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Summer stipend application; training new assistant; Hill sleeping over (no, not like that); etc.

2006-03-22 - 8:37 p.m.

Paint my ass green and call me a studying Irishman. That's how I spent St. Pat's; completely forgot the day even.

I've been unusually busy. Let's see.

This past week has been productive. I just put in an application for two grand for the summer. I'm competing against the 5 other minority grad students, and I'm guessing 1 or 2 of them won't have even tried (knowing them). So hopefully I'll get some cash. There's also an offer by a local county to pay a grand to people willing to teach a week of neuroscience and some college workshops for low income and minority youth. That's right up my alley and the pay is great. Hell, that'd be 3 grand: enough to pay for my summer, since my advisor doesn't have the cash.

Today itself was supercharged. I sailed from bed and a shower to the lab at 10:30. I was preparing stuff when my new assistant, Casey, came in 10 minutes late. I hate it when people are early. I walked her through the in's and out's of data entry, had her meet Dr. C, do the usual administrative shit. She's around for the summer and seems to be interested in my monkey project, so maybe she can help with that too; that'd mean finding just 1-2 more people. She's a little tentative because the Simian B virus deal, but it's understandable. She also met Nicole, my other assistant, and we got to coordinate just who would enter what in the grand scheme of things. All in all, productive.

After that I picked up Ben's extra credit exam from humanities. Dropped that off, dropped off the 2 grand application to the academic secretary, then headed up to attend an honors board meeting. We planned out the induction ceremony and decided I'd give the history of the society spiel. I'm a history minor, so why not. Afterward, the secretary and I talked for awhile about the organization, her doing most of the work (which she does), and some ideas about how to recruit more people--both grads and undergrads. She appreciated my showing up at the cluster meeting--you know, the regional conference where it was just me representing the board and the secretary. I better be careful or people will expect me to stick around, and I really decided to volunteer out of pity more than anything.

After that, I got a quick dinner, administered and proctored Ben's exam, then sorted and collected it all. For some reason he'd gotten two other proctors to come in. He's thorough like that, but hey, why not. So I dropped off that stack in my office.

Tomorrow around noonish I'll get the scantrons graded at T&E. But before that, at 9, I have to watch the PPI procedure. Another day of me waking up at 8 o'clock. I can't stand this 'do science in the early morning' stuff. Hopefully I can do it without a mocha.

That just leaves around 3-4 hours tonight to work. I can't wait until I get a fellowship and all this annoying TA stuff is behind me.

I hear back from those in about another week or two.

* * *

So work work, yadda yadda.

Only thing that really happened personal-wise in the last week was Hill sleeping over. Her husband's mom had come in to visit, and she and Hill don't get along I think. So she'd decided to sleep over at her parent's place. The 'rents were out of town. Unbeknownst to her, the hell-raising Belch had concocted a plan to have a big ass party (instead of the 'small get-together' she'd mentioned), complete with drinking and underage stupidity.

The little sister had gotten belligerent, Hill got annoyed, and I got a phone call. I was sitting in Barriques, working through stats modelling or reading or something. Through some round-about questions she asked if she could sleep over. As with all out-of-the-ordinary situations, I switched into logistics mode to figure out what'd work easiest. I suggested she could park in a nearby parking garage for 2 bucks, or I could drive in my car, park someplace nearby, and let her take my spot. She chose the latter.

Mostly we resolved a misunderstanding between us. She also confirmed what I'd been thinking for a little while, that the dynamic we had was like what had happened between her and 6'5. She honestly didn't know why she got pissed off at what I did here or there, and why we fell into conflict so easily but it was difficult with other friends. And we do butt heads. It's about 50/50 with either that or harmony going on. She asked at one point why I was still friends with her. Given that we don't touch at all anymore, there is some internal difficulty and conflict about just how to convey myself. On the one hand I want to be completely open, but then that openness would manifest in ways she doesn't like or finds irritating.

But I more or less told her that she was my friend, I loved her, and that it was worthwhile to work on the conflicts.

We'd thought about seeing Ultraviolet, but talked through the start.

Eventually she went to bed in my bed around 1. I worked for awhile and, at 2, attempted to sleep in my mummy bag on the floor of my living room. My big mistake was thinking I could still sleep on the floor no sweat. I ended up royally tweaking my lower back, but I kept trying to fall asleep. Around 4 I took a shower to massage away the knotted muscles, and at 5 I finally realized, yes, your loveseat cushion CAN be used as a lower back flotation device.

That made things much more comfy. Unfortunately it didn't help with sleep. So I did some work, worried, and went back to 'bed'. Around 8 or so Hill woke up, we shared some awkward words while I walked about with my sleeping bag around me. I was disoriented and I didn't want to bother with pants. So she left, I got back into my bed, and I slept from 8 to 12.

Woke up, got food, and worked harder than usual.

Haven't heard from her since. I'm guessing she's busy with neuroscience.

* * *

Lately I feel more indignant and pissed off than usual. Partly I'm getting sick of waiting for word on my money (i.e. the fellowships) to come back. And there's also the travel awards for the conferences I want to attend. And some other money stuff.

There are good moments, of course. Like when I hang out in my mind in some of the favorite places I've constructed over the years. On occasion I need full-scale spirtual-mental immersion like that.

But in general I feel like there's a lot of stuff that's about to happen, and I'm getting really impatient about them finally coming about.

* * *

Back to learning about cognitive bias for this survey study I'm doing. That analysis is going decent. I'll have enough to make a paper, at least, and I'm just looking to publish as much as possible this semester.

* * *

Sometimes I wonder exactly how people relax.

(After around 3 hours of reading the cognitive bias literature for depressive, anxious, and neurotic personality characteristics)

I am so fucking glad I study actual science with, y'know, objectively verifiable phenomena. Cuz reading through pure Psychology just bothers me on some fundamental level, like trying to read Spanish though you're fluent in French.

I am past the point of mental and emotional exhaustion. I wish I could cancel tomorrow's thing at 9, but I can zone in my TA classes later anyway.

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