On Neuroscience (pt1)

Saturday: My day started out a little rough. I had a flight out of Richmond at 7:04 am so I set my alarm for 5:45. Alarm went off, I decided not to shower and go back to sleep for an extra 15 min, apparently I fell asleep while setting my alarm and the next thing I know my girlfriend invdes my sleep with the question "what time is your flight again?" I bolt up and see that it's 6:24. We rush getting dressed and she goes to drive me to the airport. I throw on a heavy sweater, heavy coat, hat and gloves. I get to the ticket check out on 3 hours of sleep, stressed about rushing and overdressed, some old guy in front of me looks back and chuckles "oh you goin to flordia a lulululululul" catching my breath from running I just say no. I get through security and sprint to my gate, B20. The terminal ends and all I see is B16 as the highest gate with no one to be seen any where. I ask somone if there is a B20 and they ask me where I was going, I tell them Chicago and they say yeah they were at B15, so I turn around and see the gate, but no one is there. It was 6:58 so I had "plenty" of time to get on. However apparently they finish boarding 10 min before the flight. I wanted for a united rep to come back and I got schedueled for a 9:30 flight.

Go home, get another hour of sleep, get a shower, get a better start to my morning. Get to the terminal with enough time and get on the plane. Watched venture bros and looked at the program on the flight, fairly uneventful. Dr. Porter told me to call him when I get into Chicago, so when I get off the plane I call him but his phone is off. I try to get online and find the confrence but there's no internet, that's fine. I get down to the metro stop, get a week pass, and decide to call Joe again; only to find out my phone's dead. Now those of you who know me and my phone you know that if it dies I'm basiclly out of a phone for about 24-48 hours. So I'm in O'hare with no phone, no internet, an extremely vauge idea of where the confrence is and no idea at all where my hotel is. I do however see alot of people with poster tubes, so I decide to take a chance and follow them, hopeing atleast one of them will lead me to the confrence. Of course there is work being done on part of the line that I'm on so we all have to get off and get on a bus. I miss the majority of the people I was following getting on the bus so I get on the of the busses that say blue line, no posters. I stay on and one bewildered looking kid gets on with a poster so I figrue I'm ok. When the bus let's off I see 3 people with posters they all go in 3 different directions, so I follow one set of girls and they stop to look at a map, I walk up to them and ask if they're going to the confrence and they say yeah but they're going to their hotel first. So great I'm in chicago, no one to follow, no idea of where I am or where to go. Find my way to a metro station and I'm able to find a map with the metro and major land marks. With some cross referencing with some docs on my laptop I'm able to find where the confrence is being held and get on the metro towards there.

I get there successfully and try to get my badge and stuff, there's express log in places all over and I try to register but my name's not in the database, I know that I am a member, and I know that I'm presenting a poster, so why can't I log in? Turns out in addition to paying to be a memeber and paying to present a poster you have to present to attend as well. Shelled out another $60 and get a badge. I find an outlet and try to charge my phone which involves finding the hyper specific way to let it chrage and letting it charge for 20 min so I can get a min of usage. Twice I get my phone to charge long enough to see the texts I got only to have it cut out in the middle of writing a text or making a call. Whatever. So I'm wondering around the confrence with both my bags, heavy sweater and coat, inside. I'm sure I looked horrible. Sleep deprived, haven't eatten all day, lost, sweaty and smelly. Finally I charge my phone enough and got some numbers. Called Jason and got the hotel and the metro stop and found my way to the hotel.

Long story short: I got into chicago at 10:30 local time, and didn't get to my hotel til 5:00. Great first day.

Today: Went saw some posters, got some Epic Burger really, really good, went to SSPD meeting and had my poster up but didn't talk to anyone. Plus while putting away posters, ripped my pants again. So it looks like I'll be going to HM tomorrow morning to get some new jeans. But overall the confrence has been fun, haven't gotten a chance to really explore the city but I'll try to get some of that in while I'm here. Give me suggestions on places to go!

On Frames

So I've been thinking about it and I want a new bike frame. Something nicer. Maybe I'd be happy with just powder coating my old frame, it's actually pretty nice. Either way internet: thoughts? suggestions?

Started grad school applications last night. Started to fill out the Wake Forest University one. I'm also applying to UNC Chapel Hill, UIC, DePaul, Northwestern Weinberg School of Arts and Sciences, VCU, and possibly UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. Ugh I don't know, I need to round up money for transcripts, GREs, and application fees. Thinking about asking for it as an early birthday present. There are some other things that I was thinking of asking for but this is more important.

Meeting with Dr. Bettinger today, didn't meet all of my deadlines for this week. Hope I don't get boned.

On Disecting a Ghost

So I'm finally back.

Worm lab's going well. I just got my end date extended to the end of February which is good because now I have job security. At the same time however I was kind of hoping that Dr. Bettinger wouldn't have room for me but know someone else that would. While working in that lab is fun I just feel like I'm not able to get results as fast as I should be, and I'm officially decided that I don't like working with C. Elegans. I understand that they're an amazing model organism especially for studying EtOh, but they're just too fragile. It's really annoying waiting for a strain or recombinant to grow up to the stage you need them and then on the day they should be ready they're too young, or worse they're too old, or they starved, or the plate modled or go infected. I'm sick of it! With rodents they're either ready to test or not, I don't have to worry about adding another 3 days to my project every time I let them go a day over on food. I may look into what a behavioral genetics mouse lab, I feel like that would be a fun little adventure.

So as most of you know I plan on leaving Richmond some time around Febuary, or atleast I did. Dr. Porter has told me he could gaurentee me acceptance into the Biopsych program here and he has a good pull if I applied for integrated life sciences. He also told me I could use part of the research I've been doing for my thesis, essentially putting me a year ahead in my project. That's a huge jump, and I'd be passing up a huge opportunity if I left. Still, I feel the pull to leave the city and a part of me is worried that if I stay I'm going to not be able to focus like I should, which has been my reason for leaving all along. It's alot to think about. I'm going to apply to a bunch of placesc and make my decision once I hear back from everywhere.

I turn 22 in a little under a month. Gettin old, real quick. I was talking with Carol Ann about this last night, we both have friends who have already been married for a year. THAT'S NUTS! So many people that I went to high school with already have babies and are married, kids younger than me that I went to high school with have babies. What is this?

So I moved out of Ranger HQ as predicted and I'm not too crazy about it. It's smaller, more expensive, thin walls, shitty neighbors, boring neighborhood, internet shits out half the time. Ugh whatever, one redeeming quality is that it's close to Kroger and in a way it's nice to be back in a building (kind of). If people were more sociable I feel like it would be cool. It turns out that I know someone in the basmenet and I've made friends with one other apt and kind of me a few others but nothing major. While I've stolen Carol Ann's camera I can do a photo update.

So what's up with Grad Student's all over the nation dying/going crazy. There was that Yale PHTX student who got murdered, a VCU Grad student was found with thousands of dollars of non-civillian cop paraphanalia was arrested after pulling a woman over with cop decals on his car and a badge, and I feel like there was something else but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Anyway, I think that's all I've got right now. Before I go I'm going to plug a review a friend of mine wrote for BYT.

On Returning

I've been meaning to post recently. Don't have time right now but hopefully I'll do something later today/late this week.

On Selling Out

http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.whycantsciencesolvethis.blogspot.com

On Project One

Project One

Amazing idea from a friend of mine, spread the word, get support behind this.

On Jynxes

So I haven't posted for awhile because of the curse that seems to be on this blog, every time I make a positive post everything turns to shit. But consequences be damned, a short update is in order.

Things are going really well in Dr. Bettinger's I did my first PCR and got decent results. I'm not complete shit yay! On the other hand now that I'm doing PCR things are really building up downtown. Right now I've got about 30+ recombinant strains that I need to get through 2 more rounds of assays, plus I have to do PCR for 18 more chromosomes with the 16 strains that I did this first one with, as well as keep up on worm maintaince, pouring plates, etc.

Porter's in going a bit more smoothly. Some of my boys are dropping out here and there but they are starting to get old so it's understandable. But recently everyone has been training really well so I'm breezeing through test points left right and center, I do wish they were a bit more staggered but results are results. Also two of the curves I'm on now look promising as far as subing goes.

Things are going well personally too. I won't say much because of the jynx but: Goats.

I've been watching alot of weeds recently, conclusion: season 3 sucks boner jams. It's just too rediculous, like before things were believeable but now they're shooting for the stars with these plot lines.

Also I've been listening to alot of born ruffians, they grew on me really quickly and I'm now watching last.fm like a hawk to see when the'll be in the area.

I'm leaving ranger HQ in 35 days, then Richmond in 6 months. Chicago has a pretty strong pull but I need to start looking at schools/jobs/programs really soon. Also on that note, I made a professional facebook, with my real name. OOOOOOOh! I won't be posting the link thought because I'm trying to keep it just lab/professional contacts. It's pretty lame too, I wouldn't want any one to really look at it.

Mike and I ordered our first warhammer boxes. Him Dwarves (obviously) myself Lizardmen. Stoked.