giddiness

It may just be all the sugar from the liter bottle of gatorade I drank this morning, but I am more excited and feeling more like myself than in a long time. Having Erica here helps a lot. We've known each other for so long that we just fall back into our old rhythms automatically and have spent an inordinate amount of time giggling in the past twenty four hours. It's fabulous.

relief

Since making my decision to finish with an MA in the spring life things have started looking up. I feel a million times better, especially since I'm finally coming to terms with it. The idea no longer feels quite so much like failure, though I do have my moments, Talking about it has become significantly easier, too.

Most importantly (at least in my mind) is the incredible feeling of freedom I get from time to time. Once I finish this I am no longer tied to anything, really, and I'm thinking that I may just get a job and work for a year or so, save up my money and then go to Europe for a while. Just that fantasy is enough to keep me going through the tough patches at work and given me a new motivation.

reality

No, I haven't been blogging much. I don't want what I'm going through to be real. Writing makes things real. But now I've had the help of several glasses of champagne (it's champagne Thursday and we're watching Grey's at Tim's) and I think I can write it. Because it's real. Reality...

I finally saw the finale of Grey's Anatomy. (Give me a break, I was in Rome!) And I cried. Not because of Doc dying, not when Denny died (though I was rather distraut). No, I cried when Izzy gave her monolouge.

Izzie: [to the Chief] It was me. I cut his LVAD wire. I did it, no one helped me. And now… I thought I was a surgeon, but, I can't. I thought I was a surgeon, but I am not, so I quit. [George tries to block her from walking off. She walks around him. He and Alex follow her down the stairs]

I thought I was a scientist. For the longest time I believed my destiny was a PhD and a career in scientific research. It took a few twists and turns along the way, but ultimately ended up in the same ggeneral area. And here I am starting my third year of graduate school in molecular biology and I am miserable. I am twenty-three years old and I realized I am completely miserable. There is no reason to be miserable at twenty-three. So I tried changing labs. Sent emails, snuck around behind my boss' back, prepared and gave a shit presentation, did absolutely nothing of value for at least two weeks. Everyone gave me the same advice, "Follow your science." Follow my science. There is no way to follow your science when you are at the point in your life when you are absolutely least qualified to make that decision. So I am staying where I am. In this miserable lab with a boss I neither trust nor like nor respect. And I have decided to get my M.A. and be done with it. At least for now. (Getting the master's degree means that I have a better chance of going to graduate school again if I so decide to come back to this in a few years.) So it means that for the sake of being finished in May I am giving up on earning my PhD. Giving up what I believed in. That's my reality. I am miserable and what is making me miserable is what I believed I was supposed to dedicate my life to. Reality.

So there it is. And I'm slightly drunk, but even when I look at this post tomorrow, I'm going to leave it up. I think.

rugby article

Good article written by an MD/ex-rugger that was found and posted by Wes Clark of Rugby Reader's Review. Based on my experiences it is entirely accurate. Do injuries occur? Yes, of course. However, the worst injuries any of my teammates have sustained in the time I've been playing with them have been a single broken collarbone and a concussion.

Exhausted and satisfied after my first two days working at ACL. How is it that tending bar in a VIP tent in the heat is the most fulfilling thing I've done in two years???

the other hand that always holds the line

This morning I created a bluegrass station on Pandora and have been listening to it nearly constantly since. Given my history with bluegrass I'm not entirely sure how to feel about this.

Sunrise 9.11.2006

Sunrise 9.11.2006, originally uploaded by Hull Cove.

Taken in the Philadelphia aiport this morning around 6:45AM.

It has been five years. The east coast's low grey sky was actually something of a relief this morning, a marked contrast to the brilliant blue of that deceptively gorgeous morning.

an omen

Quote of the Day:

Most advances in science come when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields.
Peter Borden

guilty pleasures

Weekend of busy nothingness... The UT football game was blistering hot. UT blew out UNT; the score was 35-7 when Chris and I left during the 3rd quarter. What was unexpected was that Chuck Norris was at the game. During the entire 2nd quarter they ran ads for his fight league on the jumbotron, including a seriously awkward 30 seconds of Chuck Norris personally speaking to the camera. Chuck Norris, awkward in front of a camera??? Plus, unless the guys standing around him on the sidelines were unusually tall, this guy is kinda short. Not what I expected with all the hype flying around.

Saturday night Wendy and Ros threw a combined birthday party. Theme: "Birthdays are such a Drag." It was the most fun I've had at a Valks party yet. More laughter than I've had the chance to experience in a long, long time and a chance to dress up. I went out and bought this fantastic purple boa to pair with my little black dress, wore way more eye make up than I ever do and slipped into my favorite heels. Heels which JJ found laying on the couch after I'd pulled them off to dance and proceeded to strut around in. They went extremely well with her cut off blue jeans. The peak of the evening, however, was the drag show. People came up with a little bit of everything, from Fancy to The Girl is Mine. If it's over the top, it's fair game. And Meg is going to be finding purple feathers all over her living room for months.

Sunday afternoon I finally got to the grocery store. Spent a ridiculous amount of time circling around because I'd forgotten my list and kept remembering things I needed. I finally get to the checkout, triple checking that I hadn't forgotten the laundry detergent or the all-important popsicles and am standing in line flipping through an US magazine (Jessica Simpson and John Mayer? Seriously?) when a manager interrupts me and tells me that my cart is fairly empty and I need to go to the express lane. Excuse me? I give her a look expressing my disbelief and she tells me that those lanes are empty and then proceeds to grab the front of my cart and walk it over to the other end of checkout herself. I am highly disappointed that I was cheated out of a rare opportunity to indulge in a bit of mental junk food.

musings

It's one of those days at work where I have the best of intentions to be highly productive. Reservations about where I am going to be in a month completely put aside, today I wanted to get stuff done. Partially I shot myself in the foot with this one by lack of ordering properly, but figuring out that I was out of one of my reagents was a small deterent; always something to be done. So instead I park myself in front of the computer, iPod headphones snugly in place, and pull up one of the multitude of bioinformatic tools available on the internet and start plugging away at one of my datasets using it. Eventually I come up with a few interesting genes and pull up their respective associated papers. This leaves me staring at a journal article on my computer screen whilst Jimmy LaFave whisks my thoughts away from what I was so recently attempting to focus on. Unfamiliar vocabulary slips through my gaze without really registering.

Lately the hours I put in at work have increased quite a bit. Nor am I shy about telling people how much I work . It's part of grad school and graduate students in the hard science fields take it in stride or generally don't make it through. It's also another thing to impress people with, on top of the usual "wow, you're in graduate school..." (Hey, these days I take what I can get.) It recently occurred to me that I actually don't mind the long hours. Not because they make me look diligent and dedicated, but because I have no reason to leave work at a decent hour. Going home to a 13 inch TV in an empty, messy apartment isn't exceptionally appealing prospect most days. Does this make me completely pathetic?