Well, I actually got a lot done yesterday- brainstormed my proposal for the Japan thing, got some papers read and summarized for my annotated bibliography. Now I just have to continue the trend for the next three weeks...

I think we will have an Orphan Thanksgiving for people who don't have family around at the lab tomorrow. Which is also kind of silly, since I've been at the lab all week, but it will get me motivated to go to the lab, because I've realized that it's very difficult for me to get work done anywhere else.

Tags: grad school, japan, procrastination
Current Mood: cynical

The Japanese researcher replied! He thinks I can come! There are definitely still some kinks to work out, but the first hurdle is cleared! Luckily my adviser will be in today so I can talk to him. I can't believe this might actually happen. Oh I am so psyched.

Tags: grad school craziness, japan, science
Current Mood: ecstatic

So. I just hit send on a really super crazy important exciting e-mail.

Most of you probably know about my interest in going to Japan. However, what most of you probably don't know (unless you have been in my immediate vicinity sometime in the last 24-48 hours) is that the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science supports a summer program that enables graduate students to go to Japan, get a crash course in the language, culture, and research systems, as well as do research with a host scientist.

Now, of course the application (basically a full-on grant proposal, since the funding covers your travel to and from the country, some hotel stays, a research allowance to the institution that hosts you, and a stipend) is due in three weeks, right at the same time as the rest of my class stuff will be due. And of course, I haven't been working on this stuff as much as I should have, which means- cue headless chicken dance!

Still, I refuse to let complete lack of time stop me from stalking/contacting Japanese scientists, politely badgering them to host me (pictures of my best sad puppy face may be involved), and finishing the research proposal on a topic I'm planning to take a class on next semester (meaning, I know next to nothing about it right now. Yay genetics!). As of now, I remain optimistic, but just be ready for a gradual, horrifying degeneration in sanity over the next month. And yet, if this works out, it will be the coolest thing ever and totally worth the stress. Not to mention allowing me to make contacts for my future plans to take over the world do more long-term research in Japan.

The e-mail I just sent was to a scientist at the University of Hokkaido who studies rhinoceros auklets, in a way very similar to that on the Farallon islands. Here's hoping he replies, and is willing to work with me, or put me in contact with someone who is. Now that I have a letter of introduction prepared, I can send it to more people tomorrow to see who bites.

Tags: grad school craziness, japan, my life as a biologist, science
Current Mood: excited
Current Music: japanese japanese japanese

A (naive, innocent of my spaziness) guy came into Boundaries late one night this past weekend with a bargain paperback of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I clapped excitedly and told him how good it was. He replied that it reminded him of the Terry Pratchett books he had paged through. Hadn't read them, just paged through and found some bits hilarious. Now, why he didn't go out directly and read said Pratchett books is beyond me, and I proceeded to tell him so as kindly as possible. Still, we parted on good terms, me hoping that my hype of the book wouldn't outweigh his actual eventual opinion of it. As he was leaving, I smacked my forehead to realize I had forgotten to recommend the esteemed Good Omens, possibly one of the best examples of both Pratchett and Gaiman's work. I thought the story was over with, until...

...a guy came up to the reg a day or so later with the last four books in the Hitchhiker's series, and huh, he looks kind of familiar, but h- OH YEAH YOU CAME IN THE OTHER DAY, I SEE YOU ENJOYED HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY YES YES? YAAAAAY! I love it when my recommendatory (<--yup, that's officially a new word) reinforcements are correct. And this time, I didn't forget to recommend Good Omens.

Just three and a half weeks left in the semester! I've made a schedule of homework to be done so I can stay on track through exams. Not too many stranding calls, but more Borders hours, so that's good.

Going on the physical oceanography class cruise tomorrow, doing profiles of temperature and depth at different locations, as well as possibly chiseling barnacles off of a mooring. Seasickness plagued me a bit last time, so I'm eating lots of crystallized ginger, taking a bit of dramamine tonight, and going to bed pretty soon.

I finished Sandman this morning. I feel kind of sad that there are no more, although I know there are the Death mini-series to find, and I think there's a Thessaly spin-off too. Neil Gaiman does such a fantastic job weaving stories together, until you can feel sympathy for the unlikeliest people. He is a master of huge, mind-bending ideas laced into elegantly simple words. I had some problems remembering everyone's name; some characters were shown briefly at the end that hadn't been seen for five or six volumes. And while there were certain markers, sometimes it was difficult to discern exactly who it was, because the artist styles are so different between issues. However, keeping track of all those story threads is what Gaiman excels at. Fantastic series.

On one hand, I wish comics were a bit more of an accepted medium, because such cool things can be done with them that you can't do in a regular old just-words-on-a-pagebook. On the other, though, I'm glad they're still sort of fringe-y, because mass market mainstreaming might take away some of the cool ideas that come out of them.

Tags: grad school, hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, neil gaiman, sandman comics
Current Location: Monterey
Current Mood: contemplative

You will never guess what happened today.

I'm walking with a couple of my friends to the thai place near the lab after class.  We're minding our own business, chatting about fun lab stuff, and anime, and Stephen Colbert, and everything's dandy, when suddenly this battered white truck drives by and hits me with a full soda can.  On the butt.

I screeched in incoherent, mind-twisting fury as I stared at that foaming can before letting lose with a massive WHAT THE FUCK??  Because honestly, what other response could you have to that kind of sheer single-minded assholery?  The audacity of hurting someone in such a way just blew my mind.  I contemplated throwing them the finger, but I couldn't quite bring myself to give them the satisfaction- especially as K saw those jerks high-fiving through the back window, and G apparently did that favor for me, although I'd been seeing too much red to notice at the time.  Those brutes better be counting their blessings, because if I were a Spartan lady, they would be so, so dead.

The rage built up more when I couldn't stop crying.  How could I let it get to me?  It didn't even hurt- the blow glanced off, but I guess it hurt my pride more than anything, and it might have been my indignation on behalf of anyone in those peoples' lives.  Maybe even my disbelief that it had happened, and even though I'm pretty sure it wasn't personal, just general (possibly sexist) jerk-facedness, my hurt feelings.  And then I thought about what a nice time we'd been having and how in two seconds these jerkholes had screwed it up.  Which of course made me spitting mad (some more), and tearier, and angrier for being tearier. 

I sniffled the rest of the short walk, supported by my awesome friends, and a little at the restaurant.  They offered to get the food to go and head back to the lab, but I refused to allow our time to be spoiled by the arm-dragging, drooling neanderthals, so I bucked up and we had a good time (and awesome panang curry!), then went back and had our anime night.  There are now a few more Cowboy Bebop fans in the world, which is always a good thing.

So no lasting damage done, but man, I really wish I'd gotten the license plate number.  If anything like this happens to you, keep your wits about you and take the bastards in.

ETA: How could I forget about that icon? No other one could be more perfect.

Tags: cowboy bebop, food, friends, life, rants
Current Mood: shocked

This has been a socially demanding week, with a phys-oce homework and Heroes session, a taco and tye-dye party, a housewarming party, Avatar night, and the Halloween party tomorrow. My tye-dye turned out pretty well, for a first time, although I guess you'd have to work pretty hard to screw that up.

I helped carve the vert lab's submission for the pumpkin carving contest, with murre silhouettes, a neat turtle, and a really cheesy dolphin.  Pictures to come. 

I'm really excited about my Halloween costume- I'm Death from the Sandman graphic novels, and I already got to try out the costume at Borders, although people probably thought I was just some random goth chick, since it wasn't yet Halloween and no one else on the shift was dressed up.  

I haven't had a chance to go shopping too much this week, so I'm getting Thai take-out for Avatar night tonight.  We're on the next to last disk, which is unfortunate because some of our number may be gone next week on a research cruise. They were saying they could Netflix the finale, but I and most everyone else put the batz on that- if there is one disk to watch all together, the finale is it.  We'll just watch Cowboy Bebop in between or something.

Anyway, I"m proud of myself for being more social. 

Tags: avatar: the last airbender, friends, grad school, halloween
Current Location: MLML
Current Mood: chipper

In about 4 hours, I am leaving to drive down 2 hours and necropsy a dead blue whale!  The apparently juvenile whale was spotted, floating, by an MMC volunteer kayaking south of Big Sur.  It's being towed south to the nearest location that's okay with us backhoe-ing a huge decomposing carcass onto the beach.  It sounds like most of the vet people won't be there until around noon, but we have to be there early in case help is needed to haul the whale onto the beach. 

Bring on the crazy!  This kind of really cool field work is why I live to be a marine biologist, even if I am focusing on birds.  Unfortunately, our adviser has class tomorrow, and most of the lab members are at the Marine Mammal Conference in Quebec, or in the adviser's class. 

I am extremely excited, but I would be so much more excited if midterms weren't this week. 

Dear whales,

Could you maybe, like, die more conveniently next time?

Love,
A Neurotic Graduate Student/ Dead Animal Examiner/ Bookseller

Tags: grad school craziness, my awesome job, my life as a biologist, stranding coordinator
Current Mood: tired

It is the season for locally grown apples, and boy, are they good. I wish they were here year-round.  Before I had tasted them, I don't know how I lived.  They just have such a wonderful crisp taste, with none of the waxiness that comes from the artificial shine they put on imported apples. I put some in a salad with tofu marinated in garlic, red wine vinegar, and olive oil, along with parsley and walnuts and grated sharp white cheddar.  I wish I'd taken a picture, because it was gorgeous and tasted lovely. Then wheat pasta with pesto and cheese, as well.

For Avatar night this week, I broke out my landlady's huge crockpot and made potato soup with onions, leeks, carrots, and celery, and vegetable buoillion cubes.  It was great because it brought like three extra people into Avatar night, even if they couldn't stay the whole time.  I'd been craving potato soup because it's been getting chilly.  Although not as chowdery as I'd hoped, it still tasted pretty fantastic.  I'm glad that it's getting colder, because it feels like autumn (even if it doesn't look like it) and makes me think of cuddling in blankets with tea and soup.
 
Midterms are this week, so I'll be studying hard over the weekend.  Sometimes I feel like I have so much to do that I'm afraid to get out of bed in the morning, but tomorrow won't be like that because I will comfort myself with the thought of accomplishing a lot. 

Tags: adventures in cooking, grad school craziness
Current Location: Monterey
Current Mood: cheerful

( Background to the main point )To wit, this quote from Titania in Fairyland:

Tags: authors, books of magic, graphic novels, neil gaiman
Current Location: Monterey
Current Mood: thoughtful

For lab on Wednesday for the Birds, Turds, and Mammals class, we did the bird-on-a-stick project, read: My First Taxidermy.

These stuffed birds are kept in the museum as learning tools because you can see all the markings and the beak shape, although the feet are generally pretty shriveled.  The bird I chose was a Northern Fulmar, the light morph.  I was trying not to get anything too big, but it was really sandy because it was collected dead on a BeachCOMBER walk.  I have always wondered how these birds are made, and I found out. Boy, did I.

For some reason, I just can't make this humorous, so... sorry. ( Warning: The Following Passages May Be Distressing to Some People )

Sounds easy, right? Well, I was there until 3 in the morning.  Yup, that dang bird took me about 13 hours to do, counting a small 10 minute food break.  I don't even know what took me so long. I suppose I could be out of practice with the scalpel, and some people were there until 1:30 as well, but I was just moving really slow.  Luckily, the TA respected that I and the others were sticking it out and trying to do our best on it, but it was still utter and complete madness.  This may have also been because there were about 15 people and only one inexperienced (in bird skin preps, anyway) TA.  Hopefully I wrapped the feathers correctly so they don't mash in weird directions. 

More importantly, I was listening to the classic rock station in a relieved and exhausted stupor on the way home, and the Guess Who's New Mother Nature came on.  If I've heard this song before, I don't remember it, but I liked it a lot.  I'm not really sure if it was the beat or the music, or the cool overlapping parts at the end, but the whole "Mother Nature" part seemed to go really well with what I'd just been doing.  I didn't realize that this is the group that also did American Woman (until I Wikipedia'd it today).  Anyway, yay new song to play over and over.

Tags: bird on a stick, grad school, music, my life as a biologist, the guess who
Current Location: Monterey
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: New Mother Nature- The Guess Who