Talking long distance to anyone on the phone for over an hour…makes me have to poop.
Why is that?
Monthly Archive for July, 2006
If hell were a house, it would be decorated with wallpaper. Flowered wallpaper. And it’s peeling.
Wall paper is absolutely the WORST invention ever. EVER! It is ALWAYS ugly, and, unless it is put up by a professional with great care, it ALWAYS shows seams. And even if , after a few years, the corners start to come up a little, and it’s just awful. And tacky. And ugly
The only thing potentially uglier than a room done in wallpaper, is that horrible wallpaper strip that people put around the walls near the ceiling. Usually featuring ducks or geese. And hearts. *shudder*
If you have this in your home, I can do nothing but pity you. You also probably have one of those fake geese in your front yard with seasonal “outfits” that you change regularly. Seek professional help.
But ESC! You say. I LOVE the wallpaper in my dining room! I did it myself and I am SO PROUD!
Well aren’t you just FANTASTIC? So say after a few years, you decide you’re ready for a change. Dark burgandy wallpaper with green and beige paisley and flower pattern just doesn’t scream “you” anymore. NOW what do you have to do?
why…TAKE IT DOWN, of course!
Which sucks. If you had just painted your ugly dining room in the first place, all you’d have to do is go over it with another color. One afternoon and *POOF!* instant makeover. Now you have to peel and scrape and gouge and spray and peel some more and weep, because tearing down wallpaper sucks.
Or…maybe you decided to cheat and just PAINT over it. Then, years later, whatever sucker buys your house after you squeeze out one too many kids and need a bigger house to inflict the horrors of your interior design style on, they are faced with a room that LOOKS like a painted room…but has suspicious vertical seams…
And if they are stupid, like I was, they just paint over it again! In stripes! So the seams aren’t so noticable! Fucking genius!
Except now it looks REALLY bad in there, the seams are coming up, the wallpaper (some hideous rust colored stripes with flowers? fuck!) is peeling around the front door…it had to come up.
So that’s part of what I did today - ripped wallpaper out of our entranceway (I also painted baseboards in the sunroom - wheee!). I still have to get the rest of the adhesive off (i’m halfway done), which THANKFULLY scrapes off somewhat easily after a few sprays with water/vinegar solution.
I need more bacon.
I’ll say it again.
If they didn’t want you to cook and consume an entire package of bacon at once, they’d have made the package resealable.
Just kidding, we’re only cooking a few. But still…it’s a good point, right?
With one nice exception, this was just one of those days I really just should have stayed in bed.
It actually started last night on my drive home from the lab. Huh. That’s weird, this road is rarely backed up this much, this late…in the summer. Must be an accident, I shall turn around and go another way home.
I never bothered to look up what exactly happened, which is why on my drive in this morning, I was taken completely by surprise when I got almost all the way to campus to find my road completely closed off due to a water main break. Swell. That explained the backup yesterday. Everyone was diverted to alternate routes. I had to drive all the way around around to the other side of campus and come in that way…fighting traffic and crazed “OH SHIT I’M GOING TO BE LATE” commuters the whole time. The end result being that a 15 minute commute took me an hour and 45 minutes. There are other people in the lab who live north of the city, and while traffic is bad for them normally, there was some kind of accident this morning that made it extra bad. They stumbled in after me, bitching about their 2 hour commute.
I don’t wanna fucking hear it. It took me almost 2 hours, and I live 3 miles away. Today, I fucking win.
So no writing was accomplished today, either. Fanfuckingtastic.
The highlight of my day was meeting a fellow blogger! Nicole flew in to town today to attend a conference being held on my campus. WHAT ARE THE ODDS??? And she’s staying in the dorms right across the street where I work. AGAIN, WHAT ARE THE ODDS???
So we enjoyed a late lunch together where we ate entirely too much, and talked entirely too long, because on the drive back to campus, we hit rush hour traffic…compounded by the fact that they are STILL working on that water main, because it was WAY more nuts than usual.
But lunch was so nice! We really do have a lot in common: graduate student bloggers planning their weddings. Though we said we wouldn’t talk about science, of course we did for the first half hour. Because that’s what geek scientists do: bitch about how their research is sucking, their advisors are crazy, and undergrads should be sacrificed to the lab gods. Then on to limited blogland gossip, and then inevitably to wedding planning. Because get two brides-to-be in a room together, and they’ll talk about nothing but dresses and how stupidly expensive wedding veils are.
It was a nice almost-two-hour lunch that was JUST the break I needed. Means I’ll be late in the lab tonight (almost 7 now), but it was worth it. So THANKS NICOLE! IT WAS COOL MEETING YOU!!! I PROMISE I WON’T BLOG ABOUT HOW YOU SHOT THAT LEMON UNDER THE TABLE, AND THEN LATER ALMOST DRENCHED YOURSELF WITH SWEET TEA! THAT WOULD TOTALLY BE EMBARSSING! I hope you are now not traumatized by the south, our sweet tea, and po boys.
I survived my committee meeting. It was rough. It went both better and worse than I expected.
No one seemed to care about my bonehead mistake. They were satisfied with my plan to fix it. Or they were lulled by my homemade brownies, cheese popcorn, and bottles of coke zero. Always helps to bribe..err…make them COMFORTABLE.
However, my lack of writing is worriesome for them. They want me to get back to writing. Now. And also finish my lab work. I need better time management. Write a couple hours in the morning, then lab work the rest of the day. Long hours. Limit extracurricular activities. Write write write until the paper is done. They will keep tabs on me and give me deadlines, as advisor will be distracted with the move over the next few weeks. My first draft will be due Aug 15.
It is humiliating that they will be “babysitting” me. However…
I do need it. My procrastination with my writing has gotten out of hand. Advisor has been distracted by all this Duke business, and hasn’t really pushed me except for the occasional “you should probably be writing” in one breath, and then “aren’t you done with that strain construction YET??” with the next. I do much better with set deadlines and some supervision. And it’s so easy to get caught up in what I’m doing in the lab. It’s difficult to tear myself away. I SAY I will take some time in the afternoon…but then it never works out that way.
I do have to finish some labwork, though. So the next few weeks will be…ugh. A giant PUSH to get done what I need to get done.
Let’s just say that while I might still be posting, my overall presence in blogland will be minimal.
Pft! ESC, you haven’t commented on my blog in WEEKS! your presence is already minimal. I hate you, and I’m never coming back here again.
Bitch! I don’t want to read your skank-ass blog anyway!
Anyway, after the meeting (lasting over 2 hours) and then spend the rest of the day plotting out my schedule for the rest of the week, designing a new plan for ANOTHER 2d gel, and confirming a cloning strategy, I got home late, and NOT feeling like spending any time in my messy kitchen.
So Kev took me out. What a nice boy. I decided I didn’t want fancy. I didn’t want exotic. Or weird. Or different. I wanted a big, juicey, pink burger. And fries. I wanted fattening comfort food. And that’s what I got. A bacon bleu cheese burger. Cooked medium. (shut UP, I FEAR NO E. COLI!) Sooooo…very…..gooooood….
and exactly what I needed. What a nice boy I have.
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