So I'd prefer updating more frequently just for the sake of writing shorter entries.

Whether this'll go the way of my oh so many other ideas, who knows

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I woke up at 9 today, and day-dreamed/lightly slept 'til 10:30. It was fucking awesome. Then I received a note from Hillary about 'ignoring' her and her being busy today (hanging out with her family). Even if it was playful (as I later found out), there's always some shit or another that can be perceived as negative. And I apparently assume the absolute worst in people given a neutral situation, at least according to St. Louis Colleen. Crazy bitch. Later on today I also learned Hill has plans with Kari and her boyfriend on saturday. So re-scheduling for friday or saturday suddenly changed in the magical span of several hours. And she playfully complains about her wondering if she can put up with me?

Of course I can't hang with them on saturday. Kari is of the opinion I'm not up to standard for Hill. What the fuck that means for being someone's friend I don't know. But if I ever see that pudgy bitch and she so much as thinly gives me lip, I'm gonna get ugly quick. As if she is all that. If I wanted to talk myself up I could go on about how the sun shines out my ass for hours. But she is a goddamn coward and won't say anything to my face so it is moot. I am polite to her friend because I will not disrespect Hillary. But it's hard. I do not brook disrespect from near complete strangers, especially when they'd feigned friendliness to my face. It's something of a grudge, you could say.

On a completely different track, she's asked once if she'll ever get to read this thing. I figure I'll give her the address when we've parted ways. It's bound to happen sooner or later; just the way of things in general.

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So back to that morning. With my mood back to my usual calm and chill, I went into the lab, organized some samples, and realized I'd been a complete fucking moron. See, I had neglected to remember something for the high sensitivity inflammation protein assay we did. I forgot that for the first experiment, we took blood samples at TWO time points. So for the 3rd hour, I'm currently missing 4 data points.

Will these show up in a regular assay? Maybe. At the time this freaked me the fuck out. At first I catastrophized the whole thing: I couldn't get anything right, was I worth anything as a scientist, what the fuck was wrong with me, etc. I just couldn't believe I could fuck something that simple up. I don't know if the part about asking someone about those samples and getting the go-ahead to run them on the regular kit was real, or made by me. I did show the senior scientist, Gabe, the initial sheet for the high sensitivity kit. I assumed if she had no objections things were ok. I'm not blaming her, I just assumed I'd gotten everything right.

One saving grace is that for a very similar experiment, I have similar data values I can use--that is, if these 4 data values I fucked up on don't get registered on this kit. At least one will, I think; not sure about the others.

I guess it's not a huge catastrophe because they are the control subjects (i.e. the subjects that don't get anything, like placebo). And I can get a fairly specific idea of where they generally are. But I still can't believe I fucked up on synthesizing that. I mean I've fucked up in the past on the project, but not on that magnitude. Gabe said she wouldn't tell Chris, and just to wait and see what the regular kit showed.

Hopefully I'll get lucky.

So after hating myself for a good several hours and kinda calming down, I talked with my advisor about some unrelated stuff. Thankfully, I only need to take 4 credits per semester while I'm a 50% of full-time Teaching Assistant. This means no Systems Neuroscience next semester. I can take that next year, just in time for my prelims (aka 'so you want to be a dissertator...well catch this butt-plug surprise').

So next semester I can worry about writing an NRSA fellowship, polish off this first year project as a manuscript for a publication, continue on my 2nd project, and work at getting some other stuff ready for publication. My advisor thinks I'm a tad anxious and that it'll pass when I get the first paper out, but that ain't it. I need to publish and keeping publishing. Everything else about graduate school is secondary. Anyone can get a Ph.D. Whether mine will mean something when I leave here is what I care about.

I'm in a lovely mood, I know.

So my advisor and I chatted some, he was amicable as mostly usual, and I signed up to bring apple cider for this party the whole set of labs in our building are having next week.

Since then, I've done my stats homework just for something to do, read all my usual political sites, wrote about 2,000 words worth of new dialogue, and decided to write this because I wanted to vent about the day.

Then I'll sleep.

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