Breathing

I'm back to doing it. Thank you for the well-wishes for my meeting. A bit about committee meetings:

By committee I mean my Thesis Committee. The people who decide whether or not I will graduate. Our program requires meeting with your committee once a year so that they can haze you you can get their opinion on your work. The idea is that by gathering their input, you will have a better thesis project. Near the end of your graduate career, you have what is known as the penultimate committee meeting (the ultimate one being your defense) at which time your committee says, yes, you have done enough, you may start writing your thesis now (up until this point, it's all been lab work). Today was not the penultimate meeting. But it was the meeting just before the penultimate meeting--the pre-penultimate meeting if you will.

I had been feelling pretty good about the thing. I had been working hard and was tired, yes, but I had some solid data (which I've never had before), and it was the kind of data that you build a thesis around. Then, I stupidly did another experiment earlier this week. Dumb, dumb, dumb! I should've known the results would contradict some of my previous results. It's Murphy's Law of Labwork. Anything that can go wrong will, and at the least opportune time.

When I got my result, I freaked out. I almost started crying. I was two days away from my meeting and now I had to rewrite everything. I had, in fact, already given my committee my report which contained the erroneous data. After talking to my advisor (who thought I was getting a little too carried away), I started to realize that it wasn't as bad as I thought, but I was still up a creek with a teaspoon.

Then, I went to a baseball game.

Not because I find baseball particularly soothing, but because it was a lab event and the tickets had already been bought. So I sat and knit and tried to relax.*

I spent the entirety of yesterday putting together my presentation. I put a sign on my bench chair that said, "Do not disturb except for tea or chocolate," (we don't have offices, just the desk attached to the lab bench, and if you're sitting at your desk, people just come and talk to you). I spent hours in Powerpoint, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator. Making figures, fixing figures, putting together slides, practicing, running things past other members of the lab to see if I was being coherent. All of it. I forgot to eat lunch. I remembered around 3:00. I forgot supper and managed to find two pieces of bread to eat. I lost all track of time. Twelve hours later, I had a finished presentation. I was dead tired. John came and picked me up, and I had a bowl of cereal and a banana because I was feeling nauseous.

All of that stress for nothing.

It was fine. They liked my experiments, wasn't worried about the conflicting results and think it's reasonable for me to finish in March. Such a waste of perfectly good hysteria.

Panic

can't talk, committee meeting, feeling sick, not ready, data screwy, sunny out, wearing socks, nauseous, nauseous, must focus, they're smarter, no I know more about this than they do, but they're faculty, that doesn't matter, I can do it, I can do it, no I can't, must buy refreshments, don't have time, practice, practice, practice, husband moving to California, no must focus on meeting, tired, must graduate, must convince them I can graduate, it's okay, no it's not, pass the ativan

Well, thank God!

Imbrium posted a comment yesterday about how the snakes got on the plane. I won't reiterate it here in case someone skipped the comments yesterday because they didn't want to read a spoiler.* So, on to the next big question:

How did Samuel L. Jackson get stuck in this movie? Is he being punished?

I have to say, snakes on a plane is a pretty Bondesque way of killing someone, if you know what I mean. Wouldn't poisonous gas work just as well? Or, I don't know, a large bomb? I mean, if you can sneak anything you want on the plane, why snakes? Although, if this were a Bond film, James would probably whip out a flute and demonstrate his snake-charming skills that he learned while undercover in Egypt to lure the snakes into one of the bathrooms and lock it up. Or, Q would've conveniently equipped him with a tie-tac that, upon pressing a specific point with a pin, emits a high frequency sound capable of knocking out snakes.

Please don't mind me. I'm on the verge of sleep-deprivation induced hysteria.

Turns out that if you overwork yourself (or at least if I overwork myself), you get a little loopy. Not the good kind of loopy, like with yarn, but the bad kind, like when you start running into doorways and think it's funny (which has happened to me in the past, sadly). This morning, I was reading a Terry Pratchett book while eating breakfast and I got into a giggle fit. Now, I don't know if you're familiar with the writings of Mr. Pratchett. He's a favorite of mine, especially when life has been going rough. He writes deliciously smart satire that will make you laugh your arse off. Now, I often laugh a little while reading a Pratchett book. But, it's usually something like, "Hah!" Then I go back to reading. This morning, it was more like, "teeheehehehee" *stifle*stiffle*snort* "teeeheeeheeee, okay I'm going to stop now, heeeheeeheeeee" *lays head down on table*stifle* "teeheeeheee" *eyes start watering* "teeheeeheee, the vampire, heeeheeheee, is a photographer, heeeeheeeheee, and when the flash goes off! Heeeeeeheeeeheeeeee." Ten minutes later, I was still giggling at odd moments and John was staring at me and I know he was thinking something like, "well, she's finally gone around the bend, but I didn't think it would look quite like this."

So, I'm actually going to leave work early today, go home, take a nap, read a little more Pratchett, watch Stargate, and go to bed.



*I can't imagine this is true, but I want to be polite and not spoil anyone's movie-going experience. *snort*

Just. don't. get it.

So, not all that long ago, I saw a commercial for a movie, and thought, this movie looks like the most gawdawful thing ever, then saw it's title, Snakes on a Plane, and thought, it's so bad, they can't even come up with a better title. At least they aren't trying to trick you into thinking it's good with a clever name.

Despite this, it seems some people have gone to see it. From the knit bloggers, it has been getting solid Ds (for Dreadful). This does not surprise me in the least. Personally, I have no intention of seeing it, especially since I have a little snake phobia. But, there's one thing I want to know.

How do the snakes get on the plane?

Try as I may, I cannot think of any quasi-plausible way to get a large number of deadly snakes onto a plane. This is probably why I am a cell biologist and not a screenwriter (or a terrorist). Here are the completely ridiculous ways I've come up with.

How are we going to get this exhibit full of the 50 most lethal snakes to the National Zoo by Wed.? I know what let's do! We can send them by plane in flimsy crates that will fall apart as soon as it hits some turbulence.

Honey, how are we going to get Jimmy's lethal snake collection to our new home in California? The moving company said they won't handle them. And anyway, the poor things would starve on the way. What do you think about putting them on the plane with us? We'll just pay the fee to check extra luggage and not tell the airline what's in there. People bring their cats and dogs on planes on the time, it can't be too much of a hassle. I'm sure we can just keep them in their rubbermaid containers. Just fasten a belt around them so the lids don't accidently come off. Oh, and put an extra one around Bob's container. You know how he likes to sneak out. Naughty snake!

Okay, folks, bin Laden has given us two thumbs up for the snakes idea, so we're going to roll with it. This is going to be slightly more complicated than the exploding latte idea, but we're running out of options, people. And, anyhow, we've made them so paranoid about the carry-on luggage, nobody will even think to check the cargo! Anyone have ideas about how we're going to disguise the sounds of snakes? Yes? Lable the container Madagascan cockroaches? That's brilliant! Everybody knows they hiss and nobody will want to look at them. Right, now let's get to work on the device that will blow the lids off the containers once they're in flight.

"Hey, Frank, whadya think's in these crates?"
"They say diplomatic papers, Charlie."
"But they're hissing."
"That's probably some device that maintains a constant pressure on the documents."
"I ain't never heard of such a thing."
"Well, ya' gotta start reading the technology magazines, keep up with current events."
"But it feels like there's something moving in there, Frank."
"Oh, that's probably a device they use to help keep the crate level."
"I wouldn't think documents would have to be kept level and at constant pressure, Frank."
"They don't pay us to think, Charlie, just put the crate on the plane."

I'm dying to know how the snakes get on the plane. It's the only reason I can think of to watch the movie. But I'm not going to pay big bucks to find that out (plus, I'd have to leave before the movie's over because, I have this little snake phobia). So, if you've seen the movie, could you tell me how it's done? Please?

How did this happen?

When I first started in this lab, I was on my way into a serious depression. There were days when, if I managed to be in lab for four hours a day, that was a success. For awhile there were too many days when I didn't make it in at all. There were a couple of weeks I spent almost entirely in bed.

For the last couple of years, I've been (mostly) sane, and therefore have been in lab on a more regular basis. And, I've been able to put in 35-40 hours a week. But there has always been a certain limit to how much time I can spend in lab on any one day. It didn't matter if staying one extra hour could save me an entire day*, I just couldn't do it.

But, lately, I've been working like a complete maniac (for me, that is, there are still people in the lab who work many more hours than me). I've been in lab for 14 or more hours some days. I've spent the better parts of the last two Saturdays in lab. I've had days (like today) where I get to a certain point, an acceptable stopping point, and I'm dead tired, and I've stayed the extra couple of hours in order to save me a day. Some days, I've stayed a whole extra 4-6 hours so that I could have the data by the next day.

I used to do this a lot when I was a research tech, but I haven't had it in me for a long time. In fact, I thought I would never be able to do this kind of thing again. I had accepted the fact that I just get tired more easily than I used to and wasn't going to berate myself for not going that extra mile.

So, I'm not sure where all of this stamina is coming from. I didn't expect it. I didn't try to muster it up. I didn't sit down and have a real heart-to-heart with myself to say, "Self, you have just got to work harder." I just....started working harder. I know I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but this is one of those rare moments when I am actually amazing myself.** I'm sitting here thinking, "Damn, you're starting to kick some ass with these experiments!"

Perhaps it's because the end is in sight. Perhaps it's because I know I get to go to California as soon as all of this is done. Perhaps it's my biological clock egging me on so that I can go make babies soon. I don't know. I'm completely bewildered. The cynic in me says it will only be so long before I collapse from exhaustion, but even if I do, I'll still have gotten an amazing amount of things done in a short amount of time.


*An example of this is the following: a certain procedure takes 1-2 hours, then has to sit at least 16 hours before the experiment can continue. If I stay the 1-2 hours to do it, I can pick it up again sometime the next day and continue on. If I don't, then it will take me an entire day longer to do the experiment because no matter what, I have to wait those 16 hours.

**Generally speaking, I am my own worst critic (as many people are). Accomplishments that would have me saying congratulations and patting people on the back are nothing special if I am the one who did them. This is One of Those Things I Need to Work On.

Behold the power of The Block

As I mentioned on a previous post, my DNA scarf was looking a little rumpled around the edges. So, before I got any further along, I decided to block it to make sure the problem would go away with blocking.

Here is a pre-blocking picture:


Here it is post-blocking:


I now pronounce blocking to be a Good Thing.

So, I decided to go ahead and continue working on it while watching Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis last night. I was able to do about half of a pattern repeat (the above picture is one pattern repeat, just to give you an idea). I probably could've done more, but the TV was taking a lot of my attention. The fact that I am able to work on it at all watching TV is due to the fact that I regraphed the pattern:


The arrows on the post-it note were key to stopping all of the tinking back; I kept reading the graph from right to left for every line. If you are at all familiar with graphs, you know that you read row 1 right to left then row2 left to right and so on. The post-it note itself is an indispensible tool for graphs. Without it, I have a hard time focusing my attention on the line I'm actually on. I thought I was really clever when I first discovered this, then I found out that this is a pretty universal method for reading graphs.

I continue to be pleased with the way the scarf is coming along. In the process, I have uncovered another one of the positive side effects of sock knitting. When I knit socks, I use fingering weight yarn and size 1 or size 2 needles and I have around 70 stitches per round per sock and I knit both socks at once. So, I'm used to rounds taking awhile. Not so with 40-stitch rows of worsted weight yarn. Those things just fly by! I feel like I'm zipping back and forth, especially the wrong side rows where there's no cabling. Plus the yarn itself is so soft and smooth. It feels great on my hands while I'm knitting.

One thing I had been worried about was whether I would have enough yarn (even though I had done the math and even bought one more ball than I thought needed), but I'm no longer worried about that. The scarf is seaman style, meaning it's just ribbing around the neck. Each of the sides is composed of 5 pattern repeats. I bought six balls I'm definitely going to get at least 2 repeats out of the first ball of yarn, so I'm pretty sure I will be fine.

In Other News, we found out we got the apartment we wanted! Yay!!! Now, we are trying to find a good moving company. If anyone else has moved across the country and has any words of wisdom please share them!

A day in the life of Elisabeth

ETA an important afternoon event that somehow slipped my mind!

7:45am: Wake, shower, pray that the janitor will deal with the bathtub drain sometime before we have have to stop taking showers and start taking baths instead, eat breakfast.

8:30am: Start bikeride to campus. Nearly run over the Rev. Al Sharpton as he comes out of the dry cleaners (yes, he lives somewhere near me, either that, or there is someone out there trying to be his clone).

8:40am: Get to lab. Read email. Start experiments. Read more email.

10:45am: Leave for psychiatrist appointment. Discuss pregnancy and psychiatric meds (for the future, guys, don't be getting your hopes up). Discuss finding world class psychiastrist specializing in the above in LA.

12:00pm: Get back to lab. Throw out experiment because cells aren't growing. Curse the nature of biology. Sit around wondering if I have time to get lunch before next doctor's appt. Look up doctors who specialize in depressed pregnant women because the wait lists for new patients are often quite long, so in order to see a doctor in April, I might have to make the appt. now. Look up Caltech health plan. Realize none of the doctors I found are on the plan.

1:00pm: Female doctor's appt. (I don't want to talk about it, but I left feeling like a dumbass.) Curse the nature of biology.

2:00pm: Continue to feel like a dumbass. Try to pee in a cup.

2:30pm: Finally pee in cup. Take back over to hospital. Everything normal. Feel that it was all worth it. *snort*

2:45pm: Wonder if I am ever going to get any work done today. Still feeling like a dumbass. Can't concentrate on labwork.

3:00pm: Sister calls. She's getting married! Next year in October. Wonder how it is I could be living in Chicago for the last 10 years (a mere 7 hour drive to my mother's) and then the moment I move to California, two of my three siblings set wedding dates that force me to fly back to Iowa only months apart (although in Meghan's defense, when I moved to Chicago, she was 10; oh, and the other brother has bought the ring, he's just waiting for the right moment--but shhhh....don't tell his girlfriend!).

3:45pm: Labwork. Right. Going to get around to that.

4:00pm: Set up some cultures and leave. Ride bike home without almost running over any celebrities.

4:10pm: Take nap.

7:30pm: Wake from nap. Go watch TV.

7:50pm: Go buy pint of Blue Bunny Cookies 'n Cream ice cream. Eat said pint for supper.

8:00pm: Watch Eureka. Think about how the characters are so unlike scientists and still so like scientists. Wish that I lived in a talking house with a really great bed.

9:00pm: Talk to John about health plans, specialists, and money. Argue merits of expensive health plan that will pay partial out of network charges vs nonexpensive health plan that won't pay out of network. Wonder how much it costs to see superspecialized doctor and how often I would have to see said doctor. Blow up at John when he suggests maybe we should wait longer before having a child.

Him: We don't want to go into debt to have a child!
Me: I'm 32, we can't wait much longer!
Him: I'm just saying maybe we should wait until I have a better paying job!
Me: My eggs are old! Every year we wait it'll be harder for me to conceive and more chance that there will be birth defects!
Him: It's just that maybe now is not the best time!
Me: There is never going to be a best time! As soon as I graduate we are going to have a baby and that's final!!!

9:30pm: Go into bedroom with laptop and continue mad hunt for psychiatrists who specialize in depression and pregnancy in the less expensive Caltech health plan.

10:00pm: Start losing hope I will find such person. Email current psychiatrist to ask about the necessity of having a superstar psychiatrist.* John comes in and appologizes for being crazy about money.

10:30pm: Read knitting blogs.

10:45pm: Apply antibiotic cream (please don't ask where). Tell John I hate being a woman.

11:00pm: Go to bed.

11:15pm: Resolve that if John piles the blankets on me one more time, I will go sleep in the living room.

11:30pm: Fall asleep.

*sigh*



*It's not, btw. The medications I'm on are so benign, it wouldn't cause a problem. I should just find someone I like that is covered by my insurance and keep in mind the names of the superstars in case something goes horribly awry.

Mondays and Mutagenesis

Have you ever noticed that the more you have to do, the less inclined you feel towards doing it? While, in theory, I should be busily tinkering with experiments and writing in my lab notebooks (because, you know, I want to graduate soon), I have spent a huge portion of the day checking my email (despite the fact that I haven't had any new messages in the last couple of hours) and reading blogs. And then, when I ran out of blogs to read, I looked for more. Then, I went to get some tea from my new favorite beverage kiosk, Argo, in the Center for Advanced Medicine which is down the street. This despite the fact that I have a perfectly good cup of licorice mint tea on my desk already. And I bought a whoopie pie (frosting sandwiched between chocolate cakey cookies covered in chocolate) despite the fact that I had just eaten lunch and was not at all hungry.

This is the usual Monday routine. Absolutely nothing of importance gets done. Well, I did schedule a medical appointment.* But that's it. I feel (and I think I'm not alone on this) that Mondays really serve as a buffer between the weekend and the rest of the week. It's a day to ease back into the idea of working. Nothing too important should be done because it's bound to be screwed up in such a way that will take you the rest of the week to resolve.

In knitting news, I have done one pattern repeat on the DNA scarf. Which means I have enough to show you a picture in the near future. I have a small concern, however. The bottom seed stitch border does not lay flat. It bulges in the areas that have the beginnings of the helix cables. This is something that I dearly hope will come out in blocking. One approach to this little glitch would be to continue to pray it will come out right, knit the rest of the scarf, say a rosary, and block the hell out of it (in order to get the hell out of it, perhaps I should also wash it in holy water, too?). Another approach (and one that is slightly more sane, I think), is to block what I have and see if, indeed, the problem can be resolved by blocking because, while I have already spent some significant time on it, I have not yet devoted months of my life to it. Since, I am working hard on avoiding unnecessary denial, I think I will choose the latter option. I will try to remember to post before and after pictures for you guys.

Otherwise, I'm quite pleased how the scarf is coming out. The fabric has a nice drape (although that may be why I'm getting the irregularity at the bottom edge--perhaps the pattern needs a stiffer yarn), feels soft, and the cable is coming out well. However, I do make a lousy polymerase. I can't tell you how many times I had to rip out a couple of rows and reknit them. Even so, there is still a slight mutation at the very beginning. This does not bother me in the slightest, I am calling it allelic variation. (Sorry guys, the biologist in me can't resist). I do think one of the reasons I'm able to catch the mistakes relatively quickly is because I know what DNA should look like and if it doesn't look like that, I've done something wrong somewhere.

Today's biology lesson was provided by Elisabeth, a graduate student who is more interested in education than research, and Wikipedia.



*The appointment was about a "female issue," so I called student health and asked to have an appointment with my favorite nurse practitioner. "She's gone until Sept. 6," they say. I try to make an appointment with my second favorite nurse practitioner, "She's gone until Aug. 31," they say. At this point, I say (and I'm using my actual quote here), "Well, hell, just give me whoever's available that's a woman." The appointment specialist found this hysterical and kept giggling through the rest of the phone call. I'm glad I could brighten someone's day, even if it was at the expense of my own discomfort.

Enough with the bitching

It seems like everytime I post these days, it's to complain. So, here are 10 things I'm thankful for:

1. I will be finishing grad school sometime in the next school year.
2. I have a husband who loves me (and I love him).
3. I have the greatest kitty in the world.
4. I can knit and that helps soothe me.
5. The DNA scarf is going well so far.
6. I am moving to a sunny place and that will certainly help my seasonal affective disorder.
7. My bedroom is air-conditioned.
8. My boss is understanding and helpful.
9. I like most of the people I work with.
10. I am quasi-mentally stable (hey, that's more than I could say not that long ago).
11. My experiments are actually working fairly well. (Hey! One more thing that I was aiming for! Bonus!)

Yes, I have started my DNA scarf. I haven't gotten very far. Imagine 8 rows of seed stitch in camel colored wool and you pretty much have it. I started on the cable part and had to stop so that I could chart out the whole thing. The DNA cable is charted but I was having a hard time keeping track of the flanking mini-cable rows which were not charted. Overall, though, I'm liking it. The yarn is soft and a joy to work with. And it has fabulous stitch definition so the cable is going to look terrific.

Back in Chicago

And hating every minute of it.

Honestly, if I wasn't a few months away from finishing my PhD, I would've said screw it, let's just stay in Pasadena and send for our stuff.

We got in really late on Wed. and went straight to the hotel. We started the apt. hunting bright and early on Thurs. Half of the places we went to couldn't show us an apt. because the apt. was still occupied. The other half showed us an empty apt. identical to the one that we would be getting, but they couldn't show us the actual one we'd be getting because it was occupied. It seemed odd to us because we've moved a couple of times in Chicago and every time, the manager has showed our apt. to people while we were still living in it. The last apt. we saw on Thurs. was the one that we liked the best. They wouldn't let us take any pictures, but this website has pictures of the outside. We are going with a one bedroom, one bathroom that is more expensive than our current two bedroom, two bathroom with separate dining room and sun rooms.

*sigh*

Still, I'm excited about it because the apt. is nice with new appliances and a gas fireplace and a patio. And it's within blocks both of Caltech and a major shopping area, as well as only a few blocks away from this:

A lovely yarn store called Elegance. We stopped in and had a chat with the owner who was very friendly and told us all about the events in the area and about their Wed. night knitting group. She offered John a chair and even managed to include him in the conversation.

And then, of course, we're only a short drive from this:


But, really, I'm more excited about the shopping area. You'd have to be familiar with my current neighborhood to understand why. Hyde Park has almost nothing to do. There are a few restaurants (that is, there are an absurd number of Thai food places and a smattering of other things), but almost no shopping, there's no movie theater, there are no cafes, there's pretty much nothing. To get to anything of interest, you either have to drive and pay around $10 for parking (if you're lucky), or you have to take public transportation. It takes anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes to get downtown and that's not even where the fun stuff is. If I wanted to do anything north of downtown and was going to take public transit, I'd leave a good hour or more for transit time. In Pasadena, everything is right near where we want to live. Parking is cheap ($5 or $6 maximum on the parking garages! in Chicago, it's $20 maximum). But, for a lot of things, we wouldn't even have to drive.

I've been in Chicago for 10 years now, and I'm sick to death of it. In fact, I hate it. I might not feel that strongly about it if I could live in another neighborhood, but with grad school being in Hyde Park, I have to live here. Prior to grad school, I worked at the University, so I had to live here.

I'm from Iowa. I'm used to having nothing to do (though, it was easier and cheaper to go to the movies at least). But having nothing to do is not the only problem. The buses are loud and they go right outside our windows. Our window sills are covered in more grime that I ever saw on any window in Iowa even if the sill had not been cleaned in 10 years. And this is only a few months worth. I can't keep up with it. It seems fruitless anyway. And the crime. My roommate and his boyfriend were mugged at gunpoint a few weeks ago. I would say half the people I know have been a victim of a crime. Being held up at gunpoint is not uncommon. And just last week at 6am, two women were accosted and "fondled" by a man not two blocks from my workplace.

In short, Hyde Park has all of the disadvantages of living in the city and none of the advantages. I cannot wait to get out of this hellhole.

But, to continue on with the Pasadena trip, on Friday, having found a place we liked, we wandered around a bit during the day going to a children's museum and the yarn store, and had a nice dinner. Sat., we left and got back ridiculously late in Chicago due to airline issues.

We have submitted our application so the management company can see how much we owe in student loans and check to see if we're serial killers or anything like that. I don't anticipate having any problems (juvenile records are sealed, right? j/k), but I'm still nervous. We should know by the end of the week and then I will feel better.

An embarassing moment leads to S.E.X.

Monday evening is supposed to be Stitch 'n Bitch night. However, last week, the Yarn Harlot was in town (more on that in another post), and this week, Arcadia Knitting was having a Meet the Bloggers party. How could I resist this opportunity to meet Franklin?

Boy am I glad I went because in addition to meeting the delightful and charming Mr. Habit, I came home with this:


I won this set of goodies by being brave enough to tell a room full of knitters my most embarassing email story. I got a signed original Franklin Habit drawing:

Knit Two Together

Which would've been more than enough, but I also got: a signed copy of The Happy Hooker, a sparkly addi crochet hook, two skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted, and a gift certificate for the store.

What? You want to hear the embarassing email story? Well, alright. Never say I don't love my readers.

I was a sophomore at Boston U and I was emailing a friend in Iowa who had recently started a relationship and had commented that he found the array of condom choices bewildering. So, I very helpfully wrote him a review of the condoms I had some, ahem, experience with, full of reasons why I liked or disliked them. Then, I sent it to the university bulletin board instead of to him. At the time, the bulletin board was being used as a sort of chatty newsgroup for a large number of people at the university, including the vast majority of my friends.

The shop owners picked their top three choices and then read them to the crowd. The one with the most applause won. And, well, it's hard to compete with sending your condom preferences to the entire university. Who knew that one day that moment of horror would lead to a Stash Enhancing eXperience? When I got home and told my husband I had won all of the above with an embarassing email story he said, "The condom post?" (Interesting aside: we weren't dating when I wrote that email).

Everyone who attended got a goodie bag:


I got some Fiesta ribbon yarn, a sock pattern, several yarn samples, a list of classes, and an invite to their first yarn swap. Everyone pretty much got the same thing although which yarn and which pattern you got varied.

I also bought these (not with my gift certificate, I'm saving that for buying a decadent yarn for something for myself):


When these guys grow up, they will be a DNA scarf for my advisor which I plan to give him after I pass my thesis defense. I'm going to try to make scarves for the rest of my thesis committee members, too, but we'll see if I actually am able to get four scarves done in between now and then (whenever "then" is--hopefully sometime this winter).

Well, today I'm off to California to look for an apartment. Wish me luck!

Freak show

So, you really want to know what being double-jointed in your thumbs looks like, huh?



Well, this is what happens when I move my thumb at the point where it connects with the rest of my hand. I don't think the picture quite shows you the oddity of it.











This is what most people's hands look like when they try to do what I did above. They can't make the thumb-hand joint jut out on its own, the whole thing moves together.





Which is why I have to wear these stupid things. The plastic keeps my thumb from jutting out like that. I have one for each hand. The little gloves are supposed to keep the braces from rubbing my hands raw and are these flimsy things that are difficult to wash. One of these days, I'll get around to knitting myself a pair that will be vastly superior to these. I'm going to use some short-row shaping to make the space between my thumb and my index finger higher than on the pinky side of my hand.

Some people charge admission for these things, but I'm letting you view my little oddity for free! Can you feel the love?

Right then. Moving on to knitting.

In the last couple of weeks, I have completed the following:

Watermelon socks for afghans for Afghans. They recently had a drive for items for school children and I made a hat, but then they sent out a plea for anything but hats for older children, so I made a pair of socks that would fit me. These are made from Cascade 220 and I used Wendy's Generic Toe-up sock pattern--my first toe-up socks. I gotta say, I liked it a lot. They came out quite nice and should be very warm. I'm not sure they have watermelons in Afghanistan, so I'm not sure they'll understand the color scheme, but that's okay.

I also made these:

(pen included for scale)

An aquaintance from college just had a baby; a girl after already having two boys. I decided she needed something a little girly (but not frilly). So, I made this Cascade Fixation hat and socks set in "Sunset" (I think that's the name of the color). The striping is actually more subtle than this picture indicates. They're soft and stretchy and I hope they fit properly.

I'm still working on my roommate's socks. I have 5 inches done on the foot--only 6 more to go! I have also picked up a baby cardigan that I had set aside awhile back. My husband's cousins are expecting their first baby in March. Too early to know if it's a boy or a girl, yet. I haven't decided if the cardigan would be suitably boyish for the son of a military man, if they do have a boy. Might finish this one and start something else, just in case.

Evolution has failed me

I'm double jointed at the base of my thumbs. Double-jointed is a funny term, but what it basically means is that the ligaments in my thumbs are loose enough that my thumbs constantly dislocate themselves. Since this is not at all painful under normal circumstances, I was completely unaware that my thumbs were different from anyone else's until I was in my last year as a research tech (about seven years ago) when I started to have symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome. Since I was a research tech in cell biology and using a micropipetter was part of my everday existence, I was not surprised to get a repetitive motion injury. And, since it seemed to be getting worse, my doctor sent me to the orthopedic hand surgeon to get steroid injections, and he got to the root of the problem. It wasn't CTS at all, it was my thumbs. I will never forget him coming in with two or three residents (a resident saw me first but couldn't identify the source of my problem) and then sitting there moving my fingers and my thumbs into odd positions until he finally said, "there, look at that!" The residents were now staring at my hand with a sort of sick fascination. I looked down at the position he had pushed my thumb into and asked, "what's wrong with that?" To which one of the residents replied, in a tone of revulsion, "normal people's thumbs don't do that!"

It was then explained to me that I had "loose ligaments" in my thumbs, that my thumbs constantly dislocated themselves, and because I was over-using my thumbs (pipetting--as though I had any choice about that!), I had finally irritated a nearby nerve and that was mimicking CTS. I got braces made especially for my thumbs (to keep them from dislocating themselves) and had to wear them everyday (but not at night, fortunately) and after a few months, things were better, although I was still careful and had started using my pipet with my index finger instead of my thumb. The doctor had told me I should probably eventually have surgery in which they would, "use a scalpel to rough up the ligaments," in my thumbs. *shudder* No thank you. That just sounds a little too scary for me.

So, everything continued just fine until about two weeks ago when I had a flare-up. Suddenly, I was back to wearing those damn braces and everything I did irritated my thumbs. Do you know how hard it is to do anything productive and not use your thumbs? I began to envy monkeys with their non-opposable thumbs.

The only thing that did not hurt was knitting. It was a mystery why until I really looked at my hands and saw that I held my needles in such a way that my thumbs were in their sockets exactly the way they were supposed to be. I think this may be God's way of telling me to quit science and knit for a living.

For your viewing pleasure....

.....The Bolero!!!




I finished weaving in the ends over the weekend and was able to wear it to stitch 'n bitch on Monday night. I think it came out pretty well! This is my first ever knitted garment. Oh, I've knit socks and hats and scarves but never something with sleeves and shaping and, well, size requirements.

Observation

While my mother was in town, J took us up to Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin


to see the lab he works in up there. The Observatory is no longer used for research, but the labs are functional (they use telescopes in other parts of the world).

Yerkes is home to the world's largest refracting telescope.


John is standing near the base to give you an idea of the scale. The white tube-like thing is the telescope. Only half of it is in the picture. The red wheels are part of the mechanism that moves the telescope up and down. The floor that J is standing on moves up and down so that you can actually reach the eyepiece.

After dinner, we waited for the skies to clear (it had rained), and headed back to Yerkes at 10:45 pm. This was the start of the most exciting part of the trip. Although we were not able to use the telescope pictured above (only the director is qualified to use it), we got to use another one of the telescopes and did some honest-to-goodness observing! We saw several nebulae and Jupiter. Jupiter looked something like this (images taken with a telescope at Yerkes--click on the first image). We also saw the four largest moons. I swear to God, it looked just like a picture out of a textbook. There were some high school teachers there using the scope--they had been there for a week-long workshop--but we just jumped right in ("step aside, real astrophysicist with his wife and mother-in-law here"). They were a little confused because they didn't know who John was, but we just shared the scope and everything worked out okay. The floor also moved up and down in this dome (the scope, while not nearly as big as the one pictured above, was still quite big and depending on what you had it pointed at and where the floor was, the eyepiece might be several feet over your head, or at your knees). I even got to put the coordinates in to move the scope (accompanied by a lot of warning to not let it hit my head) and I moved the floor and everything! Mom was absolutely thrilled, too, and we had a fabulous time.

We went to the hotel around 12:30 am and hit the hay and didn't get up until after 9 am (my mother normally goes to bed around 8pm and gets up at either 2am or 4 am, depending on whether she has to work overtime; so this was pretty crazy scheduling for her). Then, we headed back to Chicago. It was beyond worth it to go up there. Yerkes is a very famous observatory, so it was worth it historically, plus we got to use the scope which is probably a once in a lifetime experience, and to top it off, the University has just sold Yerkes and the land around it to a developer. While the observatory will remain on the site, if the sale actually goes through (and there's no guarantee about that because the town may block it) the University will no longer have control over the observatory and we wouldn't know someone who could just let us go in and fiddle around with the thing.

This whole experience has made me want to buy a piece of land in the middle of nowhere, a decent, but affordable telescope, and do some casual observing as a hobby with J (okay, so it may be a little weird for an astrophysicist to have astronomy as a hobby, but really, he doesn't get much of a chance to just point a scope at cool things in the sky and look at them). Maybe someday.....

I'm alive

Just busy.

Last week, my mother was here and took the week off work and we did a few tourist things and she taught me how to sew. Over the weekend, I slept. This week, it's been a combination of trying to get work done and still being tired, so still sleeping a lot. Hrmph. Apparently, my body doesn't understand that after a week off, one needs to work like mad to catch up on all the stuff one could've been doing if one had been at work. Oh, and I had some friends over on the fourth and we played with some sparklers and had margaritas (a nice patriotic drink) and ate hamburgers and brats and blueberry/peach cobbler. Yum.

I'd be more interesting if I had more energy. Really. But for now, I'm just letting you know I'm still alive. ;)

California here I come

Thank you all for your congrats. The other night, I was too excited (and exhausted) to tell you what this little bit of data means to me, so I thought I'd take a moment to do so now.

Grad school has really been a rough road for me (as it is for most people). In addition to all of the trials and tribulations that come with working in lab, I also had to deal with my husband living in another state for three years (though he was able to come home on weekends) and a crippling depression. Additionally, I got stuck finishing up the work of another grad student who left before she really should have and so much of my data is already published in a paper where I am not the first author (in my field, there are often several authors on a journal article). This is a problem because an unofficial criteria for graduating is having a first author paper. Now, of course, some people get to leave before then (such as the student whose work I got stuck doing), but so many professors have gotten burned by this, they are becoming very reluctant to let people do it.

So, until about two days ago, I was finishing my 6th year of grad school and I had absolutely no data that could be put in a paper of my own. And no idea if I would be getting some anytime soon.

We're going to get to Calif. soon, I promise.

In the meantime, NASA, in its infinite wisdom, decided to not give the project SOFIA any money for the next fiscal year (btw, the technical hurdles mentioned by that press release were nonexistant). This was the project that was going to be paying my husband starting in August until I graduated. They have already spent half a billion dollars (yes, that's billion, with a b) on this project and they were effectively cancelling it. It was a project for a telescope on an airplane. The airplane had been built and modified to fit the telescope. The telescope was in its final stages of development. Several instruments that were to accompany the telescope (one of which J was working on) were nearing completion. And now it is all stopped. In fact, they stopped giving them money for the current fiscal year.

Now, I could rant about the stupidity of this and the workings of the federal government and how this country is going to go to hell in a handbasket if we keep cutting funding for basic research, but that's immaterial at this point. The important thing is that J needed a new job. And that job was not going to be in Chicago. He was able to get funding through Sept. and then he heads to Pasadena to work with a group at Caltech. So, despite our best efforts, we are going to be separated yet again.

This made my situation even more desperate. I really need to graduate, but I had no data. I am determined to graduate by next Feb. at the latest, but yet, I had no data. I had no idea how I was going to accomplish this. Whenever I sat down to think about it, I got panicky. So, I tried to stop thinking about it.

On top of this, six years is starting to get old for a grad student in my department at my school. They frown upon you staying longer than that. They stop increasing your stipend every year. Your advisor starts thinking of you as a burden. Your committee starts pushing you to finish up and get out. Except I had nothing to finish because I hadn't gotten my start. This also made me panicky. Again, I tried to not think about it.

Then, finally, this week, I got a Result. Something I can build a paper around. Something that is going to let me get out of here and move to California where it is sunny year round (important because I have Seasonal Affective Disorder) and where my husband will be starting in October. This is what I've been waiting for all of these years.

I'm a realist, though. I know this could still go horribly awry. It wouldn't be the first time such has happened to a graduate student. But, now, I have hope. Hope that this will all end up okay and I won't be forced to leave without my PhD because after 6 years, I still didn't have a real project. Hope that I won't be separated from my husband for another 3 years (and this time, he wouldn't be coming home on weekends). Hope that I will eventually be done with research and I never have to look at a pipet again (well, at least for awhile--I gotta tell ya', after all of this, I'm sick of research).

So, that's what this is all about. That is why I am celebrating (a little, quietly, so that the lab work doesn't hear me and think that I'm getting a little too uppity and decide to stop working out of spite).

I have a thesis project!

My experiment worked! It really worked! I have a publishable result! I really will graduate sometime in the next year! I'd been hoping, dreaming, wishing it were true, but now it really is true. Hooray!

Busy weekend

In addition to my lakeside trek this past weekend, I also bought a bike. I live about a 30 minute walk from campus and have long thought a bike would be a better way to go back and forth. So, on Saturday, I went to Working Bikes to buy a used bike. My criteria were as follows:

1. Cheap
2. Can ride while wearing a dress or skirt
3. Large seat
4. Nobody would want to steal it

I ended up with the bike above (we speculate it may be a 1960s Raleigh) which also has a rack on the front and a headlight that currently doesn't seem to work, but my astrophysicist hubby is going to deal with that.

For the past two days, I have been riding my bike to campus and I can't tell you how much I love it--the freedom! Today, I went home for lunch and took a little nap and came back. I can go back and forth as much as I want! The only thing left to do is buy a basket for the back so I can use it to go to the grocery store.

What's the Point?

This past Saturday morning, I decided to take the trekking socks (colorway 104, by the way) for a little walk to the lake. This was prompted by the fact that it was a billion degrees in the apartment, and I knew it would be cooler by the lake.

I live about two blocks from the lake in Hyde Park, home of the lakeshore park known as Promontory Point (or, for Hyde Parkers, the Point). In between Hyde Park and the lake, however, is Highway 41, better known as Lake Shore Drive. It's a beautiful drive, but it does mean that when you are at the Point, you can hear all of the cars drive by so you can never forget you are in the city.


To get across LSD, the city of Chicago has thoughtfully made pedestrian underpasses like this one.






At the Point, there's a really great view of the Chicago skyline. I'm not all that interested in architecture, but I think Chicago has a fabulous skyline. It's all laid out in a line jutting off into the lake and the buildings have a nice variety of heights and shapes. This picture is pretty hazy because of all of the humidity.





If you've never seen one of the Great Lakes, you probably have no idea how big they really are. On the other side of this lake is Michigan, but no matter how hard you try, you can't see it from here. When the wind is really strong, the water gets very choppy and crashes up against the rocks on the shore in large waves. Those of you who are used to the ocean (especially the Pacific) probably scoff at the idea that a lake could have waves that are measurable, but they are pretty impressive to this Iowa girl.

I sat down on one of the rocks by the shore, dangled my legs over the edge and started knitting. There was a delicious breeze blowing on me and I didn't even mind working with wool. The water is pretty clear right now, which means that it is still cold. When the water heats up, more things can grow in it and it becomes cloudy.


Even though the water was churning a bit around the rocks, the socks were unafraid because they are superwash.

The shoreline is pretty unique in this area. Sandstone boulders have been laid out so that they resemble steps.
The steps are getting pretty uneven, and slightly dangerous in some areas. For this reason, the city wanted to redo the shoreline at the Point. It was a huge to-do because the city wanted to shut down the entire Point for two years which would've denied Hyde Parkers our shoreline, plus the huge park that is the mecca of every picnicker in the area. Additionally, they wanted to get rid of the sandstone boulders altogether and make it into sterile, white concrete. The citizens of Hyde Park were up in arms about all of this and made a huge stink about it. The city and the Hyde Parkers have been in negotiations about it ever since. I think it's been 7 or 8 years now. In the meantime, we continue to enjoy the Point the way that it is.

As for the socks, I am doing one of the zigzag patterns for self-striping socks from Sensational Knitted Socks. I finished the garter-stitch cuff and started the pattern, but unfortunately discovered that one of my socks has two extra stitches. This brings up one of the disadvantages of knitting two socks on one circular needle. If you have to tink back on one sock, you almost always have to tink back on the other, too (although, I was un-purling, so would that be lrupping?). And, not wanting to go through the hell that was casting on again, I decided to decrease by two stitches on the one sock. But, now I'm not so sure how I feel about that and may end up ripping it all back and starting over. With a different pattern. I don't know. We'll see how I feel about it the next time I bring the socks out.