Now what the actual conversation had been about, I thought, was how to keep down "per day" costs on food and water for monkeys, by having them officially on my experiment for as little as possible. I'd been thinking he meant dollars and cents for adding this to that. He'd also meant to keep everything on one sheet. I didn't understand this at the time. Why does this misunderstanding sound like a big deal? Because when you're relatively new to the game, you keep fucking up, and your advisor sends out an email more or less implying (accidental or purposeful) that you weren't listening to him--you get panicky, or ragingly fucking angry for the rest of the night in my case.

Thankfully, I found out yesterday that the building manager thought my advisor was making things unnecessarily complicated. She didn't blame me for going with normal procedure. G, the senior scientist, didn't seem to mind at all. Might have been because of the "I really was listening to him, I just misunderstood his intent" email.

In any case, hopefully that's the end of the misunderstandings and general hellish confusion.

This past friday (yesterday) was another test day, where the second monkey of the first pair was done. Everything went much more smoothly than wednesday, and I was alot more on top of things. G reflected that the day went really well after everything was said and done. I agreed: I felt good about how things had gone. That's 2 down, possibly 10 or 16 more to go. I'm only doing 4 more for this semester, don't get nervous or worried [grins]

I'm being deliberately vague about the research because I know how some of you feel about animals in experiments--and it's a good idea in case, however completely unlikely it may be, someone runs across this journal. I say unlikely because I have anti-search bot code for every major search engine, an iron-clad disclaimer (which is an entertaining read), and anonymity as far as the eye can see.

So I'm sitting in the cafe across the street from the monkey lab, ready to read about 7-8 more articles about psychological stress and how it can cause an increase in circulating levels of inflammation proteins. Dr. Vem told me thursday that if it was clean and good enough, he'd be interested in helping me publish it. It's cool how a neurosurgery prof. took an interest in the behavioral side of the inflammation proteins he partly focuses on.

I haven't mentioned it to Dr. C (my advisor) yet, but I'm sure he'd think it was cool. I don't know how likely it'll be that the thing gets published, but you might as well try, yeah? I haven't seen any scientific review article of the specific relationship I'm talking about, so I figure the space is open for me to park myself there.

So far as the future goes, I haven't heard back from the Fjord Foundation. I'm mostly assuming I didn't score that fellowship (read: scholarship for grad school kids) either. So this summer I'm going to write 4 fellows apps:

1) Another national $cience one

2) Possibly another Fjord one

3) An American Psybot Associaton one for minority people in the neurosciences (i.e. poking the brain and seeing how it ticks).

4) A national instuhtoots of health one. This is by far the biggest, meanest son of a bitch of the lot. The other ones are teeny, tiny applications compared to this one. But this is due in December. The others are due in early to mid fall. It'll all work out. I hope.

I do know in one capacity or another that I'll be a Teaching Assistant next year. Not exactly glorious, but hopefully it won't break my mental back. I'm hoping I can do intro psych (which should be a walk in the park) and abnormal psych. I don't relish the idea of doing intro psych stats. Explaining what a t-distribution is, how a standard deviation relates to it, and what in the hell a t-score is ain't not me cup of tea. True, I am a stats pimp. True, people in my grad class year, to this day, still call me by the first name of the author of our stats book (from last semester). That doesn't mean, however, that I remember all of the basics--and it certainly doesn't mean I have the patience.

Hopefully it'll just be the TA work, research, and some decently not so bad classes next semester. One of 'em is an 8 week course, so that'll leave the later part of the semester for doing my National Instuhtoots of Health fellowship.

Alright alright, enough about my work. I know you probably find it as thrilling as leather-bound bondage snails fucking. Moving on.

"What the fuck about your photography, you artist in a can scientist freak person thing?", you ask.

I know. I know. I've been a naughty non-productive artist. I even spend most of my time in cafes, so that makes me one of those artsy types. I don't know coffee lingo (well) if it makes any difference.

I have no excuse for the lack of photography except that I haven't had the time. It takes at least a good 3 hour block to get into the right mindset, find shit, shoot shit, then go back home. I was walking back from the Medical library on thursday night, listening to Nirvana's New York acoustic album while still fuck-the-fucked pissed off, and saw me some very lovely shots. I composed about 6 in my mind. They'll look great as they are, but I wish I had some humans to put in 'em. Specifically I need hot young female people to get the whole otherworldly air + mysterious alluring factor in there. Actually I could also use hot young Bram Stolker/tastefully gothy men for some of these, but again: what is a motherfucker to do with no nearby peeps around?

I'm rambling. I'd like to spend alot of nights doing photography during the summer.

And the writing? Well so far as I can tell, our fearless leader for the game project has gotten busy elsewhere, something about being able to start a game company and accruing the investors necessary for the initial start-up capital. More power to him, and hey it works that I don't have to add writing on top of everything else going on now, but the project is not proceeding quickly. We're already working with a 3 year old game engine, which is Cretaceous in tech terms.

And so far as my short stories go...I frankly think pimping my photography will be easier. I'm hoping to get some of it hung in various coffee shops I go to. I know it's of good enough caliber for that. There's just the question of having enough time to edit shit, resize it for print sizes, order the stuff, contact the managers of these places...and all that takes more time than I have now.

So overall I'm doing much better at the end of this week than the beginning. I frankly never want to remember this week again (except maybe the last two days). But time marches onward, and the stars keep on shining.

See you 'round some time.

(P.S. The chat is down again. I sent an email to Andrew about it, but getting a coalition of regulars to write in would also help. So if you frequent that den of infamy, send something to Andrew at [email protected] )

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