I Am Boring (Because I Dream of Boxes)

Dr. S has gone off to fetch the Parental-Scientist Pickup Truck. I am sitting alone in an apartment full of boxes. I am too tired to wash the dishes.

Wish us luck.

Guaranteed to Raise Your Blood Pressure, Every Time

Look, kids! Stupid people still think vaccines cause autism! And their kids are getting a serious, potentially fatal, sends-you-to-hospital, totally preventable disease! Because now it's not the mercury, oh no, it's the immune challenge. Vaccines give you a fever! An unnatural fever! Then you get autism! Because little kids never get high fevers otherwise, oh no!

Gaaaaaah.

***

Baby also, I forgot to mention, measured exactly the right size. I have been mandatorily tested for a bunch of things I don't have. Including syphilis! And Rh antibodies. I am O+. Dr. S is O-. Ummmm....

***

Conversation with Dr. S:

Me: We could hire movers. I think I can go up stairs carrying stuff maybe three times in a day. And then I'll need a nap.
Dr. S: I can handle it! It's not that much stuff.
Me: Fine.

Next day:

Dr. S: Wait.... there's going to be heavy furniture to carry, right?
Me: Yes. Like that couch. And a bed. And chairs.
Dr. S: You didn't mention furniture!
Me: I thought you knew. You did know.
Dr. S: Maybe we could hire movers.
Me: Sigh.

(We're both a little stressed. He's usually not like this.)

Random Updates

• Packing: still boring. Belle has been giving us her charming company and help, though. It eases the pain. Also: still not done.
  
• Experiment: still not done. I don't want to talk about it.
• Dr. S: is from another planet, bless his heart. I want to hire some strapping young college students to move our stuff from truck to apartment. He wants to do it himself. ?????
• Dr. S's boss: is insane. No, he does NOT have time to do 'one more experiment.' That takes three full days. Because he is leaving on Sunday.
• Dr. S's boss: is also paying him in September. Half-time ('There is no way I will work for that man full time in September!' 'Yes, dear.'
• My boss: is also paying me in September. Full time.
  
• Nausea: in full force. Now on the Bad List: garlic, cold room, vinegar, canned corn, and lab sinks.
• Baby: lima-bean sized on today's Baby's First Picture ultrasound. With a little flickering heart. ('Here, see?' 'Are you sure that's not just noise?' 'Yes.').
  
• Mother-in-law: ecstatic that now she can tell everyone.
  

(Normally, we might wait longer, but... 1. we're leaving; 2. my tummy is so fat and poochy that I've already been asked twice; and 3. half my lab already knows.)

Baaaaaa (Now With Food)

Moving. Five separate people came today and wandered off with furniture. Still have a rug, coffee table, and dresser to get rid of; however, the Curbside Recycling Plan (Sign: FREE!) is amazingly effective. I once set out 78 pieces of a computer desk, without directions, and it was gone in 20 minutes. Good luck, buddy, was all I could say.

****
Here I am in need of inspiration- and dinner- and along comes a meme. Well, here I go over the cliff. I should add: I keep kosher now (so no shellfish and so on) but I didn't used to (which is why I have, in fact, eaten wild boar.) Also I'm deathly allergic to cow milk. Can I cross off all the milk things? No fair.

Rules: bold are things I've eaten, italics I have attempted and nearly retched on, and strike are things I would never put in my mouth. Here we go!

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros Mmmm. Dinner. Oh, wait, we're out of eggs. Damn.
4. Steak tartare.
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue I miss cheese. A lot.
8. Carp Makes an excellent homemade gefilte fish roll, thank you.
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush Maybe it's time for a grocery trip...
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich Are you kidding? I have never met an American who'd never tried PB&J.
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses I think so. When I was in France I lived in the Jura. We ate lots of weird cheese. (The dairy allergy met up with the terrible depression and lost, that year.)
17. Black truffle I think? I ate a LOT of stuff in France.
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes I'm from the South, people. Of course.
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream In my youth.
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries Every summer.
23. Foie gras On toast. Mmm, saturated fat.
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava Dr. S works with a bunch of Turks, and they bring me baklava all the time. It's lovely.
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. --Salted lassi-- Sweet and salty should not mix. Except in gravlax.
34. --Sauerkraut-- We hates it, precious. Naturally, Dr. S loves it.
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat No, but if I find kosher goat in Chicago, I am totally making some.
42. --Whole insects-- Treif. So treif.
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme How I love thee. Now I want a doughnut.
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi We do not approve.
53. Abalone
54. Paneer By accident, a few weeks ago.
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal Maybe? A very long time ago.
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini I miss alcohol. Not that I'm opposed to having a drink every now and again while pregnant- not at all!- but it upsets my already-iffy stomach.
58. Beer above 8% ABV.
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips Not allowed chocolate as a child. Developed a strange fondness for carob.
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads Again, I think so; I got fed lots of things in France.
63. Kaolin
64. --Currywurst--
65. --Durian--
66. Frogs’ legs Didn't really taste like chicken.
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. --Louche absinthe--
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum Weeeeelll... a kosherified version without shrimp. Still tasty!
82. Eggs Benedict Okay, now I want this for dinner.
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse I certainly hope not.
90. Criollo chocolate
91. --Spam--
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta Especially fried. With syrup.
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

60! And snake, thank you, is very treif.

Experiment? What Experiment?

Internal Dialogue:

Experiment! Right! Work!

I feel so faaaaat.

No, not that skirt. Ow. Tight. Not that one either. Dammit.

Must haul fat ass to work.

Bleh. Don't feel good. Sitting now. Still sitting. Still.... sitting....

No! Must work! Experiment! Experiment!

Pregnancy seemed like a much better idea three months ago.

Screw this. Going back to bed.

(Progress? What progress?)

Reassurance

Lest I should worry about the Beanlet's progress: today I very nearly threw up. Because the lab smelled funny.

Super-sensitive sense of smell: CHECK.

Various Lab Stupidities

Or, Lessons Learned in Flammability, Hazard, and Bad Smells

• Chloroform dissolves floor wax.
  
• But it is not flammable.
  
• Stupid techs are stupid in so, so many ways.
• To wit: Do not put your bare finger in the acrylamide.
  
• A skull-and-crossbones is not informative enough for some people. Including stupid techs.
• Never store the TCA sideways.
• Is that smell beta-mercaptoethanol or a skunk? (AKA: Use the damn hood already.)
  
• Aqua regia with too much acetone... makes metal-corroding fumes. And is very dangerous.
  
• Never wash the LiH syringe in the isopropanol/NaOH bath.
• Especially never do it twice.*
• Never let biologists** organize the fume hood. Because ethanol plus nitric acid goes BOOM.
• Never clean out the radiation room. You will, inevitably, not like what you find.
• Chicken Incidents always smell really, really, really bad.

*True story. Why yes, it did catch fire! Both times!
**e.g.: my lab. Unless said biologists know that strong acid plus volatile solvent is BAD, of course.

In Which, For A Change, Something Works

Yesterday, I did the Last Experiment. Again. (I also did it last week, the week before that, the week before that...)

And! It's really blurry. And not very convincing. And something definitely leaked into the next lane. But it looks like maybe, for once, it actually worked.

As a) I've been trying to do this for, no joke, six months and b) I really need to finish it before I leave.... this is really good. Now cross all your fingers for me that it works at least twice.

Bonus! We have an apartment. Oh, how I love efficiency. I called three days ago. Two days ago we sent an application. Yesterday they sent us a lease. A 9-month lease. Behold:


















All for 2/3 what we pay now. And underground parking, thank you very much.

The List of a Thousand Cuts is slowly, slowly getting shorter.

I work with MORONS

Someone just dumped phenol into an open box in the middle of the lab. And then was mad at me when I moved it the hell away from myself.

Fucking idiot.*

Fucking idiot biologists who never learned about toxic chemicals. And who are illiterate and unable to see the POISON symbols. Someone autoclaved phenol last year. Because it's not like it's flammable or anything.


*It gets better! He just took the box, taped it up, and put it in the hall as regular trash. Can anyone say 'toxic waste' with me now?

Gender Stereotyped, Or, But the Baby Is So Cute!

BELLE and I, out walking, meet my COMMITTEE MEMBER (male) pushing a stroller full of BABY, his SPOUSE (female), and a GRAD STUDENT (male) from my lab.

Belle and me: Cute! baby!!!!

GS and CM: [Something about doing a postdoc.]

Me to Spouse: What's the baby's name?

Spouse: L.

Me: Look at those cheeks!!

GS and CM: [Something about grant writing.]

Belle: How old is he?

Spouse: Four months today.

Me: [Playing with chubby little hands.]

GS and CM: [Something about research.]

Belle: He's adorable.

Me: He's adorable.

Spouse: Thank you.

Exeunt.

P.S. Many thanks to Aurelia and Julia. Clearly, my vitamins are eeeeevile. I feel rather better without them (but with folic acid, of course!).

In Which I Have a Bright Idea

A couple months ago, I had an inspiration. 'I am short on time,' I thought, 'and I am never going to finish.'

You may remember that I work on bricks. I have, let's say, a particular blend of clay that changes bricks' resilience. However, I don't know what it does to the structure, and I am very slow at examining structural details.

But! There is a grad student in my lab who is very good with structural examination. I've done a few, but he's done hundreds. Hence the bright idea. 'He could do it!' I thought. 'That would be faster.' So I went to him and said, if you do these five experiments, you're second author. (It's pretty good, in biology, to get a second-author paper after 3 years in grad school.) Everybody wins!

Last week I handed him a diagram of Figure 2. 'You're it,' I said.

Collaboration. It's wonderful.

(P.S. Still pregnant; 6 weeks. Still really dizzy. Doctor's appointment in 2 weeks; 'Call us if you feel really dizzy or really nauseous,' they said. Um... like ALL THE TIME? Right. Aargh.)

(P.P.S. Yes, I know their stupid little list is trying to convey, if you have ruptured-ectopic symptoms, call us right away, but seriously. How useless can you get?)

In Which I Try Not To Scream

Cherish has put up the August Scientiae! A lot of us are, apparently, in transition.

*****

Consider the city of Cold Utopia, where there are thousands of apartments. Of these, perhaps a few hundred meet conditions A-D. And of those, only fifty or so have pictures online, two-bedroom apartments (an even more necessary condition than before), and non-ghetto locations . If we are to buy a house, 3 years is the break-even point; therefore we need a 6-month lease, because postdoc fellowships are 3 years and Dr. S will know in about 6 months. We called all 50. Exactly TWO had apartments free and would give us a 6-month lease.

We send Apartment 1 an application two days after talking to them.

In between they rented the damn apartment.

Fine.

So we called Apartment 2. Wait for it... wait for it...

They want to meet us in person before renting. "There's just so much credit fraud now!" the woman said. "You never know. So we really just couldn't do it. Of course, if you come here..."

Right. I'm supposed to fly my pregnant, busy, stressed-out ass there on the off chance they'll maybe rent me an apartment. Or! Wait until we are physically there with a truck full of our worldly possessions. Because they are too moronic to a) run a credit check; b) call people we know here- or our bosses! or, hell, Payroll!- to verify that we are who we say we are and actually want to rent; c) accept pictures of us together, drivers' licenses, and a hefty check; or d) probably: use a computer. They can take a long jump off a short pier. I am not renting from crazy people who are apparently related to Ted Stevens.

On Monday Apartment 1 will tell us if they have another one available. If they don't, I guess we're not buying a house. Or something involving lease-breaking and unpleasantness. I cannot fucking believe this.

Also, I have 26 days to finish up One Last Experiment From Hell. Shoot me now.