Evilsciencechick’s

By the time I got home today it was after 5. GAH! Too much to do!!! So I’m blogging.

The retreat was fun, though. It was at the Calvin center, and the weather was PERFECT! hot and sunny. I enjoyed a nice walk around the lake today, scaring little tadpoles in the shallows.

Last night, we just socialized and played games. The wine was FLOWING! It was weird being tipsy around church folk. Not that they’re a conservative bunch, or anything (we lamented about how, despite all of our best efforts, GA will most likely go to Bush…ack!), but you know….they’re GROWNUPS! Had a VERY entertaining conversation with two women that had young kids, and one that was older and had grown up kids. We talked about sex, pregnancy, dealing with puberty - ours and both of the mother’s daughters, who are apparently just beginning the crying about everything and the “why is my body changing? I don’t like it!!!” phase. We didn’t get to bed until well after 1, which made getting up at 7:20am VERY difficult. Especially after my roommate, a very sweet older lady who turned in early, starting snoring at around 5am.

We got a lot of work done today. We’re doing a very complicated piece on Dec 5 (you know, in honor of my birthday, of course!) , where we’re actually singing the whole service. We’ve done it before, but it’s a LOT of work! Seems like it’s coming along, though.

We ended around 3:15, and I drove straight to work. I think I did the fastest colony patching of my life.

So now the floor is clean, the last of the food is bought (except for the baguette for the leftover goat cheese, which I’ll pick up fresh tomorrow), and all that’s left is a quick wipe down of the bathroom, including installing of a new toilet seat. The old toilet seat cracked, and now pinches your butt when you sit down. (I’m inclined to believe it was a factor of cheapness, and NOT a commentary of Kevin’s or my weight. ahem.) I thought about making it part of the party theme - Beware the Evil Biting Toilet Seat of Doom! but figured my guests might not have a sense of humor about that sort of thing.

Tomorrow I’ll make the rest of the food. Yummy! Hopefully my camera batteries won’t crap out on me and I’ll be able to take many pictures. Wish you could all be there!

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just realized that after tomorrow, my template is going to look a little silly. I haven’t had time to come up with a thanksgiving theme, so I may just go back to the original. any fun theme ideas any of you would like to see?
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in the interest of animal fairness, here is a picture of my friend Brenda’s (another grad student in the lab) cat. His name is Max, and he’s sticking his tongue out at you. HA HA! Happy Halloween!

Ugh. Woke up this morning early and couldn’t fall back asleep. Got to work tired with a general feeling of all over ickiness. Headache, soreness…bleah. No amount of tylanol was doing anything for me. So I got what I could done today (slow day anyway, not much to do) and left work around 12:30.

I have a gazillion things I need to do before sunday, and not much time to do it! I have a stupid choir retreat friday night, so friday and half of saturday is lost to me. So headache and all, I decided to get some errands done. first stop, HAIRCUT!!!

Haven’t gotten my hair cut since….august maybe? my hair is fine with no discernable body to it whatsoever, so when it starts to get long, it just looks…bleah. As evidenced by the picture below.

So because I’m a big spender, I get my hair cut at Great Clips. Good because it’s cheap, bad because I don’t get the same person every time. This means I have to explain my hair likes and dislikes to a new person. And new people never think the style I’m describing is going to work. The hair by my face should be long enough to just tuck behind my ears. Then layers cut into the side, and the length angled to the back, which I like short, cut to the hairline, also layered. They all give me the same response. “shorter in the back than the front? are you sure that’s what you want?” Yes.

This guy did the same thing. and it wasn’t until he was blow drying my hair that he commented “you know, your hair really takes to this style.” duh huh.

then off to the best store in the world: target. Picked up some plates and napkins, candy, makeup to turn kevin into a zombie, a devil horns headband for me, and…heehee…a little devil costumy thing for sadie! God, I’m such a dork. but if I’m going to be a devil woman, I need my trusty devil hound by my side!!!

So now I’m home and should be cleaning and decorating. But instead I’m blogging. What is WRONG with me???

Such a slacker.

GEORGIA REPUBLICANS:what are you so worked up about? Relaaaaax. Georgia is a red state! Don’t you notice? Every time they show that red and blue map on the news, Georgia is ALWAYS red. No one is even TALKING about Georgia! Of COURSE Georgia will go for Bush. In fact, I wouldn’t even worry about it. Don’t you have something to do next tuesday? Little Bubba Jr’s got soccer practice, doesn’t he? And you have to get over to Save Rite to pick up some fat back on sale, right? So if you don’t make it to vote, it’s no big deal, right? Georgia will go for Bush with or without your vote. Stay home, and take a niiiiiice relaxing bath……

(OK, I think I’ve got them lulled into complacency.)

pssssst!!!! Georgia Democrats!!! I know you’re out there! I see many many Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers around! So, at least in atlanta, our numbers are strong. Here’s the plan: GO VOTE!!! Don’t vote early, then they might catch on to us. Hopefully, most of them will be so sure of a republican lock for GA, they won’t even show up to vote. That’s where we have to show our numbers! Most of us are in the cities, anway. And atlanta’s the biggest city in GA, right? Hopefully, Athens will go our way, too. That leaves us Macon and Savannah to contend with. Pft! Nothing. Are we gonna let MACON push us around? No Way!

So remember, VOTE! Let’s pull a fast one on the republicans. Please!!!!

What? Oh, nothing. Nothing. Just talking to myself. Go back to your hot bath. Relaaaaaxxxx…..you’re feeling sooooo sleeeppppyyyy….(don’t vote).

the weekend checklist is suffering badly. Not much checked off it of. Today we went to see Team America World Police, which is pretty damned funny. But a word of warning: if you think South Park is stupid, immature, and full of potty humor, you will NOT LIKE THIS MOVIE!!! If, however, you LOVE south park and have a functioning sense of humor, you will enjoy this movie.

After the movie I dropped $60 at PetCo for dog food, poopy pick up bags, and treats. Ouch! But the 40lb bag of dog food will last until May.

I got started on the halloween costume tonight. There was some panicking when I realized I no long had the instructions for my sewing machine. I don’t sew very often, and I’m really terrible at it.

“then WHY are you sewing your costume, ESC???”

because I’m a glutton for punishment. Shut up.

And I wasn’t sure I remembered how to set it up. I turned on the laptop to see if maybe, just maybe, the company (Euro-pro) had the manual online. And who did I get an offline message from??? Why, Blogville’s resident seamstress, Aimee, of course! She wanted to know how my sewing was going. HELP MEEEEEEEE!!!! It took some furious IM’ing, some digital pictures, and two phone calls, but somehow we managed to configure the machine so that it didn’t bunch up the thread every time I tried to stitch. Stoooopid bobbin!!!! So, THANKS AIMEE!!!! *SMOOCHES!*

Got as much done as I could tonight. I need to go buy some fabric to finish up tomorrow. I tried what I had on, and…..eh. Looks a little bunchy in the front. And it shows off my lumpiness nicely - WAH! I’ll be a lumpy devil woman!

So EVERYONE is buzzing about the upcoming Kansas City trip. Gah! A trip! That will be expensive! And I’m SO FUCKING POOR!!!! But I REALLY want to go. And not just ’cause I want to meet everyone. But also because this little childish voice in me is saying

you know if you don’t go, then from now on, everyone will be like “hey, remember that time in Kansas City? When blah blah Pup blah blah blah Kate blah blah blah a monkey???? That was hilLARious!!!!” and everyone will be all “HAHAHAHA!!! That was sooooo funny? Remember that ESC? oh yeah, YOU didn’t go.” and you will be sad and pathetic and everyone will hate you.

This is ridiculous, I know. I’m already sad and pathetic. But that’s beside the point.

I think I may be able to swing it. Round trip flights from atlanta to KC are just under $200. And if we all share hotel rooms….and hotel rooms are cheap…and if someone can get me from the airport…I MIGHT just be able to go! Yay!

Maybe.

yes. definately.

Most likely.

I’ll look into it.

ack!

mmmmm…it’s almost 1 am and I’m eating a bowl of lucky charms and watching Conan O’Brian. It doesn’t get any better. Well, yes it does, but hey - Lucky Charms! Yum!

And I just talked to Jamie for over an hour on the phone. Yay! Bloggers are real people, and they have midwesternish-chicagoesque accents! Well, she did anyway. Kevin said we sounded like a couple of teenagers - much giggling and shrieking going on. Heehee!

So in spite of the fact that I’m in a “break expensive lab equipment” phase this week (wtf??? Don’t hand me any babies), it’s been a good day.

And I hear baseball has gotten exciting lately. How nice. I think I read an article about it somewhere. Certainly I wouldn’t have found out from EVERY BLOG I’VE READ RECENTLY!!! Geez! Settle down, people! Focus! Election coming up. Very important…don’t be blinded by baseball.

That is all.

Well, the radioactivity has been played with, the E. coli cells are soaking nicely in their little DNA bath - suck up my ligation little ones…or else you will DIE WHEN I PUT YOU ON LB+AMP PLATES!!!! BWAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Ahem. Sorry about that. Evil Science mode kicking in there.

So I have nothing real to talk about, except how exciting it is that Dastard had been revealed. What a cutie! Except that he’s making a weird face in that picture. Huh.

Anyway, I’ll just ramble on for a bit…

So I mentioned before that when our kick-ass computer guy at work fixed my computer, he pimped it up with all sorts of goodies. One such goodie is Adobe Photoshop CS. (Ummmm…unless it was totally illegal for him to do that…in which case I have no idea what you’re talking about. Shut up.)

Photoshop is not the most user friendly of programs, and slogging through their beginners instructions is not fun. Much of it seems to be written in “geek,” which I am not proficient in. I’ve almost got the “Dooce effect” down, though. Hopefully I’ll have some warm and fuzzy photos of…well, Sadie to post tonight. I don’t have many pics of myself, so I can’t make myself warm and fuzzy yet!
So if anyone knows of a good photoshop tutorial site, or a book I can purchase, that will be helpful!

Also thinking about taking up crocheting. Did I spell that right? Talk about jumping on the bandwagon two years too late! but I’ve been kicking around the idea for a while now. I may know someone at church who can teach me, but I’m not sure she has the time. My evil ulterior motive for learning is that I’d like to be able to MAKE Christmas presents to save some cash. My foray into chocolate truffle production last year got mixed revues. They were tasty, but were weird and lumpy looking. So I need a new craft - quick!

Tomorrow instead of lab meeting, we’ve decided to have a morale-boosting, order-in lunch, general-discussion type meeting. And we’ll sit outside if it’s nice. Hooray! Thai food….mmmmm….panang beeeeeeef….

Everyone in the lab has been stressed and crabby lately. The strains I made two years ago have popped up with some real problems. Nothing that we would have caught, or even thought about back then. But still serious enough to affect a lot of projects going on. No one blames me, thank God! But I have to reconstruct the root strains using different methods, and that puts me back on my projects, too. I’m feeling better that at least now we KNOW for sure what the problem is, instead of just random negative speculation. THAT was stressing me out more than anything. But other people in the lab are stressed out for various reasons, and we all just need to CHILL OUT and eat Thai food. HOORAY!

This weekend I get to make my halloween costume! If it turns out nice, I’ll take a picture. If it looks like crap, I’ll deny everything. Time to dust off the sewing maching!

Happy hump day! Don’t forget to…umm….hump…something?

as we’re watching TV, a commercial for the new “farscape” miniseries comes on. Kevin makes the comment:

“that was a weird show.”

“yes, it was. I missed part of the very first season, so I was pretty confused about everything on the show.”

“like what?”

“like who were these peacekeepers, why were they evil, and why did they all have British accents.”

“…!”

“what?”

“…!”

“are you LAUGHING at me???”

“mmmmhehehehHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!!!!”

“why are you laughing at me?”

“what does it matter if they have British accents?”

“I don’t know, it just didn’t make any sense!”

“sweetie, you need to suspend your disbelief with these shows.”

“I think I suspend it enough with the whole ‘other universe’ and ‘blue aliens’ and ‘everybody speaks perfect english’ stuff. It just bothers me that the bad guys from another galaxy all together, would have of all things, a BRITISH ACCENT!”

“you don’t think a British accent could occur somewhere else?”

“no. and STOP LAUGHING AT ME, DAMMIT”

he continues to laugh, and much tickling and wrestling ensues. Then I pout a little, and get kisses to make me feel better.

It’s not that I can’t suspend reality for a movie or a book. I love sci-fi/fantasy books and movies. Terry Pratchett is one of my favorite authors, for God’s sake. But sometimes when I’m watching a show or movie of the genre, there’s just one little detail that pulls me right out. Aliens with tentacle heads? Yes. Unexplained British accent? NO!!!

It didn’t help that, during this conversation, we were watching some movie on Sci-fi network about vampires. Vampires I can deal with, but the movie seemed to be taking place in some futuristic, yet retro time. Like maybe the Nazi’s won, but not really. All the women had retro 40’s hairstyles, and all the cars looked old. But the main character was a black police detective who talked and acted very current day. So I kept asking Kevin “why are those security people wearing Russian cold-war type uniforms? ” and “why do only the vampires have that slight eastern european accent, but no one else does?” This is why we can’t watch movies together. But the movie just made no sense, even though it SEEMED like it should have made sense. I can watch a strange movie that purposely doesn’t make sense.

Is this all just me? Am I the weirdo here?

******UPDATE BELOW!!!******

I wore sandals today, defying the weather. Now my feet are cold. waaaah!

yeah yeah, cry me a river.

watched the debates last night. Same shit, new podiums. Did W answer a single question without talking about “no child left behind?” I don’t think so. How in God’s Holy Name are people voting for this guy?

I had a yogurt parfait (translation - layers of yogurt between layers of blueberry pie fillings, sprinkled with stale cake crumbs) and a C monster strawberry Odwalla from the nearby snack bar for lunch. Both had the effect of filling me up for about a half hour. I am STARVING, but I can’t go home for a while yet. So I am ruining whatever health benifits I got from lunch by drinking a cherry coke and eating doritos from the vending machines. Yeah, I have self-control.

Found this little site from BoingBoing today. It’s been added to the “amused by” links, but I thought it deserved a special mention. Also might be useful in explaining those “nocturnal emissions” to the dave.

If anyone out there knows specifically what caffeine does to DNA, I would be most interested. I’m using caffeine in a protocol to purify single stranded DNA from my preps, so I’m assuming it binds ssDNA, but can’t be sure, and can’t find a paper that will tell me. Bastards.

It’s getting to be crunch time for my halloween costume. The one I found online is sold out at EVERY SITE I LOOKED AT! again I say, bastards. So it looks like it’ll be another year of “what can I find at Goodwill?” Which is fun, too. Will try to do that this weekend
What’s everyone else going to be this year?

*****BoingBoing just posted links to the actual recordings! Click here*****

Still laptopless (no, not topless. LAPtopless). Apparently, there were more files to back up than we thought on it, and it took MD much longer than anticipated. Lots of mp3s and mpegs. Not porn mpegs. no, not at all.

So MD is putting all the fun programs back on, like office and…whatever. Again, we could have done that ourselves, but I’m saving us the aggrevation (”goddam son of a BITCH!”)

Not a whole lot of stuff going on today. Creepy and a little too good looking “robert from roche” stopped by to drop off an offer for a free nucleotide mix. Free nucleotides! How can I resist!

Good thing, because I’m going a lot of PCR lately to solve “the mystery of the misbehaving strains.” Zoinks.

Going to attempt to get a flu shot tomorrow. I have asthma, so I’ve gotten a flu shot every year since I can remember. I’ve never gotten the flu, but knowing how much my asthma craps me out every time I get sick, I don’t want to find out what would happen if I did get it. If I do manage to get one, I’ll probably feel guilty about it. A shot for me might mean someone’s sweet old grandma won’t get the shot and end up in the hospital. Ack! I can’t take the guilt!

But I will. I don’t want to get the flu, dammit! Sorry granny.

Kevin bought really good steaks on sale last week, and having them sitting in the freezer was KILLING ME! Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had steak??? I was JONESING for them. At least I think I was. What exactly is jonesing, anyway?

I did them up right: medium rare, smothered in sauteed mushrooms and onions, sprinkled with bleu cheese, with asparagus and HUGE baked potatoes on the side.

Good God am I full. I think I need to unbutton my jeans.

Ahhhhhhh…..that’s better….

Apparently, the whole of atlanta also wanted to rent “saved” last night, as the blockbuster near me, and then one where my friends live was already out of it. Beatdown on blockbuster!

So instead we watched

which was very strange, but very good. Not used to seeing Jim Carey so…quiet, and Kate Winslet so…blue haired. I think the guys even liked it, but I know for a fact that Kevin was most interested in the parts with Kirsten Dunst dancing around in her underwear. And Elijah Wood looked even gayer than he did in L of the R, if that’s possible. But in a creepy kind of way.

(apologies to all geeks there, but really! But during the whole trilogy it seemed like he and Sam were just on the verge of kissing. I kept wanting to yell out “Oh just kiss him already!” but I was afraid I’d be bludgeoned by plastic sword bearing geek elf wannabes.)

The friends brought a yummy lasagna, I made a salad, and Kevin made a cake. A nice evening with friends. No drunken debauchery, as friend is preggers. Very preggers! 7 months! Gah! My friends are all going “breeder” on me. Not me……………………………………………………………………………………yet.

Why is it that I giggle uncontrolably whenever W says “duty?”

heh heh

he just said it again.

duty…

Yeah, I’m still here. Feeling better about myself, but still swamped at work. NK and I are doing a full scale check of all the strains we’ve made. She found a lead on something that may be the cause, and if it is, that means I won’t have to start over from scratch. I’ll only have to take one or two steps back, which would be GREAT!

So I’ve just been laying low and making the rounds of blogville when I get a chance. A thousand little things have popped into my head to blog about, all of which I’ve promptly forgot. Grrr!

Here’s one I remember: I was brushing my teeth last night, and doing my usual “travel brushing,” meaning that I walk around, shutting the lights off, locking up, etc, while brushing. My allergies have been acting up lately, so suddenly, I had to sneeze! In the middle of the living room! With a tootbrush and a mouthfull of foamy Arm & Hammer With Calcium for Enamel Care! Gah!

Mad dash for the bathroom, and made it just in time to

AAAAAAHHHHHH - CHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

all over the sink and faucet. Gross. But better there than on the couch.

Ah, the weirdness of my daily life…

Here’s an interesting topic to start off the week. Also falls into the TMI category, so if you are just SICK AND TIRED of all the weird things I write about mine and Kevin’s relationship, you can stop reading now, and check out the webpage of the Scrotal Safety Commission, helpfully linked on my sidebar.

Last night I cut Kevin’s hair. I do it every other month or so with a pair of clippers. Saves him money, and it’s fun (I’m an expert now, I watched the video that came with the set!) I use a smaller set of clippers to do the trim work. And he looks pretty darned spiffy, if I do say so myself!

And while I’m at it, he lets me use the smaller set to trim his naughty bits. Nothing drastic, just the area around the “tickle-y zone.” Because he realizes that if he wants me to visit, he’s got to keep the place clean and clear. Having your nose tickled while visiting is not sexy. Also, not a good time for a giant sneeze. Ouch! I keep myself well groomed as well, because I enjoy being visited as much as he does
So here’s the question of the week for all you boys and girls out there: do you trim your hedges? And if you don’t, why not? And do you prefer that your partners trim (or wax)?

Just curious

The whole weekend in front of me. No work to be done in the lab. Kevin isn’t working. No meetings after church.

Ahhhhhhh…

The possibilities are endless. A movie? Walmart? The park? Dare I even suggest…naps?

Oh raptious joy!

AND I made pepperoni, artichoke, and roasted red pepper pizza for dinner.

Yeah, this weekend is going to be GREAT!!!