thursday over at the student union. They always have open mic night there, and it's become a tradition for several psych grad students to go there, hang out, play cards, and drink.

The group was bigger this time than usual. By bigger I mean beyond just me, Xtian and Katie. Tat was there, for instance, who can best be described as one of those hip asian girls with more of the style than the attitude. Meaghan, one the stats geeks besides myself who's got a rep. for knowing the material, brought along a shy gay dude who mostly just played cards; seemed like a nice enough fellow. Heh, and I can't forget Lindsey either, considering I accidentally kept screwing her over in the card game we were all playing. And of course I couldn't forget Brian, the happy-go-lucky self-professed alcoholic of the bunch.

Enjoyable as it was, I never really feel comfortable at open mic night. Maybe I just need to let it grow on me. The best part was when it ended, actually, and I ended up walking back with Brian to his apartment to yak for a few hours. At one point he pulled out a tin with photographs inside. Apparently his grandfather had developed an anonymous roll of film he found in Germany, way back during World War II. The photographs were a narrative of a woman who (I was told) had slept with one of the allies and was publicly executed for it. They would cut and then shave off the woman's hair, dress them in what looked like a Siberian workers plain work suit, then hang them. The emotion that Brian felt for the photographs was intriguing, that he felt personally invested in them; had cried over them at one point when he was alone. I was more fascinated than anything. It was as if I could read the photographer's mind; the style was alot like mine, how I would have chosen to document something like that. It wasn't a propaganda piece either, not with the grave shots and then the little girl and an older woman planting flowers right at the site.

I came to find that Brian was much more laid back, almost pensive, when it was just him and I. I'd suspected he was like that, but I was glad to get to know that side of him. It was also good to find out that I wasn't the only one who didn't know people around Mad Town.

Big and lonely place this is, sometimes.

I decided to resolve things with one of the three people I wrote about in my last entry. At first I'd simply wanted to be done with it, but I felt like completely lacking mercy in her case was going too far. She hadn't lied to me or, it seems, meant for her rumor to be damaging. I can forgive an accident. Even so, as I've told her, I can't trust her with personal information. So we're still friends, but my trust has been tested in general lately.

I have received no substantive word from the other two. I suspect Two-Sexes has no idea who they are, or if they do they haven't the courage to wonder aloud about it. That one has lied to me, so quite frankly it's a done and dead deal. Lying is the highest ranking cardinal sin for a friend in my book. You know the types of lies I'm talking about.

Finally, I'm certain I won't hear from T again, about her betrayal or anything. I've seen it before in some of my exes, that same sudden, sharp snap where consistency gives way to some utterly irrational development. She had not seemed like a liar, nor a whore all this time. Yet, I must have been gravely mistaken about the content of her character. To think, she talked with my mother once over the phone for 20 minutes and praised her for how amazing a job she'd done. She read my mother poems. I'd thought about inviting T to live with me back before her house situation was secure, or just buying her a ticket to see me, even if she "wasn't that kind of girl." (which to this day seemed odd to say)

But for all the talk, T turns out to be just another emotionally damaged girl looking for abusive comfort or some post-modern jagged pill, that same twilight life I've seen friends of mine die over. More than anything, to be honest, I feel sorrow for her choice. It seems like a damned empty road. I'm still angry over being deceived, lied to, and likely cheated on, but I try to look beyond my own reaction. Mindless hate isn't useful. Even so, the depth of her betrayal still astounds me.

I thought she was a completely different type of person; I'm usually an excellent judge of character, and my profession is studying behavior. When she told me all that shit, it sounded genuine. And while it'll likely never happen, I want to hear her explain why she did what she did. I know that expecting a reasonable answer is silly--never really came the last several times I've been fucked over--but a guy can hope.

I've progressed over the years, though. The last time this happened, it hit me hard. I should have expected it given the circumstances, but it still stung for a year. In T's case, I didn't cry or get extremely emotionally upset. Maybe not fully trusting her paid off, emotions-wise. I'd like to think love is a downhill something that's more of a river than a boulder.

At least I don't have to worry anymore if she has enough money to eat. That much is a comfort.

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