| Running in the snow |
[Dec. 17th, 2009|09:57 am] |
It's not quite singing in the rain, but last night came close--the cold was delightful, and the silence, broken only by the relentless patter of my shoes against the pavement. It's been a while since a run felt that good. If there's one thing that feels better than a run in the snow, it's the hot shower afterwards...
Also finally read (most of) A Thousand Splendid Suns last night. It moves much faster than The Kite Runner but I have to agree with the Washington Post's critic--it's better than The Kite Runner, with more nuanced characters and a far more disturbing portrayal of pride and honor (to say the least) gone terribly, terribly wrong. Most books with evil people never really explain why the person is that way; here you have an explanation of why the bad guy is the bad guy, but oddly it doesn't excuse his asshole-ry, it just makes it worse.
And I've discovered a most wonderful hot drink. It's called "Barley Drink", and yes, it's one of those only-in-an-Asian-supermarket things. Basically it's powdered barely and sugar. Strange as though it may be, it's very filling and settles happily after a run in the cold.
ETA: Is it ridiculous that I want to see "Avatar"? At first I thought it was just going to be an "Oh no, one of those movies with way too much tech and not enough plot" (thanks, George), but I just caught a preview and it looks really cool. Probably cool enough to persuade Boy to come see it with me, hehe...he loves sci-fi and all that. Even though I can probably predict the plot, the best stories are the ones that never get old. |
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| Good news, bad news |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|05:15 pm] |
The bad news is that I'm still playing the part of my PI's sometimes-secretary.
The good news is that I'll be going to a major convention in February.
The bad news is that I'm stuck here until almost-6-ish.
The good news is that my Western keeps me from going to my apartment, which is cold enough to freeze the balls off of ice cream. In all seriousness, I'm considering wearing leggings underneath my PJs when I go to bed tonight, and a hat. |
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| Who me? |
[Dec. 15th, 2009|01:46 pm] |
I don't know whether to be amused or irritated that my mother thinks I'm a huge spendthrift. I think I manage my money rather well: I save at least 10% of my paycheck every month, pay all of my bills, send back at least $600/month for student loan repayments (and I usually try to send back more) AND I top off my ING savings account every month with a little something. I also send my boyfriend some money every month to cover the cost of cat food and litter (I don't have to, but the Tweeb's food is very expensive and I don't think he should have to cover all of it). Usually I'm the one footing the vet bill and Frontline treatments, too. Whatever was left at the end of the month got rolled over into my savings account during the next accounting, usually something like €50.
And she thinks I should spend less and save more?
Now, granted, this was in the context of Christmas presents and spending lots of money, her point being that I should take the money I would have spent on presents for her and my dad and save it. And maybe they're right, but I've already tucked away €1200 this month--I think my savings account can take a little hit for the sake of good cheer, and besides, between my boyfriend and myself, we've squirreled away a ton during the year specifically for Christmas. If I hadn't planned to spend a small fortune on presents and did, then I might have something to worry about, this was a planned expense. After all, what would be the point of scraping together that sh*t-ton of money if we didn't?
*grumble grumble grumble* |
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| My mixed up day |
[Dec. 14th, 2009|04:17 pm] |
Only if you work in a lab can you:
- get in at 9
- leave at 12
- go shopping, running, shower, eat a meal, read a bit
- come back at 4
to leave at 8 or 9 today. I haven't decided when I want to leave; I don't want my protein to run out of my gel like it did the last time, but I most definitely do not want to stay until 10 tonight.
I discovered a park today. Smeermaas is a pretty town.
I wonder how many glass balls survived the day--Boy bought a Christmas tree yesterday and we spent all of the afternoon stringing balls with fishing string and hanging them on the tree. It's a beautiful, wonderful, lovely tree. I just hope the cats have left it alone... |
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| Good place |
[Dec. 13th, 2009|08:34 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  optimistic | ] |
Maybe it's just that I'm getting older, or the end of the year, or that I'm kinda starting to get settled into my role in Maastricht. But I feel good about my life, and Boy's life--where we've been, where we're going. Well, kind of--I'm kind of treading water for now, as I was at the last job I worked, but at least I have a sense of where I'd like to go if the winds are fortuitous enough to blow the right way. And even if they're not, well, I'll just have move on to other things. And no, we might never be rich, and we might only vacation in Paris every other year rather than every year (yeah, right), but what other professional arrangement would let us have the kind of time together that we do? I think most other doctors would be jealous of the sort of schedule that Boy has...as for me? Work is turning out rather well. I don't know whether to be insulted by the fact that my PI did not expect ANYTHING on the Western I ran the other day--I mean, come on...I should at least get a wrong band--but on the other hand the fact that something showed up could be treated as an indication of my awesomeness.
I'm kidding, of course. I've done hundreds of Westerns. Of course something is going to show up. The only reasons why it didn't are probably because a) the transfer was shitty, and b) I added mercaptoethanol to the protein when I shouldn't have (silly, stupid mistake of mine). But several things need to be optimized anyway. So hopefully that will also go over well. |
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| Blind can see |
[Dec. 11th, 2009|08:10 pm] |
I just got a new pair of glasses. Bought them last night, got them this afternoon.
HO-LY SHIT. Had I known my eyes had gotten that bad I would have gotten them checked earlier, but then again, I couldn't have afforded new glasses before now, anyway.
They were pretty cheap, too, as far as glasses go--with the eye exam, extra-thin lenses, non-reflective (I had NO idea how much light was reflected light until I put them one) a grand whopping total of €85. I could have gotten 3 pairs for €170, but I counted myself lucky that I'd been able to find a frame that I liked at all. All of the frames these days are rectangular, or nerdy. I was astounded to find a set of oval-ish frames--in candy-apple red, no less. |
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| True dat |
[Dec. 11th, 2009|09:33 am] |
For everybody who's ever failed.
I came to work this morning in an inexplicably happy mood. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why, until 2 minutes before the Grand Round lecture started (at 7:45! And they wonder why only clinicians show up!):
I am going to leave today at 4:00. I have a plan to leave here at 4:00. And that plan has been put into execution as of right now.
It's not so much that I'm leaving early today, as it is what that means--time with kitties, time with boyfriend, and not worrying about the crap going on in the lab. These things make me happy :-) and today is my shot at getting there. |
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| Will Sarah Palin please shut up? |
[Dec. 10th, 2009|10:16 am] |
Why is she still relevant? Why? Oh why oh why oh why is this bimbo who seems to think that being serious involves big works and being smart involves LONG convoluted sentences with words like "dang" and...oh why oh why oh why God do people keep falling for her?
And I think I will make up a new word--secreep. It describes the state of realizing that secretarial duties are going to make up a bigger and bigger part of your job...although, to be quite fair, my PI has suggested that she send me to a conference in February. A major conference, too, with lotsa bigwigs...so I guess a little secreep isn't so bad.
Now, to make those phone calls. And find emails. And more editing on the review--I need to see if I can bulk up a few of the sections, but I really don't think there's anything I can add to them, in a large part because nothing has been done.... |
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| Let's talk money |
[Dec. 6th, 2009|11:14 am] |
I really like my ATM card. Not only can I use it at 99.99% of all stores, but also because aside from getting cash out of my checking account, there's absolutely nothing else I can do with it.
In other words, it's a pain in the royal ass to transfer money from one account to another, which is why I almost always do it on the first weeked after payday, and then try to never touch the damn website again until the next month. So far, my mad budgeting skills have only let me down about three times this year, and all three times were when things like moving expenses (big things that I really had no way of knowing just how big) popped up.
It's a perfect example of behavior shaping: I know that every month I have to make a student loan payment, irrespective of whether I want to. Therefore, while I'm making arrangements for student loan repayments, I just do all of my financial moving and grooving while I'm at the computer--which means drawing up a quick-n-dirty budget and sticking with it inasmuch as is possible. The key is that it takes a dire, dire situation--something like "I've only got €5.76 left in my account"--to get me to transfer money from my savings back into my checkings account. Otherwise the mental barrier to doing that is just too high--it's much easier for me to curb my shopping than for me to sign on, with all of the button-pushing that's required, and make the transfer (which also requires a ton of button-pushing).
Contrast this with my BofA account back in the day when it still existed: if I didn't have enough to cover me, it was not a very big obstacle to find an ATM, push a few buttons, and voila--insta-cash. Fortunately for it (and me), I'm well-disciplined enough not to have run into dire financial straits, but I did use it more often than I'd like to admit--especially when Shadow's vet bills came around. |
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| Grinchy rant |
[Dec. 4th, 2009|01:12 pm] |
Boy's family celebrates Christmas with a massive present-extravaganza, which is always a rather stressful event for me because we (Boy and I) are expected to come up with a long list of things we want and then that list gets circulated around between everybody in his family and then we all get each other a ton of crap that frankly, I couldn't care less about having. I think it's fun to do for the kids, but I mean--well, Boy's sister makes several times more than what we both do combined. What on EARTH could we possibly get her (or her husband) that they couldn't get for themselves? What on earth could they possibly want?
It's not that I don't like giving presents. I do. But I don't like to give crap--or get it, either. I've got no problem spending a reasonably large sum on something that someone will use, something that someone wants, or something in between (as I have for Boy's present). But I do have a problem spending a ton of money on a bunch of dust-collecting tchotchkas. Want a dust-bunny? I've got tons under our bed--and you don't even have to deal with the gnome, either!
Still more irritating is the whole business of lists. I mean, aside from books (which are thankfully popular in Boy's family), what should you put down? You don't want to put down crap (lest you actually get it), but you also don't want to put down something like "DSLR", either, because that's just in terrible taste. Everything in between that you'd want, you can already afford and, if you're like me, have already made plans to acquire. Plus with kids--well, what they want is so ephemeral, and depends entirely on what they've seen on TV that day, which friends they've played with, what their big sister wants, who pulled their hair, etc. If you ask them what they want for Christmas and then buy them something completely different, odds are they won't even know the difference. They sure as hell won't remember what they asked for. |
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| When hell freezes over |
[Dec. 3rd, 2009|02:19 pm] |
If this doesn't make you step up your Green side, I don't know what will...
I must confess that Day After Tomorrow, while totally craptastic as a movie, at the very least offered a plausible explanation for a planetary deep-freeze, something that made much more sense than, say, a meteorite of the exact same size and disaster-causing potential as what took out the dinosaurs. That's not to say that I don't think a meteorite could take out the world--just that it probably won't be anything like what ended the age of dinosaurs.
And now, scientists say that it's true? Wow. Makes me think I should re-watch that movie. Except I don't think I could stand watching Jake Gyllenhal trying so save New York City with his motley crew of whiz kids... |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 3rd, 2009|09:57 am] |
Strange how picking up running again can give you more energy (provided, of course, that you eat right and all that fun stuff--no point in exercising if you're just going to stuff your face with sugar and chips all day). It's especially frustrating because I feel ready to do stuff, and there's nothing I can do (at least, not until my PI signs off on the order, and she's not here yet). Still. It's nice not to feel bogged down all the time.
My kitchenette is slowly getting overcrowded--at first it was just the cutting board, held in place by the coffee machine and the coffee. Then there was a can of soup (which is still there). Then a box of macaroni--I'd put it in the cupboard but for the leak in the roof that somehow drips inside the cupboard. Then a little jar of salt. Now there's a box of bouillion cubes.
I also had to buy a new bowl to replace the soup bowl that got broken in the move...it was definitely a night for soup last night, and probably this one, too. A half-hour riding in the cold on your way home from work requires nothing less, and that goes double if it's raining. And it was a real soup, too--lentils and potatoes...yum. |
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| I love Maastricht |
[Dec. 2nd, 2009|10:46 am] |
Heh--I've just found out that my job (well, technically not my job, but the corporate entity as a whole) will pay for language lessons. I still have to buy a book, but compared with the €1000 I thought I was going to have to pay, that's chump change.
I'm fairly sure my PI will be mildly pissed at the fact that I will be unreachable for two mornings a week, but on the other hand as long as the experiments get done I don't think she'll care.
As a bonus, it'll also mean nice long runs those two mornings. I've been trying to figure out a good route these past two days. So far the town I live in has proven mildly disappointing, but that's probably because I'm never there when anything would be open. |
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| Quorn! |
[Dec. 2nd, 2009|08:06 am] |
Last night I wanted home fries. I don't know why, exactly, just one of those cravings, like for French fries or snoep (although, come to think on it, it's been a LONG time since I've had one for snoep). So I went to the Jumbo and picked up a small sack o' taters, a box of eggs (I really was digging the "breakfast for dinner" vibe), some Brussel sprouts, and, for the hell of it, a package of Quorn chicken, on the recommendation of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) dravogadro.
Basically fried everything up in a skillet (eggs separately), seasoned with one of those premixed seasoning mixes (I don't have the space for jars upon jars of herbs and spices), and dumped it on a plate. It took about 15 minutes to cook everything through, and some of the Brussels were burnt, but it was all very good and I was happily ensconced in my chair, pecking at my dinner while reading about a kidnapping attempt on William of Orange.
And then I popped a piece of chicken in my mouth.
Obviously, this was the Quorn doing a chicken impression, and a damn good one, too. It was surprising how tasty it was. I don't quite remember what chicken tastes like, but I do recall it tasting something like that. A bit too salty, perhaps? I honestly don't remember. But in all seriousness, if I didn't know it was Quorn, I'd have sworn someone cut up my icon and dumped it into my dinner last night. |
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| Aquarel |
[Dec. 1st, 2009|08:14 am] |
Last night I spent €45 on watercolor paints. I painted a tree :-)
It does seem like an awful lot to spend on paint--I think most of the cost went into the case the paints came in. I bought the little color-bricks, rather than the tubes, and 24 colors came in a neat little tray with a sponge and a mixing pallet in the lid of the case. I have to say that I do prefer bricks rather than the tubes; loading up the brushes is much more intuitive.
Right now I'm just trying to get the hang of working with such a finicky medium again rather than actually paint anything meaningful. The hard part about working with watercolor is that you have to get it right the first time--there's no second chances, no covering up mistakes, with this medium. The tree turned out rather well :-) |
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| Do the math |
[Nov. 30th, 2009|12:58 pm] |
People who don't believe that Tiger Woods' accident was an accident need to:
- run full tilt into a wall
- count how long they're out for
- ponder (if they have any brain cells left) how much worse the damage would have been had they been going 4X that speed
- STFU
30 mph doesn't sound like much, until you consider that even a world-class Olympic sprinter can only reach a top speed of ~15 mph. And you don't want to stand in front of one of those guys when they're going all out. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 30th, 2009|10:14 am] |
I've been spoiled. Really badly:
At my old lab, all of the protocols you could ever possibly want were on a shared server and all you had to do was point and click. Check a few of the details with your PostDoc, and presto-bango, good to go. There were Dutch versions and English versions of every protocol, and if a protocol wasn't written up, it was because the kit (for, say, making plasmids) contained a very thorough protocol and there were always a few extra copies floating around. If you wanted to do anything at all all of the reagents were indexed and stored.
Now? If I want to do something, I'll have to hunt down the person who knows what everybody in the department is doing and ask him who knows best how to do XXXXX, and then I have to hunt down Person Who Does XXXXX, and get a protocol from him (assuming that I can hunt him down in the first place). Then I have to go around asking who's got reagents P, D, and Q, which my group doesn't have yet because we've only just started setting up. To top it all off the protocols my PI sends me are in Dutch. Less of a problem than it used to be, but a headache all the same. |
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| Just like mom's |
[Nov. 29th, 2009|10:12 pm] |
Try #2 at dumplings was far more successful than botch-up job #1. I was able to find real dumpling skins, and I did not forget about the chives; and this time Boy did not screw up the stuffing by cooking the cabbage beforehand. I made something like 90 or so--we cooked up ~40 for J when he came to visit, and then I froze down the rest in 14-dumpling aliquots so that Boy will have scrumptious dinners in 20 minutes. Boy really loves them; it's kind of cute, really, to see how happy he is when he eats them. It's also fairly amusing to watch him get stuffed to the point of entering a food coma on something like 8-10 of them, when according to my mom real men eat at least 15-20 :-) According to him they're a dead ringer for my mom's, although next time I'll add more chives.
I'll be sleeping in Nijmegen tonight and commuting in, since I don't have any pressing issues at the moment in lab, so there shouldn't be any problem with me going in later. Plus it'll give my laundry a chance to dry. |
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| Not waiting for no taxman |
[Nov. 27th, 2009|09:53 am] |
Surprise of my life:
I got a pay slip from Leiden last week, which kind of surprised me because, well--I don't work for them anymore. But when I checked my account (on Sunday) it was still the piddly little amount that I'd always had in it, so I thought maybe the automail malfunctioned or something.
Well, last night I checked my balance again, and found about double my usual salary in my account...so today I called up Leiden: no, it wasn't a mistake. It was my last real paycheck (I guess becuase my contract technically ended on Nov 1?), complete with my holiday bonus and probably some extra for unused leave hours.
IOW, I have 2 months' of salary this month. I might just be able to afford Christmas after all :-) (Please keep in mind that language lessons are going to take an axe to that amount, to the tune of at least €1000) |
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| Lab funnies |
[Nov. 26th, 2009|10:08 am] |
So in the world of molecular biology, you have PCR reactions, whereby you take a teensy amount of DNA and make lots (exponential growth is a lovely thing).
Then you have variations of PCR: namely, QPCR, whereby you can quantify how much DNA you make (and therefore how much you started with) and RT-PCR.
RT-PCR can stand for Real-Time PCR, which is just another name for QPCR. But it also means Reverse-transcriptase PCR, which means that you start with RNA which gets transcribed into DNA which then gets copied over and over again.
Yesterday I needed to do an RT-PCR, of the reverse-transcriptase sort, just to test and make sure I have RNA and that it is indeed good. So I go around begging for ingredients. I finally locate a lab that has all the stuff for PCRs, and then I set up my reaction and...nothing.
Because apparently the guy I was talking with confused RT-PCR with RT-PCR and gave me the (very wrong) directions and enzymes... |
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