Some credit, maybe an "attagirl" might be nice...

Time flies when you're not having fun, doesn't it? I have mixed feelings about writing blog posts as of late. On the one hand, I believe that it's good to get my complicated feelings out on "paper" to maybe help me work through them more effectively. On the other hand, I'm so afraid of offending someone that I often just keep my thoughts to myself. Perhaps I'm doing myself a disservice by holding everything in, just to spare the feelings of a person / people who may or may not be reading what I have to say. I don't know. Perhaps I'm deluding myself into thinking that I'm so important that everyone is hanging on my every word. Ha! Who knows?

So the thing that's bothering me the most today (it disturbs me that I have to triage what's bothering me on a given day. It can't ever just be one trivial thing. Sheesh.) is I just learned a few hours ago that my boss was finally awarded an RO1 grant. This is the gold standard of federal science funding. It's an awesome accomplishment and I'm really happy for him. So what's the catch? Well...the catch is that the project being funded is basically zebrafish as a natural host model for cholera - my project and the basis of the dissertation that I am struggling to write currently.

What's wrong with that?? On the face of it, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It validates everything I've worked so fucking hard on for the last several years. And that should be a great thing all by itself. The problem is that I was the last fucking person to know that he got the grant. Even though the RO1 is based primarily on all the work I've done since about 2012 (presumably, since I've done about 95% of the relevant fish experiments in the last 3-4 years). I also got him the collaborator who I think is named on the grant (I don't even know this for sure, which is crazy!).  No acknowledgement, no thanks, no fucking notice at all. The only thing I've gotten is admonishment that I'm not writing my dissertation fast enough. And yes, I agree that I'm not writing fast enough (after all, I want to get the fuck out of there as of yesterday). But still...

My paid appointment as a graduate research assistant ends on March 31, and that's only after I raised a stink about the department planning to terminate me at the end of December 2016 (which I only learned about at the departmental Christmas party, two weeks prior). After that date, I will not be getting paid, but I will not yet be done with my dissertation. I know this. Yes, I suppose it's my own fault that I'm in the situation I'm in. Funding is damn hard to come by and there simply aren't enough funds in the department or in my own lab to keep me on. I understand that. It sucks balls, but I get it. What I don't get is why my boss can't throw me a fucking bone and help me not feel like the scum of the earth because I'm not a fast writer or because I wasn't able to complete all the experiments we both wanted me to.

You know, I had a rough time at the start of my PhD studies in the fall of 2011. I thought that as time went on, things would get easier. Unfortunately, they never did. It's rare that situations align with the worst possible scenarios I have built up in my mind. These last six years have been the most difficult six years of my entire life to date. And if I had known at the beginning what I know now, I would not have continued on. Sometimes, the not yet tired trope of "she was warned, nevertheless she persisted" isn't a good thing. The process of going for a PhD has broken me. I don't yet know if what is broken can be fixed.

We shall see...

Writer's block and sleepless nights

I find it interesting that I can whip up a reasonably intelligible - and sometimes even witty - blog post in less than 30 minutes, but I can't seem to write a Kindergarten-level sentence having anything to do with my dissertation. Or the journal article I should be writing right now, and honestly, that should've been finished quite a while ago.

Why is that?

I've been working on the Word document for weeks with not much to show for it. I toggle over to it every day and my mind instantly goes completely blank, except for a general sense of terror and certain doom. This feels so uncomfortable to me that I will literally do anything - anything - to escape it.

The trash needs taking out you say? I would be happy to do that in the freezing cold! Wind chill? What wind chill?? Oh darn, I dropped some crumbs on the kitchen floor. Let me just get a bucket of hot soapy water and a scrub brush and spend the next several hours on my hands and knees scouring the linoleum. What better way to spend a Friday night? Why just run a load of whites through the washer when you could be IRONING ALL OF YOUR KITCHEN TOWELS??? No, seriously, I really do this. Actually, I do all of those things.

And if those things fail, my brain makes sure to remind me how much writing this paper is going to suck and that I should've done it by now. And WHY ISN'T IT DONE YET?? Which is fine, but not at 3:00 in the morning (okay, it's not really fine). The panic comes complete with that shot of adrenaline you feel in your stomach, which tells you that you're done sleeping for the night. I can get by on three hours of sleep every night, right? Trump does it and he's a perfectly balanced, reasonable, and tremendously calm individual. Oh, he's not? Well, shit.

And everything needs to be done right this second. Chop chop! No time to waste sitting on your ass just working on the most important assignment of your entire life to date! Oy vey.

I've been told - often, repeatedly, and by many people who are often repeatedly telling me - that I need to just let go and write down any piece of garbage that floats into my head. Just. Write. Down. Something. If you've written something, no matter how shitty, it can be edited and made better. If you've written nothing, well, what's there to edit? Yeah, I get that. I KNOW this. Really, I do. How do I make myself do it??

I think the answer might be to just fucking do it already. Take a deep breath or two, grab a cider, stop dicking around with this blog post, and start writing. Just. Write. Down. Something...

The boys' club

I guess that I've been relatively fortunate in my graduate school career not to have experienced any overt sexism in lab. I think that streak of relative good fortune has come to an end, as all good things must I suppose.

There is a new postdoc in the new lab in our department, whom I will call "D". For several weeks now, he's been popping into my lab looking for our new second year PhD student, whom I will call "P". At first I thought nothing of it. But as I eavesdropped on their conversation one day, I learned that D wasn't looking for any kind of specialized expertise or anything, just an odd reagent here or there.

There's nothing weird about that on the face of it. However, what did begin to strike me was the fact that if P or my boss, J, (both male) weren't around, he would just leave. He wouldn't bother to ask me whatever asinine question he had. I can assure you that, as a sixth year PhD student, I am fully qualified to answer the question of whether we have some spare taq polymerase in our -20 freezer.

So yesterday, D comes in looking for P (I really should've chosen different initials, but my second choices turned out to be just as suggestive), who had just gone to work out. D leaves. D comes back a short time later asking if J is around. Nope, he's not in. D leaves again. D comes back yet a third time. This time he finally asks little old me if we have any samples we'd like to have shipped off for microbiome sequencing because they had some extra space. Why, yes! I can dig something up by tomorrow, no problem!

WTF????? Why didn't he just fucking ask me the first time he came down??? It's not like P is the only member of our lab he knows. D and I have chatted and acknowledge each other when we pass in the hall. Even if P was the only person he knew, so what? I have never been known to bite anyone (not in public anyway) and I'm reasonably approachable - at least by science standards. I can't help but think that it's because I don't belong to the penis owner's club for manly man stuff.

I normally brush aside thoughts of discrimination against me, but this has been kind of gnawing at me for weeks. On the one hand, it's not a big deal, but on the other hand, it really IS a big deal!! Not only is sexism stupid and wrong, but I am my lab's oracle. If you want to know where something is, how something works, why didn't my experiment work, how do you make all this shit work, why is the fucking sky blue, WHATEVER - you come ask me. I am the keeper of the knowledge here. Even my boss defers questions to me because I know what I'm doing.

The only thing that makes me feel somewhat better is knowing that he wasted a bunch of time and trips up and down the hall by not consulting the oracle first.

Hello again

It's been a while since I've started and abandoned a draft of a blog post here. Even longer since I actually posted one. It's been a rough year since the last time I wrote. After a long time of turning inward and panicking, I've decided to try and chronicle what has made this the most difficult year of my life. Getting a PhD is no joke and it certainly isn't for the faint of heart. In the blog posts to come, I hope to tease apart the factors that make this so painfully true.

I've come to realize that no one goes through life in a vacuum and I'm sure there are others who are struggling with the same things that I am. There must be, right? I mean, I can't possibly be the only one.

I hope the act of (non-academic, non-forced) writing will help lift my spirits a bit. If nothing else, I would love for it to make my smart-ass tweenage son quit fucking calling me Eeyore. A girl can dream anyway. So stay tuned!

Enough social faux pas to go around...

I debated whether I should even write this post because it's...honest. Honest in a way that might hurt someone's feelings, although I doubt the people involved would read this. Let me preface what I'm about to say with this - it's not my intention to hurt anyone's feelings, quite the contrary. I'm going ahead with this post because it exemplifies some of the unspoken social difficulties of being a PhD student who, as a matter of course, interacts with other graduate students/postdocs/academics in general.

One of the senior graduate students in my department successfully defended her thesis yesterday, so two of my former lab mates - I'll call them "T" and "P" - were coming back for her defense and the reception afterwards. I hadn't realized they were coming until the master's student - I'll call her "D" - in my lab said so when she came in this morning. I guess they all communicate via texts, which I'm not included on. I felt a knot twisting in the pit of my stomach - I was dreading this.

Let me back up a bit. Both of my former lab mates are more than 10 years my junior and, although we got along well, I knew they weren't "my people", you know? The people with whom you develop fast chemistry, an easy rapport; it's something you recognize when it happens. T was good friends with another graduate student in a different department, "B", who would visit our lab a lot and we would drink with him in the lounge. It was fun. Fast forward somewhat and B gets engaged to his long-time fiancee. After a period of time, it becomes clear that I am not invited to the wedding. I get it, I've planned a wedding before. No big deal, right? Well, it also became clear that everyone else in my lab at the time (T, P, and D) are not only invited, but are hanging out with the bride and groom after the wedding. Um, ouch. That hurts, but after a while of feeling butt-hurt and not being able to talk to anyone about it, the feeling fades a little.

Until yesterday. So the whole fucking lab has been reconstituted for the day and guess what they can't stop talking about? How much fun they had at the wedding I wasn't invited to. I almost said something about it to explain why I wasn't being very sociable, but I just went to the other side of the lab and did some work instead. I don't think anyone was terribly bothered that I didn't want to talk. P was cordial enough, T was his usual friendly self, and D was just really excited to see them. I have no idea if they knew I wasn't invited or if they thought I was and had declined, or if they just didn't give a flying fuck about it altogether. But wow, that really felt shitty all over again.

I didn't handle it very maturely. When the newly minted doctor arrived at the reception in the lounge, I wasn't there to congratulate her. No one texted me to tell me she had come down, but I did hear the loud cheer come from the other end of the corridor. Granted, I'm not a baby and I could've - and probably should've - just sucked up my hurt feelings and gone down there to wait along with my lab's in-crowd and everyone else. I eventually sulked my way down to the lounge, grabbed a champagne, slammed it, had an awkward conversation with my boss for about two minutes, and left. Didn't really say anything to anyone else, either.

I left the lounge, I left the lab, I left the building. I just left. I went and picked up Elliot half an hour early because I couldn't deal with how I was feeling. I can't even name the feeling, really. Kind of rejected and unwanted, but those terms seem too strong. Feeling sorta kinda less than everyone else; feeling like the past illusions I'd had about fitting in were just that - illusions. This was the reality. I don't fit in here, I never have, and I never will. It's too late now anyway - I mean, there's no one left to fit in with. Whatever. It'll be okay, but the social crap has been the hardest part of the whole PhD experience. It casts a pall over everything - even the things I thought I liked - like doing science. I used to love doing science! Now I just want out. I just want to be done and move the fuck on.

If there's anything I've learned, it's this: it's not enough to love what you do to make it gratifying. It's not even enough to like the people you work with - I did. Someone has to like you back. It's about cultivating satisfying relationships. I don't know if other people have the same requirements; I have come to accept that I am high-maintenance. When I was at Eastern, my emotional needs were met, and I feel like I was at my best. I was probably the best student I've ever been, the best teacher, I was funnier, happier, thinner (not that looks should be important, but hey, they are). I felt needed, and important, and at the top of my game.

I don't think I'll be looking back on my time here with such fondness. That's being honest.

Summer (camp) in The D

For the next week and a half, I have to try really hard to act like a responsible adult/parent. Elliot is half-way through the three-week session of Camp Engineering, a summer day camp put on by Wayne State's College of Engineering. Drop-off is between 8:30 and 8:45 am Monday - Thursday, which means that I have to drag my grumpy ass out of bed before 7:00 am, get myself and the boy ready, and be out the door by 8:00 am. This is tough for someone like me, who prefers to keep vampire hours.

Anyway, the program we signed Elliot up for is "Creating Technological Toys". Not sure exactly what that means and I don't feel like trying to find out right now, but I should, since I think that could be construed as part of the whole "being a responsible parent" bit. Goddamn it. I tried asking Elliot what he does every day, but I didn't get very far with that approach. He did tell me that he met an 8-year-old who, at lunch, ate a bunch of corn dogs, pizza, and ice cream. I think this earned Elliot's immediate respect. All I really know is that he likes lunch. The kids go to the fancy dining hall on main campus, which has damn near everything a kid could want.

What I really wanted to write about was the cool swag he got. It's a bag, lanyard, and t-shirt all with pretty much the same logo (he was wearing the shirt and wouldn't stop moving so I could take his picture in it):

They get to walk to the Michigan Science Center, and I think they're supposed to go to the DIA, and maybe the museum of African-American history as well. He complains when he has to walk somewhere. So spoiled.

That's enough for now. I started this post a week and a half ago and just had to finish it already and move on. Take that, ADD!!! <shakes fist like an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn> Mission accomplished.

Writing and...

Writing and what? I don't know. I'm having trouble organizing my thoughts and trying to articulate them in a coherent manner tonight. I guess I'll just keep typing and see what comes out.

Okay, so fairly recently I've decided that I want to get back into writing. Not the please think my research isn't a waste of the past several years of my life kind of writing I'll have to do to publish in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. And not the please, please, PLEASE give me money so I don't have to wash and reuse pipette tips, leading me to subsequently have to quit science altogether for a better-paying job at McDonald's kind of writing that's involved in applying for grant funding. Ooh, I really hate begging for money grant writing. I don't want to get myself more worked up about it, so I'm going to set that topic down now and back away from it slowly.

The older I get and the more stuff I read, the more I think that writing is not only technical (spelling, parts of speech, syntax, etc.), but also an art. Technically correct writing can be taught. The art and the grace of writing, I think, is more innate talent than anything else. At various points in my life, I've been told that I'm a good writer. What the hell does that mean??? It could mean damn near anything, really. One person's definition of good might be that my description of a technique or a situation is clear and concise. Another person might think I'm a good writer because my words read as if I'm speaking and not just banging shit out on a keyboard. I suppose there could be about as many definitions of "good writing" as there are people doing the defining. And the writing, for that matter.

This compliment is one that has been paid to me at many different ages, in many different environments and states of mind, and by many (very) different people. This raises the question: do I now have a responsibility to write because I'm good at it? I don't know. I have the same question about teaching. I feel like it's a shame to waste a talent, but I guess there are so many other factors to consider. "Like what?" you ask. That's an excellent question. I guess liking whatever it is that you're good at is helpful. My problem is that I seem to be unaware of what I like. I feel ambivalence about proclaiming my love for something that could become an integral part of my eventual career. Maybe it seems like a really big commitment or something. That doesn't really make sense though, especially since I've been with the same man for 23 years. That's a bit of a commitment there. Ack, I'm difficult.

To finish off this session of public navel-gazing, here's an article I forgot I had written for my high school newspaper, The Communicator. I was sorting through old papers in the basement (read: doing more navel-gazing) and found some of the stuff I had written when I actually aspired to be a writer. I barely even remember the event I wrote about, even though it seemed to be fairly traumatic/dramatic. Anyway, enjoy.

Holy shit, it's been more than a year...

I can't believe it's been more than a year since I've last posted! I've thought about writing for some time, but just haven't done it until now. I actually just read my last post from March of last year, forgot that I was the one who wrote it, and thought what a good writer that person was...I'm fairly tipsy at the moment because we went to Hopcat Detroit to celebrate my PI's homecoming from India. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and had been in India for 5 months. In the meantime, my lab-mate and I both had birthdays, so he took us out for lunch (and beers) to belatedly celebrate our acceleration towards death.

So, what's happened since I last wrote? Hmm, let me think (it's a bad sign when I have to stop and think about what I've done over the past 13 months). I suppose the biggest thing was my foot surgery in September of 2014. I had surgery on my right foot to fix the damage I had done by dropping a heavy glass casserole dish on my big toe joint several years ago. I had a bone chip in the joint space and had developed arthritis that made it hard to walk. Every time I took a step and my toes flexed on push-off, it felt like I had broken glass for synovial fluid. Every single step, every single day for 6 years or so. It got to the point that I had changed my body mechanics so much that I (probably) tore the meniscus in my right knee while playing laser tag at a birthday party with kids my son's age. I got my crippled ass beat by those little punks. Even now, after I've recovered from surgery and had several weeks of physical therapy, lost some weight (yay!) and gained some strength through exercise - my functional left calf is a full 1/2" bigger in diameter than my gimpy right calf. It's crazy! I didn't realize what difference 6 + years of accommodations would make on my legs. I still have almost constant pain in my right foot when I walk, but now it varies from pretty intense (fairly infrequently) to damn near nonexistent (happening more and more these days). It's a definite improvement over pretty intense pain with every step I took, every single day. I might even be able to briefly wear high heels at some point soon! Before the surgery, my toes could not flex enough to wear even a 1" heel without excruciating pain. I'll likely never be able to wear 6" stilettos, but that's okay. I don't really want to feel like an amazon, looking down, literally, at my husband.

That's enough for now, but I've got more to say in upcoming blog posts. Yes, that's plural - I'm back, baby!

Age isn't just a number anymore

Today I finally saw my gastroenterologist for the first time in a couple of years. I'm supposed to see him yearly so he can keep tabs on my ulcerative colitis (UC), but that usually means that I have to take at least a half day off from work. Plus, I felt fine and I didn't want to go all the way to Brighton just to be told that I seem to be doing well (duh - I would've let him know if I wasn't) and 5 minutes later I'm out the door again. My GI wouldn't write another script for my immunosuppressant unless he saw me again. Fuck. That kind of forced my hand since I'd already been out of meds for a week due to UM's shitty online patient portal, where Rx requests apparently go to die. So off to Brighton I went.

A 1:30 appointment ensured that I didn't get jack shit done during the productive part of the day. Once they got me into an exam room, I sat and waited about 15 minutes before some doctor I'd never seen before came in. He asked me the standard questions - how have you been feeling? How often do you have bowel movements? Are they a normal consistency? Do you ever see any blood or mucus in your stools? Fun stuff and no room for modesty. This new doc didn't have any discernable facial expressions and he had an eastern european accent - not a good combination for putting a female patient at ease (I know it's not fair, but all I could think of was the movie "Hostel"). He eventually finished interrogating me, but not before advising me that I should only use ibuprofen sparingly because it can tear up my gut.  He didn't know that I already know this or that I gobble that shit like candy during my period, or when I have a headache, or when my maimed foot hurts, or...whenever I think something might start to hurt at some point. I told him that I try to limit my use of it.

Dr. Hostel left and a few minutes later he came back with my regular GI doc, whom I really like. My regular GI apologized for strong-arming me into coming to see him and said that it's really important to keep close tabs on me because of the medication I take. This particular drug is an immunosuppressant because it inhibits DNA replication - which particularly affects T-cells, but can affect anything with DNA that needs replicating. I have to have labs drawn every other month to make sure that I still have enough white blood cells and to make sure my liver is still functioning normally. He told me that he's had some patients, who were stable for ages, suddenly have a precipitous drop in the numbers of white blood cells (WBCs). The lack of WBCs is called leukopenia and initially presents without noticeable signs or symptoms, but can quickly become life-threatening. Yeah, yeah, I've heard it all before. Every time I get bullied into going and getting my blood drawn, I always check my lab results online to make sure they're normal. I used to work at UM processing these very blood samples, so I know what to look for. I never depend on someone else to tell me if I'm okay or not.

Anyway, he proceeded to tell me that at my next annual follow-up we'll have to schedule me for a colonoscopy. People with ulcerative colitis have an increased risk of developing colon cancer starting within 8-10 years of the initial diagnosis. Next year will be my 8th year living with UC, so my rising cancer risk necessitates undergoing a screening colonoscopy every 2-3 years for the rest of my life. Shit just got real. Life is all fun and games until you learn that you have to have a camera with a cutter shoved up your ass every couple of years until you die. Can't wait to start having regular boob squishings too - woot!

So far, I've got a messed up old lady foot with matching trick knee, a spastic colon, wicked hangovers that last for days longer than they used to, enough white hair that it can be seen from a pretty good distance - not to mention the hair that no one ever told me would turn white (sex-ed part 2 should take place between the ages of 30-35. Seriously). Finally, the only remaining milestones in my life are getting regular colonoscopies at 39, mammograms and black birthday balloons at 40, and membership in AARP at 50 (hello senior discounts!). At this point it's even debatable whether I will have a real job again before I hit retirement age. And I still feel stuck in that awkward age between my coworkers in their mid-late twenties and my friends who are literally counting the days until they retire. And who says age is just a number? Right now it's everything.

Some girls have all the luck

Not too much has happened since my last post. The hell of the holidays is past, we finally put the damn Christmas tree away, I've taken some impressive pictures of building fires from my lab window. Those are the highlights of the last six or seven months. Now that we're caught up, the next two or three months are going to be very busy, exciting, and stressful. Next Wednesday, I have to give my research data presentation, a.k.a departmental seminar. I don't know what I'm going to talk about and I haven't started working on it yet (shhh!). Should make for a fun weekend.

I leave for an international Vibrio conference in Edinburgh, Scotland (!) on the 29th of this month. Me and my two lab mates are going together. They are graduating by the end of the summer, so this is sort of a last hurrah. I am presenting a poster on zebrafish diarrhea. Haven't started working on that either, but at least I got my passport renewed. The new passports are ridiculously and embarrassingly patriotic. There's eagles and Franklins and Liberty Bells and page after blank page bragging about how great 'Murica is. Good God, it's hideous. Oh well. One of my biggest fears about this trip is forgetting 1) my passport, and/or 2) my poster. I expect to be either drunk or hungover about 80-90% of the time while we're there. We don't leave for home until April 5th. I've never been to Europe and I'm really nervous and excited - I mean, they have real castles over there!! Should make for a fun week.

In May, I'm going to the national American Society for Microbiology meeting in Boston. By myself. Oh, and I've been selected to give a Young Investigator oral presentation in the "It Takes A Villus" session about gut pathogens. When I submitted my abstract, stupid me checked the box to be considered to give a talk. I thought that I had a snowball's chance in hell of being picked for a talk instead of a poster, like I was planning. I guess the Polar Vortex was more powerful than I realized. I still haven't told my boss or the rest of my lab. And, obviously, I haven't even thought about starting to work on this yet. Even though oral presentations are technically easier than poster presentations, I'm terrified.

Today, I finally saw a podiatrist for my foot that's been messed up since I dropped a glass casserole dish on it 5 years ago. It hurts every time I take a step, particularly when my big toe flexes upwards, and it's gotten progressively more painful over time. In addition to my injury, it turns out that I inherited two different foot defects - one from each parent. The podiatrist took one look at me and said that I have flat feet, which I must have gotten from my flat-footed father. Apparently having flat feet inhibits normal extension of my big toes, aside from any injury. After he took x-rays, he told me that I also have a bunion on my jacked up foot (thanks, Mom!). After looking closely at the x-ray, I could also see a bone fragment from the original injury that is wedged in the joint space. Ouch. The podiatrist proposed doing surgery to correct the bunion and to increase the joint space and clean out bony debris. Unfortunately, this involves breaking a metatarsal and placing a screw in it, meaning I'll be in a surgical boot for 6 weeks. Since it's my right foot, I won't be able to drive for those 6 weeks. I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to swing this, but I'm willing to do almost anything to stop being in chronic pain. Should make for an interesting summer. Stay tuned...

Moving up and moving on

Summer always seems to be a time of flux, and this one in particular is no exception. A couple of weeks ago, I went to a going away party for the lab coordinator at Eastern and his girlfriend who have since moved out west. Even though I wasn't super close to these people, I still had to fight back tears on my drive home that night. I walked into the house feeling rather empty and sad - enough so that even Chris noticed and asked me what was wrong and why I looked so sad. I think I snapped back something like, "everyone is leaving; how am I supposed to feel?!" Now, not everyone I know is leaving - that was an obvious exaggeration of the facts. However, when people that you've come to know over the course of several years start pulling up stakes and moving on with their lives, it can really shake your perception of things. On Friday, I went to yet another going away party. This time, for one of my close friends who is moving out to Colorado for her PhD. I am incredibly happy for her, but equally (and probably selfishly) sad for myself that she is going so far away.

Change is hard, no matter how good or bad the circumstances surrounding it. Other changes that are happening around me are somewhat less emotionally charged, but are still hitting me harder than I expected. Another PhD friend is moving to Brighton to be with her boyfriend. The tech in our lab, whom I've really come to like, is transitioning out of the lab and into what will be a great job for her at the Corner. The other two grad students in my lab hope to graduate by April of next year, leaving me as my PI's lone grad student, albeit with an undergrad minion. Funding is never a sure thing, and we might be out of money by March if another grant doesn't come through. This situation is putting more pressure on me to write an F31 pre-doctoral fellowship grant. The next feasible due date is in October. With so few applicants being funded, the proposition of applying terrifies me.

With all of this swirling around my head, it's hard to keep my eyes on the prize. The whole point of getting a PhD is to have more job opportunities available to me. So, what do I want to do once I become "Dr. Mitchell" (or "Dr. Visel" if I'm in evil scientist mode) and complete a post-doc? I don't know. Sometimes I think I want to teach, but teaching is scary because other people are there. And they're looking at me and expecting me to teach them new things and be this professor that they put up on a pedestal. Is that something I can do for the rest of my career? I don't know. If not that, then what? I don't think I want to be a PI at an R1 research institution. There's no time to do any bench work anymore, because you're constantly begging for money to keep the lab running and to pay for grad students, techs, and post-docs. I think I'd sooner slit my wrists than commit to doing that for the rest of my career. So, what other jobs are available to a woman who is fast approaching middle age and who is over-educated and probably under-motivated? Pot farmer? No, my brother has that covered. Goat herder? Goats are my favorite ruminant, but that won't get me far. Scientific writer? Hmm, maybe, but it might be too similar to writing your life away searching for grant funding. Plain old writer of fiction and non-fiction? My dad had one hell of a story that I could spin into an amazing tale, but it won't be enough to pay the bills, I'm afraid. Professional genealogist? As long as I'm looking for white people, how hard could that be? I don't know how one becomes a professional though. My dad's side of the family has been a black hole ever since I started looking probably 20 years ago, so maybe this job's not for me. Industry?? I need to look into this.

Every Sunday, I dredge up all of the fears and uncertainties about what I'm doing with my life. On Sundays, life seems pointless to me. I feel like I'm not making a difference to anyone and I feel like a total failure. All this means is that I really don't want to go to work in the morning. Tomorrow starts my obligatory week of teaching for the IMSD (Initiative for Maximizing Student Development) program, which has funded me for the past two years. During this last part of their summer program, I will be teaching incoming freshman minority students, most of whom want to be "real" doctors (MDs - it's almost cute), a little bit of the biology they will encounter during their first year of college. During last month's orientation, the students came with their parents. They all had a deer-in-headlights look on their faces. I thought to myself that it must be nice to have parents that wanted to come to an orientation with them. I remember at 19 going alone to orientation at Michigan State, and being surrounded by student-parent dyads and triads. That sucked, but I digress.

On Sundays, a large part of me wants to be back in the car with my major professor headed to a conference. We made fun of car names, sports venue names, and just had a good time. We got along famously and I miss that. I mean, we still get along well and he's become a good friend of mine, but I miss that time in my life. The past is the past though, and none of us can have it back. All I can do now is put my head down, get ready for tomorrow, and keep moving on.

What is it about Mondays?

I hate Mondays. It's gotten so bad that I start feeling depressed in the middle of the afternoon on Sundays. Just in the last five minutes, I've apparently let out so many long heavy sighs that even Chris noticed and gave me a quizzical look.

Tomorrow is orientation day for the undergrad IMSD summer program. This takes place in a room on main campus that is about 5 times too small for the number of students, parents, and the rest of us who will be crammed in it. As a graduate IMSD student, I'm required to spend a week in August teaching these incoming freshmen some biology. I guess the idea is to kind of give them a taste of what they'll encounter in their intro classes in the fall (they will also have physics and chemistry modules). Additionally, us older students tell the younger ones what not to do and the mistakes we made on the way to getting a bachelor's degree and beyond.

I don't know how useful I will be tomorrow. I just feel emotionally drained. For the last several months, it just seems like I have to keep giving and giving and giving. Giving instruction to various minions, giving my extra time (of that, there's been damn little), my love, and every last ounce of patience to Elliot, and just generally expending all of my energy on preparing for lab meetings, a conference, and my committee meeting. What I haven't done is give so generously to myself. I don't sleep well, I haven't been eating well, I don't really engage in any relaxing hobbies or go anywhere but the bar with friends. And sometimes I go weeks without having any significant social interaction outside of the lab and home. There are times that I feel excruciatingly lonely, even when I'm surrounded by people. I'm just tired. I really need a vacation. I think the last time Chris and I went out of town alone was when Elliot was two or three and we went to a wedding in Ohio. I had such a bad respiratory infection that I was convinced I had whooping cough. Even now I'm not sure that I didn't. That didn't make for a relaxing time at all.

Goddamn it! I just took a sip of beer and realized that I've been sharing it with some kind of insect for the last few minutes. WTF?! I give up. I'm a fabulous complainer - I like to do it and I've become pretty good at it too. Now I just have to figure out how to make things better for myself. I'm not so great at that yet, but I'm gonna keep trying.

Minioning leads to wacked out poo brain

I am exhausted. Just mentally spent. Thinking for myself is taxing enough, but having to think for myself and another person every single day is really wearing on me. A little background is called for here.

At the beginning of May, I was given an undergrad student. It kinda sounds like a late birthday present, but I assure you - an undergrad with no real lab experience is no gift. Particularly in advance of my first national ASM meeting representing the lab and my first committee meeting. My PI ultimately wants her (my undergrad / minion-in-training) to have her own project investigating whether quorum sensing is important for V. cholerae colonization of the zebrafish gut. However, there's a TON of work involved in teaching her the stuff she needs to know (what I call "minioning") to become even semi-independent. She's really smart and asks good questions, but she mumbles like crazy, sneaks up on me, almost never shuts up, has come down with some form of selective deafness, and is generally irritating the fuck out of me. Let me break this down point by point:

1. "mumbles like crazy" - I have auditory processing issues that make it hard for me to understand speech when there's a lot of background noise. Even giving myself slack for that, it makes me feel SO OLD having to say, "what?" or "I really can't hear you" 50 times a day. When I've had enough, I'll just smile and nod or run off to the bathroom and just sit on the toilet, not to pee, but to hide.
2. "sneaks up on me" - She doesn't do it on purpose, but she has walked up behind me so silently that I have literally jumped at the sight of her on least 5 separate occasions. I told her to cough or make a noise when she's about 10 feet away, or I'd have to start calling her The Sidler.
3. "almost never shuts up" - today out of the blue she looks up from her reading and says, "I do Tae Kwon Do on the weekends" - I think that's what she said anyway, because she was mumbling. I said, "really?" to which she replied, "no, not really. But I want to." I think it was at this point that I got up and went to go hide in the bathroom.
4. "has selective deafness" - Lately, I'll explain to her why we're doing something or I'll show her how to do ethanol precipitation, for example, on a few samples with her doing the remainder of the samples. As soon as I tell her to go ahead and finish the last few, she says, "okay, what am I doing now?"

There's more stuff, but I think you get the idea. It has recently come to my attention that she annoys everyone else in my lab and the fish lab too. <face palm> My description of her really sounds bad, but I'm pretty sure most of the annoying things she does are unintentional. Unfortunately, that only makes it worse in that this is just her personality. Granted, she is only 19 and likely just acting her age. I've been asking myself if I was that annoying when I was 19, and I'm fairly certain that I was not, although I may be somewhat biased.

I'm glad for the chance to vent. Fortunately, we have lab meeting tomorrow and there will be no real time to do benchwork with her. She comes in the afternoon Monday - Thursday because she has class in the morning on those days. My feeling of dread is only slightly diminished though. I have to come up with enough stuff to keep her busy, yet out of my hair, on Friday. I forgot to mention - she has no classes on Friday so she will be in the lab with me all. day. long...

The bitch is back!

I've finally gotten around to updating the blog. It's funny, for weeks now, I've been thinking of all kinds of great things to write about. Now that I actually have time to write about them, I can't think of a single thing I want to write about. I guess I'll just give a rundown of what's been going on since my last post.

The biggest change is that I've advanced to PhD candidacy (I'm not waiting for the paperwork to go through to claim the distinction. God only knows how long that will actually take.). ABD, baby (thanks, Jamin)! So, I had my first committee meeting last Thursday to present and defend my research proposal. I was a little surprised at how long it took. My committee and I were holed up in the department library for nearly two hours. I only had 35 PowerPoint slides in my presentation, so I figured I would spend about 40-45 minutes presenting my stuff. No. When I finally reached my last slide, it was an hour and 26 minutes after I had initially opened my mouth to start speaking. Holy shit. Thankfully, I was only stumped by one question: what is the conductance of the water the zebrafish are kept in? No clue. I still don't know and, at this point, don't much care. Even better is that the PI of the fish lab (where I do my zebrafish experiments) didn't know either. I didn't get any criticisms and was told that I gave an "excellent" presentation. My PI said that it was obvious that I had read everything he thought I needed to and he said I did a great job. That made me feel awesome - almost embarrassed. This project is my boss's "baby" and I really wanted to make sure that I represented the project and him well. Comments from other committee members like, "you're a really good speaker and you gave a great presentation," and, "you didn't just tell us about your project, you taught us," told me that I nailed it. I feel like I have finally earned my place in the lab. All the teaching I did at EMU and WCC has really been advantageous to me. I am comfortable speaking in front of groups of diverse educational backgrounds, I know how to tailor a presentation for a particular audience - what background to include and details I can (and sometimes should) leave out. I've also gotten good at anticipating what questions might be asked of me. The one thing I really need to improve on is time management. I always wait until the last damn minute to do everything - to the point where it isn't unusual for someone to get pissed at me as a result. Oddly enough, putting the finishing touches on a presentation just minutes before I'm scheduled to give it seems to work for me. I prefer not to practice beforehand - I feel like my talk will be too rehearsed and lacking in spontaneity. I feel like I express enthusiasm more authentically the very first time I give a talk. Don't get me wrong, I don't go into a presentation unprepared. I scrutinize every image and line of text on every slide. I know exactly what information needs to be conveyed, but my preference is to figure out how exactly to convey it while I'm in the moment. I think many of these idiosyncrasies can be blamed on my attention deficit disorder. For optimum performance, it seems that my brain requires an absolutely ridiculous amount of stimulation. This comes in the form of pushing the limits of my superiors (how much will they let me get away with before they get pissed?), seeing how long I can put off a task before it becomes impossible to do by a certain deadline, things that cause me almost crippling levels of anxiety. It drives me nuts and I absolutely hate this about myself. However, I'm at a point in my life where I wonder if it's too late to "fix" me. I feel far too old to keep getting chastised like a small child. I also wonder if faculty would respond to me differently if 1) they knew I have ADD (I don't make this known because I'm convinced it will be perceived as a "convenient excuse" for why I  sometimes don't perform up to expectations), and 2) that I am actually 37, not 27 - also something I don't tend to publicize.

One more bit of self-reflection before signing off. Here's an enlargement of my new profile picture:

An early iteration of my "bitch face"

I'm three (possibly four) years old in this picture. Something I've been reflecting upon lately is that fish  have been a consistent thread running through my life - especially now. My astrological sign is Pisces, in this picture I'm wearing a swimsuit with fish on it while holding a dead bluegill that my dad - an avid fisherman - had just caught, and now I'm sitting here writing about the zebrafish project that has gradually come to consume me. A little freaky. While my father was alive, I never shared his love of fishing - although I did love to eat what he caught and cooked for me. When I was pregnant with Elliot, it was so hard to have to keep telling him that I couldn't eat his fish. Even with that temporary abstinence, I'm sure my body is loaded with enough mercury to make even the Mad Hatter cringe. Man, were those fish delicious. I miss them. And him. Now, I essentially go fishing in a barrel every week for my job - with a net in a full aquarium in a lab. I sometimes like to think that maybe, just maybe, he still hasn't given up on trying to get his youngest daughter to love fishing the way he once did. She's working on it.

A bad day for science

Today was a minor disaster of a day. I'm taking this stupid grant writing class that second-year PhD students have to take, and over the last few weeks we've been writing the individual sections of a grant. Specifically, the F31 pre-doctoral fellowship (NIH). Today we had to submit the complete grant,  incorporating the suggestions of the reviewing professor. Ugh. Writing shit for this course has been almost as painful as writing my master's thesis. I've hated every minute of it, even though it's a good practical course all grad students should be forced to take.

Anyway, being the dingus that I am, I thought that I could get the whole thing knocked out last night. Ha! Silly me. I couldn't even concentrate long enough to open Word and type my name, much less knit together a cohesive scientific-sounding thought. So I got up early-ish (for me, anyway), and got to school a little after 9 am today. I thought that I could easily crank out my finished grant in 4 hours and submit it before the start of class at 1 pm. Well, I cranked out something and submitted it by 1 pm. I think I incorporated at least some of the instructor's suggested edits, but I know I missed a bunch. Based on past experience, (having been severely chastised - by one of the instructors who is probably my own age - for turning something in late) I've learned that as far as the profs are concerned, it's better to turn in a steaming turd on time than it is to turn in Pulitzer Prize-worthy work late. I think that's bullshit, but whatever.

Incredibly, I thought I would have time to do some science today before and after class. The only science-y thing I was able to do this morning was to tell my minion (she's actually an intern, but I like the way minion sounds) to repeat last week's fish infections using a higher inoculum. Unfortunately, the shaking incubator decided to quit shaking sometime before 5 am this morning, so that introduces an additional unwelcome variable into my planned experiment. I did manage to infect some fish also, but it was almost 4 pm before I had time to do so. Bah.

My main goal for this week was going to be optimizing a protocol for fixing and paraffin-embedding V. cholerae-infected zebrafish for histology. Infected fish aren't completely infiltrated with paraffin and don't cut well. Therefore, we haven't been able to conduct much histological staining/analysis (looking for the presence of colonizing bacteria or other signs of pathology due to infection). Because I didn't read the protocol carefully enough, I neglected to put the infiltration paraffin in the water bath last night to melt. I didn't think it would be that big a problem - I could just melt the stuff in the microwave, right? WRONG! Apparently, infiltration paraffin is immune to the microwave's melt-y wiles. It didn't matter how long I nuked that shit, it would. not. melt. Not even a little bit. If it had been in a non-plastic container, I could have torched it or put it on a hot plate or something. Anyway, this seemingly minor oversight has royally fucked up the time frame for the protocol and may lead to my samples being ruined. Instead of being in clarifying solution just overnight, my fixed fishies will end up marinating for 2+ days. I don't know how this will affect my samples yet. I guess I'll find out tomorrow or Thursday.
Speaking of tomorrow, Wednesday is apparently "40 oz. Wednesday". I guess a bunch of us are going to sit around and drink 40s in the afternoon. Maybe my science is just suffering from delirium tremens. Beer ought to fix that. I don't think it could make anything much worse, anyway.

Say hello to Ms. Sacher-Masoch...

i.e. the original masochist. I just can't seem to stop inflicting great pain on myself. For example, this week I am infecting zebrafish larvae with GFP-expressing cholera in order to (hopefully) visualize the bacteria using fluorescent microscopy. The idea is to get a good image that demonstrates cholera colonization of the zebrafish gut, which my PI can use in the paper he is writing and he said would get me co-authorship. Yay! I also have to plan out an experiment for my rotation student to see if fish infected with cholera can spread it to uninfected fish when placed in the same container of water. Plus, I am apparently getting an intern tomorrow. (I told Chris that I will refer to her in private as "Monica the Intern", just to be lewd 'cause that's the kind of person I am) I will have to plan stuff for her to work on once I know when I can do my own experiments in the fish lab.

I'm in a weird, yet incredibly exciting, position; I'm now considered the lead researcher in the development of the zebrafish model of cholera colonization/infection - I think. So anyone that comes into the lab to do fish stuff gets assigned to me. To the best of anyone's knowledge, I am the only person in the world working on this. I didn't expect this to happen so soon. I honestly can't imagine being in the shoes of my PI, entrusting me with the project that everyone in the lab calls "his baby". I don't know if it's just because I'm the warm body who landed in the lab at the right time to get the project, or if he sees qualities in me that make him think I'd do well in this role - qualities that I don't often credit myself with, like a general lack of idiocy for starters.

Tuesday is going to be a real banner day. First, I have to rewrite a scientific journal article into a "News and Views" type of summary piece for a general (read: non-scientist) audience and turn it in before class begins at 1:00 pm. Then, we have a departmental seminar from 12:00 - 1:00 pm. The final coup de grâce is the abstract I still need to write for the poster I'm presenting at the national ASM meeting this May. The abstract submission deadline is also Tuesday, the 15th.

So that's my upcoming week in a nutshell. I just hope my head doesn't explode before I have a chance to knock back a beer with friends at the Corner on Friday. That would totally suck.

The wheels of science keep grinding

A full week into 2013 and I think I have finally accumulated enough stuff to write about. I guess it's similar to how I wait to go to the doctor until I feel like I've "saved up" enough maladies to make it worth my while. Unfortunately, once I unfurl my laundry list of complaints, I sound like a raging hypochondriac to anyone within earshot.

I had initially intended to do some lab work over Christmas break, but I ultimately talked myself out of it. This past Sunday, I started feeling really anxious about starting back in the lab on Monday. I had it in my head that the other grad students in my department had all worked diligently through the break, and would berate me for my laziness in staying my unmotivated ass at home. I had also told myself that I would catch up my lab notebook (for reals this time!) and start the year with unbridled enthusiasm and a clear vision of what I want to accomplish in my research project. Oh, what lofty unattainable traps goals I set for myself! I'm so far behind, I'm still writing up shit I did in September. Ugh.

I have a few things going on that should keep me pretty busy for the foreseeable future. One is that I'm taking a scientific communications class, which is similar to the proposal development class I took at Eastern. It does seem to be quite a bit more structured than proposal development and it delves into scientific writing with specific goals/audiences in mind. I forgot how much it sucks to have classes again. By the end of the semester, I should have slowly and painfully birthed a grant proposal for my thesis project. I really need to sit down with my PI and hash some shit out. I need to stop being so afraid to ask questions about what I'm doing!

Another thing I need to do this week (that I should have done in, like, November) is flow cytometry on the cholera strain I made - and resuscitated from Christmas break benchtop desiccation - that is supposed to constitutively express GFP. My sequences came back with some possible point mutations, which may or may not affect expression of GFP. Colonies seem to look green when I expose them to blue light, so at least I know that something is working somewhere in the black box of the transcriptional unit. Here's a picture of a GFP-expressing strain (not the one I just created) that I took using the fluorescence scope I learned how to use. They're purdy :)

My PI dangled the carrot of co-authorship on the fish paper he is writing if I can infect zebrafish larvae with my GFP strain and show gut colonization via fluorescence microscopy. I'll write more on this exciting new development in my research saga tomorrow, as well as my being charged with the care and feeding of our rotation student for the next eight weeks. I'll probably do a better job of taking care of her than I do trying to look out for myself. Enough for now; I couldn't sleep at all last night and I'm really tired all of a sudden. With that said, I'm gonna quit writing and thinking now and just go to bed.

さようなら (sayounara) 2012!

I used to be able to hold a very basic conversation in Japanese, as well as read a fair amount of it,  but now I'm reduced to looking up how to spell "goodbye" in romaji (roman letters). I was actually only a class or two away from being able to minor in Japanese at Eastern. Bah. I also took 3 or 4 years of French in high school and at least 1 full year of it in college. Can't remember much of that now, either. Maybe I'll try to re-learn some of that stuff in the coming year. I was always very good at quickly picking up foreign languages.

Although it's New Year's Eve, we're pretty much treating it like any other weekend night. I don't think we've ever procured a babysitter so we can go to NYE parties or anything - the last time we went to such a party was, I think, in 2002 when we were newly married. I'd probably feel more deprived if I hadn't spent the night at my friend Mary's house the other night. A few of us watched several episodes of Girls, we drank lots of wine and generally had a good time. When I woke up in the morning, however, I wasn't sure if I was still drunk or just really really hungover. After I managed to get stuck in the snow - for a good 30 minutes or so - trying to leave Mary's, I decided that I was just really hungover. If I had still been drunk, the whole stuck car ordeal probably would have been far more amusing than it was. Stupid German car with no snow tires. Grrr. Thankfully, Mary and a friend of her brother managed to push me free of the snow drift I was sort of wedged in. I thought that since I bought Elliot all new snow gear from L.L. Bean super early this year, we were sure to have a dry winter. I thought wrong.

As far as Phudland goes, I've survived the first six months in my chosen thesis lab. Yay! Now, I need to define the goals of my project, in consultation with the PI, in order to come up with a decent proposal over the course of the coming semester. One of the new students will be rotating in our lab starting in January. I think the PI mentioned that he will have her working on some aspect of the fish project, but no one knows exactly what just yet. I'm a little excited at the prospect of quasi-mentoring one of the first-years. For eight weeks, at least, I won't be the newbie and maybe I'll get to feel smart again, like I did when I taught at Eastern and Washtenaw. I can hope anyway.

In 2013, I hope to continue settling in and really start to think of Wayne State as my home away from home. I'm looking forward to going to the national ASM conference in Denver, as well as the Cold Spring Harbor conference in the coming year. I'm also going to try to incorporate more activity into my life and maybe get to the point where I can run a little bit - for exercise and not for my life, as in running from muggers in Detroit or bears up north. That might be nice. I'll have to get my bum knee looked at to make sure I don't injure it further (I have a probable torn meniscus), but it'll be okay. Everything will work out the way it's supposed to. More patience, less twitchy-ness, good health, safety, and happiness; those are a few of my major hopes for 2013 and beyond. I wish the same for everyone reading this, and even those who don't. Be safe and have a Happy New Year!!

The worst is finally over!

Christmas is done, bitches! And I couldn't be happier. Ok, I could always stand to be happier, but whatever. I really dislike the stresses of shopping and increased social interaction that come with the holidays. This year, I just couldn't make myself do any shopping until nearly the last minute - after the last "guaranteed delivery for Christmas" shipping deadline for any online retailer had passed. I finally decided to start, yes - start - my Christmas shopping at about 6:00 pm on the 23rd. I took with me a short list of stuff to get, a box of Kleenex (and I'm still sick, even now. This is fucking ridiculous.), hand sanitizer, and I stuffed my driver's license and credit card into my back pocket. I hate wrangling a purse - plus it makes me more of a target for thieves and other ruffians. I think I've actually thwarted one would-be purse snatcher at Meijer by not carrying a purse to be snatched, but I digress...

I started at The Rocket in Ypsi and worked my way over to Target in Canton, then I took a break for dinner around 8:00. Around 9:30 or 10:00, I went to the Westland Mall to check out Kohl's and Macy's, which both totally sucked. I tell you, Macy's is certainly no Hudson's or even Marshall Fields. After the mall, I went to the Toys R Us across Wayne Rd., which is where I probably spent most of my shopping gusto. I love, love, love that Toys R Us is open 24 hrs during the several days preceding Christmas, only finally closing at 10:00 pm on Christmas Eve. I really enjoy shopping late at night, a time when mostly only frantic dads are doing their shopping. Fewer whiny kids with their bitchy overworked mothers. I like it. Anyhow, the moral of the story is that I finished my shopping and was home by 2:00 am. Boom. Done.

Traditionally, we spend Christmas Eve with Chris's dad's side of the family; then on Christmas Day, we open presents at our house before heading off to Chris's mom's house for dinner and gifts. Finally, we go to my mom's house and visit with her and my brother before calling it a very looong day and going back home. I won't bore you with details, but here is a very short pictorial chronology of Christmas celebrations.

My very first Christmas Eve with the Visels. My (then) future father-in-law took this picture of me. I was 16 - note the pink hair.

Elliot at my mom's late on Christmas Day this year. This may have been the last smile we got out of him that night before the "tired tantrums" set in.

There was a very cute picture of Chris at his mom's in a paper crown holding up a Lego set he just built, but he forbade me from posting it online. Although I'm not happy about it, I suppose that I should abide by his wishes. Such is life.

There is nothing worth watching on TV right now. Perhaps I will pop in the first DVD from my Golden Girls box set that Chris gave me for Christmas. If that gift isn't a sign of a man's true love, then I don't know what is.

Ms. Crabbypants

Cranky is not really the emotional state I expected to be in after the big department holiday party, but cranky/grumpy/pissy/grouchy, etc. is what I most certainly am right now. I'm guessing there are actually several reasons for this, now that I'm sitting and thinking about the day. A caveat - my reasons are likely not great reasons, but they are mine nonetheless.

I am an introvert and social situations/people in general really stress me out. Unfortunately for me, I am half of the social committee and was responsible for putting this holiday party together. This included food (was up until 2:00 am making the cookies I had stupidly promised to make), drinks, decorations, and all the time-consuming minutiae that goes along with that - standing in line at Meijer longer than it took me to shop, loading the car, unloading the car, hoping I didn't get ticketed, towed - or worse - while parked in front of a "Fire Lane - No Parking or Standing" sign. To be fair, I was the last and least obtrusive of 7 or 8 vehicles that were clogging this fire lane.

Once the party got underway and I got a hold of some social lubricant, the day was mostly enjoyable. Oddly though, as the last handful of us wrapped things up and started leaving to go home, I neither felt happy that I'd had a good time, nor was I even relieved to finally be alone with my thoughts again. I simply felt empty and unconnected to anyone or anything. All I could think was that there really is nothing new under the sun. This is the way my life is going to be until I die - a parade of new faces that come into my life and that I become very fond of and attached to, until it's time to leave and I have to tear myself away to go start the painful process over again somewhere else. Over and over again ad infinitum. And this is the way it's supposed to be, so I'm told. I don't like it.

So that was a vague and rambling diatribe. The seed for it was planted earlier today when an even more cantankerous friend of mine advised me to be careful what I write in my blog posts, lest it come back to bite me in the ass later on. I'm accustomed to being told what to do by this person, who I know only has my best interests at heart, but for some reason today the message really grated on me. Aside from that, there were stupid little things that didn't work out the way I had hoped today. I really wanted to talk science with my PI for a bit, but he had to leave earlier than I expected. I stupidly texted him while I was on my second or third gin/juice/pop concoction, asking if he'd be around tomorrow to discuss my project. No typical "drunk" texting - just science. Now I'm thinking that I'd really rather sleep in and stay home during the day tomorrow, especially if we are supposed to be getting snow. Driving to and from Detroit is enough of a challenge with the usual crazies zooming, drifting, and swerving all around me - I don't feel the need to up the ante with some weather event.

I thought there were more reasons for my shitty mood than what I've just outlined and maybe there are. It could simply be that I'm cranky because I'm old. And old people get tired and cranky late in the day. That must be it. I hope this blog post doesn't come back to bite me in the ass someday, but it probably will, and likely sooner than I think it should.