Buh-bye, first year of grad school.  You were not precisely fun, but you were enjoyable, and now you are LE OVER.  Nothing left to do but sit back and relax for a couple of weeks... until the research starts again of course.    

For those of you keeping score at home, I chose Liz's lab (the previously mentioned Lab#2).  5 years of telomeres, here I come!

It's that time of year, boys and girls- lab picking time.  And it's making my brainskull hurt.
Basically, first rotation is right out, it's down to second and third rotation. 

Lab#2:
Pros: Future Nobel laureate PI (possibly by the time I graduate) who apparently writes amazing recommendations and has no problem going to bat for you, woman PI who was successful and had a family with a equally career-driven husband, questions with real applications to human health (cancer AND aging), everything from yeast to clinical samples, pretty chill older lab, all the freedom you could want, lab has $$$$$.
Cons: Future Nobel laureate PI- she's not around a lot, and apparently not so good with the guiding of things (and occasionally harmful in the guiding of things, apparently) due to business and absent-mindedness, so in a lot of ways I'd be somewhat on my own- apparently one must learn to "handle" her.  The fact that there are so many postdocs means that it's not as bad as it could be, but still scary.  Also, lab is entirely late 20's-late 30's and married, with the exception of one 5th year student  (who is full of much win) and the new girl grad student who'll be joining (I don't know her because she isn't my program and rotated a different time). 

Lab#3:
Pros: PI who knows EVERYTHING about everything ever, apparently takes a good guiding hand with grad students ("these are your strengths, these are things I think we need to work on"), good at guiding projects without being overbearing, younger lab with much higher energy, easily tractable model system (flies), cool cell cycle questions, also knowledgeable people here too.
Cons: Often a "boys time" environment, question is less interesting, have to deal with flies flying at your eyeballs on occasion, HIGHLY disorganized, still really only one person (although he is an awesome Aaron pseudoclone- it's actually a tiny bit freaky) who is not married although lab IS much more sociable, lab does not have $$$$

Basically, I was leaning 80/20 Lab2 as of Wednesday, then yesterday I had a good talk with one of the grad students in Rotation3 yesterday about how good an advisor that guy is and how the lab really likes me and wants me to join, and then today I had a talk with the girl who just graduated from lab #2 and she was like OMG let me tell you every horrible thing about lab #2 and I was like... :(.  I still think I'm leaning more towards lab #2 but I really don't know anymore.

Futures is hard, yo.

SOMEONE SPOILED THE LOST FINALE IN THE BITTORRENT FILENAME.  Motherfuckers.

Alright guys, I've come up with one of my crazy wacky travel schemes

July 25/26- SF to Kansas City- Visit Sarah, Drive to see Aaron, etc
July 31/August 1st- Kansas City to New Jersey- Pam's wedding!  Celebrate, party with AF girls, etc
August 2nd-Train to NYC (see Nick?!?!), evenutal bus to Boston to see family, Boston peeps, Joe, etc
August 6th/7th- Boston/Bradley to Birmingham for Adam and Rachel's wedding! Celebrate, party with Jeopardy kids, etc
August 10th- Birmingham to SF for class Aug 11-15

August 15th- SF to Cape Cod for Dad's birthday
August 18th- Cape Cod to home for class Aug 19


Crazy?  Likely.  But according to the internet I can do it all for about $700  

Didn't get NSF- not even so much as an honorable mention.  The extra 15,000 over 3 years would have been really nice, too.

Today was the day San Francisco became home to me.  Nothing out of the ordinary, just a random Thursday in February, but today I realized that if I had it to do all over again, if I could take the easy way out and erase the last year- the good, the crap, all of it- I'd say no.  I think this school is where I can grow to be the best person I can be, and I think I really love it.  Not sure where it came from, not sure if I'll ever understand it, but I am definitely in it for the long haul.    

Oh sweet Jesus, enough is ENOUGH

89% Barack Obama
88% John Edwards
87% Chris Dodd
83% Hillary Clinton
82% Dennis Kucinich
82% Mike Gravel
82% Bill Richardson
81% Joe Biden
44% Rudy Giuliani
34% John McCain
27% Mike Huckabee
26% Mitt Romney
22% Tom Tancredo
19% Ron Paul
17% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

A bit too close to call, don't you think?

So I find out today that I actually did get Liz, the so-far-amazingly-cool PI I wanted to work for this quarter, and I sent her an email being like "Hey, do you want me to come talk to you today". Well, while I was waiting for her to reply I saw her walking around with a bunch of people in lab coats (odd) and then with a bunch of people with cameras (more odd). Turns out today she was being photographed for Loreal's "women in science series", and, to make a long story short, my first day involved trying to talk rotation projects while being professionally photographed trying to pipette the smoke that comes off of dry ice when you mix it with water. Clearly, this will be awesome.

http://www.sfgate.com/flat/archive/2008/01/04/chronicle/archive/2008/01/04/MN87U9ERT.html

Gusts of wind over 60mph, puddles 6" deep or more (and that was 4 hours ago) in some places, and my ceiling is leaking onto my bed... didn't I come to CA for NICE weather?

So I realize a fair number of you don't care to know anything about Joe and I, but when my community posts outnumber my real posts by a lot, sometimes it has to happen. Sorry, I'm that lame girl. Deal or delete at this point.

( A couple stories, lots of bitching, a few cute pictures. )

Just got back on the internets for the first time in a few days- time to do the yearly meme!  I'll catch up on the f-list tomorrow when I'm back in CA

Does your life ever have moments of unreality?  Things and people and places just seem to come so easily into our lives, and then often just as suddenly disappear.  I suppose this is an unfairly externalist perspective- the choices we make shape things so gradually and entirely that it's often impossible to trace how you ended up on a given course (although sometimes it's pretty easy).  Sorry, I'm feeling wacky and philosophical and somehow much older than this time last year.  I am very grateful for the wonderful people that are still part of my life and will be for a long time to come, as well as those who are happy new additions. 

Being back in Massachusetts feels like a little bit of heaven.

Tonight I fly home to my native MA after a very busy week.  It involved baking 8 dozen Christmas cookies then decorating and anonymously delivering about 5 dozen of them to the rest of the first year class (although some peoples' got stolen, sadface!), going out for pub trivia Tuesday night and having everyone realize it was my birthday so therefore OBVIOUSLY necessitating we stay out until last call, my end-of-quarter presentation for my lab,
FUCK I'LL FINISH THIS LATER I JUST GOT CALLED SAYING MY FLIGHT WAS CANCELLED. 

ETA part 1: fuck this shit, I'm spending all day tomorrow on a plane trying to maybe hopefully get home.  Going to the exploratorium with Tetrad kids.  TBC 

ETA part 2: Alright, on a flight for 8am tomorrow.  Who knows if it will actually land, but we shall see.  Anyway, so I turned 22 this week- clearly getting old.  Went out for tasty Italian food for dinner with Kristen and Tetrad kids on Thursday as a belated b-day thing, and then last night was the departmental Christmas party- we're talking a $6,000 dollar affair featuring a bounce house, LOTS of booze and less legal substances, a live student band, and 102 pizzas.  It was pretty awesome, I'll put pictures on the f-book (since, you know, I'M NOT GETTING ON A PLANE TONIGHT ANYWAY) and possibly a couple here.  Today was the Exploratorium and some In-N-Out, both of which were excellent life decisions.  Mmmm burgers.
San Francisco has been feeling much more like a home than it had to this point, but right now I'm cursing the freaking snow, because all I want to do is get to Bostoooooooooooooon.  Sigh.  Wish me luck.  Wish me not Aaron's luck.  

The Golden Compass was lame.  Read the book instead.

I have been having trouble sleeping since I moved to CA, but last night was the WORST.  Went to bed at 11:30, woke up at 2am and was legit crawling out of my skin.  I was hot, I was cold, I itched in various places, I couldn't lie in the same position for more than a few minutes- I literally felt crazy.  Finally forced myself to fall asleep about 5 or 6am by putting on some firefly episode commentaries and had weird dreams til 9:30.  I have the sneaking suspicion that my BC has been fucking with my sleep cycles, and the fact that I may (not sure) have taken 2 pills yesterday morning only makes it seem more likely.  That sucked, I hope it never happens again.

(Note: this pointless entry is me starting this thing up again.  Mood and stress issues were a problem this quarter, sorry)

An email from housing services-

On November 1, 2007 at about 12:50 AM hours, a female student was sexually
assaulted near the east entrance gate at the Mission Bay Housing located at
1560 3rd Street. The victim was riding on the MUNI Light Rail T-Third Line
when she exited at the UCSF Mission Bay Station located at 3rd Street and
Gene Friend Way when she noticed a male also exit the Light Rail. The victim
said the male followed her to the east side Mission Bay Housing gate, where
the assault took place.

Unless I'm reading that wrong, that was Halloween night.  The same Halloween night that I came home alone from a party after drinking around 1:05am and walked in an entrance less than a block from there.

Holy fuck.

I decided to write a non-emo entry for once, lol.

In all seriousness, though, this thing has come to be used as a dumping ground for excess thoughts I'm not sure how to process, and so it ends up looking like I spend a much greater proportion of the time freaking out than I actually do.  For the most part, I enjoy my program (although I can't seem to make myself do any work lately, it's actually pretty bad), I have good people in my life, and I'm generally well adjusted.  I think 2007 has been good for me in terms of figuring out who I am- making big life decisions, deciding what was important for me in my future, etc.  I also feel like I understand a little better how I interact with others and why- not saying I do any better than I did before, I'm still pretty socially inept, but I think I'm developing the tools to get better.  And even the hard times of this move have shown me that yes, I can for the most part stand on my own feet and do something, although obviously it hasn't been done without emotional support form the fam and friends back home.

So, enough rambling, I'm back from Boston and though I had an amazing time getting to see everyone again, I'm starting to be ok with it.

WORLD.  SERIES.  CHAMPS.

Wow, it's funny how EVERY SINGLE person who read my NSF proposal, including me, two professors, several other grad students, and Joe, all missed the fact that I never actually said what I was going to do in 50% of the proposal.  Something tells me it may not have been funded if Martin hadn't made me go through and do a massive edit (about something unrelated). 

In addition, BOSTON IN 36 HOURS WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

World Series, here we come, bitches!  Not gonna lie, was more than a little jealous when Joe was telling me they're rioting on Comm Ave outside his window. 

In other news, the whole foods down the block from me ROCKS.  That is all.

I've opened this thing half a dozen times to update in the past few weeks, but every time I do I decide I have nothing worthwhile to say and close it.  Oh well.

So SF is going well- the program is definitely very challenging, it keeps us very busy, but I seem to be keeping up with the piles of work as well as anyone.  I still really like everyone in my program- they're a super good group.  My rotation is going well I suppose- while it's incredibly frustrating to be doing something brand new and have no idea how to do anything on my own or even where simple things like gloves are kept, I'm learning a lot and the project is really interesting.  Despite that, though, I'm not sure it's the place I want to end up long-term; it's a little bit of an older lab, and just about everyone is from a different country, so while everyone is super nice and willing to help out with anything, I haven't gotten a super-large sense of community yet. 

I feel like I should be more excited about my life here, but per usual I'm spoiled.  The unreality of this whole transplant has yet to wear off- some huge part of me feels like this is only temporary and soon I'll be moving back to Comm Ave and going to Fenway and wandering on the Esplanade.  This is my life now.  AT&T park is down the street now (not that anyone cares about baseball from what I can tell), I go to Safeway instead of Shaw's, trips to go see Joe cost $400 and one of us spending 12 hours on a plane instead of just a stroll down campus, and somehow none of my (3 male) roommates seem to have the urge to spend 5 hours watching Pride and Prejudice.  I just know how good I really had it esp. my last year (semester) at BU, and while most of the people who were part of it aren't even in Boston anymore, it seems more than a little crazy to have given all that up.  I wonder if I'll ever stop referring to myself as a Bostonian and call myself a San Franciscan.

I don't want to be one of those people who's stuck in the past and whose life peaked at 21, but for now I'm having trouble letting go.

Not gonna lie, sometimes I listen to my project advisor's scottish accent more than I listen to the science he's trying to explain to me.

Real update soon, I promise, but I thought this was amusing and should be shared.