I appreciate the look-after all the same.

* * *

I have a love-hate relationship with winter. On the one hand, I absolutely adore short days. Some of you know that sunlight and I don't mix so hot. Vampiric, sure, but night is good for two things: 1) less visual pain when I happen to forget my sunglasses; 2) the air just feels less staticky and annoying. So the sooner daytime get a knife to its throat, the better. But on the other hand, there's this annoying fucker that gimps along with me wherever I go, slapping the shit outta me. That son of a bitch is what we call FUCKING COLD. Being around as many lakes as I am in this city, the wind chill can truly add insult to injury.

So mixed blessings and curses (cursings?) there.

* * *

As far as the wide world of work goes, I have a stats test this coming tuesday. Already gone through the notes once except one lecture. Only have 6-7 lectures and a few of them are short. I'm not especially worried. I'm also not especially keen on taking the thing for granted, so you bet your ass I'll over study for the thing.

The research stuff is one part good, two parts fuck all. I'd say the good is getting on with the rest of these inflammation protein and stress hormone analyses. Been finding some useful things so far that go with what I'd expected. Some of the correlations I was hoping for ain't there, but ain't science a motherfucker like that sometimes.

My next huge year and a half study is already underway, too. Let's just say it's a logitudinal study in monkeys looking at how mood, social interaction, and thinking change over the course of development, depending on whether the mom was sick during pregnancy or not. We even get to do brain imaging, which could well be a bitch but I've always wanted to try it. The kick ass thing about this study is that other people do all of the infant observation and assessment stuff, then I do my assessment stuff when they monkeys become adolescents.

On the downside, I need to wrap up the last 6-7 months of research and write an article about it. That's 4 full experiments looking at behavior, stress hormones, cellular inflammation, and immune system activity. It's about as complex as it sounds, yeah. I'm thinking getting done by the end of december or the end of winter break is realistic.

The downside part comes from a few things. I had a meeting yesterday that I thought was going to mainly focus on the new study. Instead, it turns out it was a 'lets go over your analyses' session. I'd done all my analyses and graphs one way, but they want them done another way that I frankly think isn't useful. But they're the ones who've published papers before, so who am I to argue (even if it is a pain the ass)? It's not a huge amount of work, could burn up a night or two, but I thought all this stuff was done with.

Another part of the equation is that my advisor thinks I may be overextended or having trouble multi-tasking. I'm pretty sure this thought extends from not having anticipated what he wanted during our last meeting. At the time he'd said, "oh don't worry about it, just take notes for the next meeting so we have all the stuff then." But rather typically it became something negative, which could just end up being nothing at all. Like one of my colleagues said, it depends on the mood he's in. That isn't to say I'm insulting him, it's just hard to figure out how well I'm doing or if I screwed up or something. I did send an email to him with a set of good news an hour ago, though, so hopefully that'll smooth things over.

Another thing on my mind is how to pay for this summer. See, they have very, very few Teaching Assistant positions open during summer. These tend to go to the 'guaranteed funding' kids. I have no idea where this list is, but I could use some getting on it. So I've had to think of ways to get funded. One method has been spearheading some National Science money that the department wants to use to boost diversity. That was what the whole meeting with Colleen was about. The stipend for that position is 3,000. Trouble is I don't know how much time I'd have for that, and my advisor isn't especially keen on it. He says it's fine if I have enough time, but I can tell he's worried. After a meeting I had with Colleen in her office today, it seems like the spearhead position might be divided up between several different people. We'd basically do recruitment drives at other universities, national conferences, stuff like that. Do-able stuff.

Of course that'd mean splitting up the stipend. So I'd have to get a loan to cover my rent, that is unless Ma and gran want to fork out more cash for my destitute ass. They might, might not, but I'm hoping the most I'd have to borrow would be a few grand.

So the situation overall is alright.

* * *

Personal life wise, I spent most of yesterday night going out to Noodles and watching Spinal Tap with Hillary. It's kinda awesome having a friend/pseudo girlfriend who likes doing shit. It'd been kinda contentious over e-mail the few days before that, but things got smoothed over. It'd been an argument over whether elderberry had scientific backing for helping get rid of sickness. I said yes, she said no, and the fun began. I still have a tendency to take her way too seriously over e-mail sometimes, probably due to the lack of tonal inflection. In person, though, our occasional amusing digs at each other are just that, amusing.

After the movie we talked for a little while about some of my old issues like the lack of letting people in, why I let her in, things like that. One thing she asked after was if I'd changed since I met her. And I think I have. I didn't mention it, but I've felt more self-confidence and more willingness to express my opinion. I don't have to dance on eggshells with her. If I disagree or I think something is fucked, I can say it like it is--and likewise on her part. Open and (when necessary) un-sugar coated honesty is cool. I'd say another thing is that I take things slightly less seriously--slightly. Part of me wonders if I'm slipping some on my stuff because of the time I spend with her, but I'm still on top of everything. I guess you don't have to work all the time...and it feels wonked typing that.

I think, finally, it's nice to have a genuine close friend around here. There aren't even any hidden issues about falling in love or any of that silly shit. For once my mind and emotions are in agreement not needing that kind of complication. I just like spending time with her.

* * *

Ohhh...nearly forgot a good story. Ok. My printer recently ran out of cyan ink. I originally thought, "Meh, suck the nut, bitch beast." But then I found out a nasty trick some Japanese and American engineers thought of. See, if you run out of ink--ANY ink--that's in the printer, the fucking thing WILL NOT WORK until you replace that ink. I'm talking the printer, I'm talking the scanner, every fucking thing about the little wanker.

Recently I got a request from Suzanne, one of the profs. I TA for, to scan some articles. So I thought, "alright: I already have to buy some printer ink. Now I have an immediate reason to get that shit." So at around 7 a few nights ago, I drive to a local best buy, get the only epson ink cartridges they have, pay, resist the need to tell my sales associate to get her act together, drive home, and plug the thing in. I'm expecting all will suddenly be well and bloom fucking buddhas.

No.

I finally found out why business people and commercials like to poke fun at ink catridges. See, you not only need the company's ink, you need the specific brank of ink that's just for that particular product. Now, this LOOKS like cyan ink to me, right? And it's the right size and look and style of the exact same cartridge that I have empty, right? Well here I am being a stupid son of a fuck, because there's a tiny computer chip at the bottom telling me that my printer doesn't recognize the ink cartridge.

I spend 20 minutes trying to find a way around this business. I kept talking to myself, trying to puzzle out the logic: "cyan ink is fucking cyan ink. What in the hell use is there making different cartridges for a printer unit? Isn't this like universal technology or something?"

But the printer paid no attention. So I ended up finding another best buy close by. I'd never been around this section of town, though, so I partly had no idea where I was going. But when I hit the right street and saw that store, I was angrily happy. "Yes!," I said to no one in particular, "I have found fucking Shangri-La and it is East Spring St.!" So I parked, found the exact right printer ink, unsuccessfully tried to pawn my old ink off (I have to wait a few days), rode home, and stuck the fucker in.

And it worked. Now I could scan those articles for Suzanne. That took 2 hours on another day and more bullshit, but eh, it's done.

One thing I wasn't expecting was my credit card to suddenly go missing. I searched for the thing, couldn't find it. So I decide to go online, report it missing/stolen, get a new one sent. Trouble is, I fucked up on typing my password, the system locked me out of my account, and I had to scrounge around my apartment for 30 minutes trying to find a paper statement, a chistled piece of wood, SOMETHING with my account number. And at the bottom of a plastic bin, finally, I found it. So I logged back in, went through some bullshit, got a hold of customer service, and talked with a very pleasant older gentleman about my dilemma. He was a decent sort. "Oh ho, someone had pizza today without me!" he joked. That kinda guy. Helped to make the last 4 hours more funny than annoying.

* * *

That's what passes for drama in my life. Improvement.

* * *

I'm going to get to studying for my stats test, then maybe waste some time re-doing all of my graphs. It's nice busy work after thinking a lot.

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