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New genetics study plopped into my lab; I need to get back to Detroit

2010-07-29 - 1:12 a.m.

I had the big meeting today with the aging institute people today.

I'd wanted to clear the docket, so I'd made it my big thing to finish the glucose regulation paper. Despite some issues with the anemia side project and other work things, I did it! I think the Discussion section actually turned out well.

Barb, Guofan, Dr. Silver, and I all trundled over in Big Red's SUV. Barb is my prof/preceptor/boss for human neural connections stuff, whereas I work with Silver on the diet restriction in monkeys stuff.

At least until today.

The big reason I'd been invited along was because of my expertise in neurophysiology and stats. They've been working with a brand new, highly visible gene that could be useful in finding people at risk for developing dementia early in life. The thing is, no one really knows what the hell it does in terms of conferring risk.

So they need someone to figure out what's going wrong physiologically in the low, medium, and high risk profile groups, and perhaps to see if that pairs up with or augments some of the structural and functional brain changes that've been seen.

In a sentence: I got made the point person for a multi-million dollar project today. I have a solid reputation as someone who gets things done. Granted, I'm not being arrogant when I say that I'm the only person really qualified to do this work in our Dept. of Medicine, but it's still of course a really, really big thing.

Like, this becomes my main priority and I could get into 'Nature' or 'Science' and make getting a tenure-track professorship smooth sailing.

So I feel extremely accomplished and happy about work things.

Older friends around Madison keep cropping up, and some people I know from the Oberlin days are apparently either living in town or are moving here. So, slowly but surely, I'm trying to make a regular social life of things. Not too much of one necessarily, because working until 7-8pm, going to the gym, and making dinner eats up most of the evening.

Oh. I called my great aunt the other day to thank her for the graduation well-wishes. Unlike great uncle Jack, who is fairly dead now, she didn't talk my ear off for hours. Actually it was just 10 minutes. Makes family all tolerable. On that note, I do get pissed off that my cousin on my father's side gets wide praise for deciding to do Teach for America, but I hear nothing when I get my Ph.D. or a post-doc.

I guess the salience just isn't there.

Granted, I think my paternal grandmother is an over-emotional bitch who still hasn't forgiven me for not thanking her for a fucking savings bond over the phone when I was 16 and busy with homework. But aunt Jennifer at least used to try to make an effort. Well, I suppose that's alright. I don't make much of an effort either. All of us--all four of us--on my mom's side are like that. It'll be months at a time where we don't talk over the phone. We're just not big on staying in touch.

That's actually a lie. She assiduously keeps up on my Facebook updates. It's cute but disturbing in a way, especially when I try to not be funny 'ha ha' but funny 'Oh God. Auriel!'. I love it.

I dealt with and did all salubrious about other people's drama for so long that I actually like cultivating my own now. In that weird geek-like patch of basil way.

I need to see if I can afford a new camera this month. I need to get back to Detroit. I need to see Nicholas, skulk around abandoned places a white looking injun shouldn't be, say, um, hi to a few old...uh...acquaintances in these abandoned places that just sort of perpetually, um, stay there, and take pretty pictures.

Well I mean I cut off or lost every other connection to that world, so I like to indulge and mix it with art. I have a disquieted adoration for decay and things caught up in it. I just do.

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