Conference life
The best thing about these conferences (particularly this year)? Hanging out informally with co-workers who I wasn't as close friends with before and having fun. :) I must say, thus far I am really enjoying the downtime with everyone. The talks? Entirely secondary.
About the speed dating...
Well, I'm up to 3/3 as far as getting replies from my speed dating matches. As the other girl from our lab at the conference pointed out...speed dating is very high yield.
The first is a grad student here at Harvard in the Computer Science/Applied Engineering department. When one finds out about their matches, they get links to their matches profiles and pictures. Other friends (who unlike JP, didn't meet them in person) thinks that he is the cutest from his profile picture. We've been emailing and he seems really nice.
The second is a grad student at a UMass campus studying industrial hygiene. He tried to explain industrial hygiene to me in very small words and I looked at him and said "You mean workplace safety and OSHA stuff, right?" and he said "Ummm....exactly, yeah." But then we talked about college basketball, which was much better. He also seemed quite fun to talk with.
The third, who just emailed me this afternoon, is an accountant who I got along really well with. JP got very excited about the prospect of he and I dating, thinking that we matched well.
The conference is going relatively well...we are in the process of skipping afternoon talks and we might go off shopping again in a few minutes. It's definitely beautiful and fun, although I am pretty dehydrated thanks to the altitude.
Pre-update
So,I'm in Keystone. Flight was good, travel was good, pizza on the way was good (but caused us to miss all of the evening talks), our condo is spectacular. I'll let you know more when there is more going on.
So....what kind of speed dating update are you guys looking for? More details on Wednesday night? Or details about subsequent events? I ended up with three matches and emailed all three on Friday afternoon. I've heard back from two so far and we've been emailing back and forth (which can easily be continued while out of town...) I was pretty upfront when I emailed in the first place-making it clear that I was out of town and not just blowing them off. So...we'll see. What sorts of details are you looking for?
Week in review
So, let's see...what's been going on here? I went out for ribs with Jolene and ExI on Monday night. Obviously, the company was awesome and it was great to see both of them. :) The ribs were AMAZING. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm ribs. Good times. (Slightly related to this matter: ExI's blog thinks I am a spammer and won't let me comment. Boo.)
Wednesday night was JP and I went on a speed dating adventure. It was really fun. The age ranges for the whole thing were 21-29 for girls and 24-32 for guys. There were 10 guys and 10 girls. (For those of you unfamiliar with speed dating: each girl talks to each guy for 4 minutes. Then you check off yes or no for each on a very fifth-grade-esque score card. Then you go home and log in and say yes or no to each person. 24 hours after the whole thing is over, you get the contact info of your matches: the people whom you said yes to who also said yes to you.) Anyway, we had fun overall and ended up drinking with some of the people afterwards. (Quote of the evening from a girl with a thick Reveah accent in response to a guy who was a surgery resident after he said something about appendices: “Oh my God! That’s how you know someone is smart! They know how to pluralize appendix!” I had to work very hard not to react with an eyeroll or mean laughter.) In the end I wasn’t SUPER excited/dying to see anyone again, but I did think that lots of people were interesting and potentially fun to talk to or whatever so I checked “yes” to 6 out of 10. I mean, really, checking yes meant all of the committment of email addresses. I ended up getting three matches and I emailed all three today. We'll see how it goes, but at least it was a fun time and makes for a good story.
Hmmmm.....I also got caught coming in late this morning (ooops) and the boss just came by and told me that he wanted to see me before I leave (once other people get out of a meeting). Good news: he saw me here late which can at least partially make up for the whole coming in late thing. Bad news: I have to stay indefinitely and was just on the phone altering my evening plans....
Oh....and then there was that thing that happened last night. I don't really want to talk about it. Let's just say that I am quite displeased. Grrrrrrrr.
I’m off to Colorado on Monday. I have a million things that have to get done before then and I am a little stressed, but I’m sure it will work out. I hope. How are things going with you?
Trauma!
I got my haircut on Saturday morning. In my sleepy Saturday morning haze, I did a slightly poor job of describing what I wanted. My wonderful stylist did an awesome job and did exactly what I said. He cut it shoooooooooort. I now have no hair. Instead of having the shortest layer at my shoulders, the longest layer is a little above the shoulder. Ack! Everyone is telling me that it looks really cute, but it is freaking me out. I know that it is a great cut (because Clyde never does a bad haircut) and I know that it will look great as it grows out, but right now the ends tickle my chin and my nose and aren't entirely long enough to pull back.
Even worse...about an hour ago we had a BABY BAT in our apartment. We ended up having to get one of the nice growup men to catch it and get rid of it for us because we were too busy running around shrieking. My roommate walk across the room with a blanket over her head to get the neighbor while I got my cell phone to call someone else for help. It was very scary. I think we will all have nightmares.
Wedding crashers
Okay....so what's the deal with taking dates to weddings? I am baffled (well, not really, I am just annoyed).
I'm perfectly fine with bringing someone as just a friend and I'm perfectly find going by myself, either because I have no one to go with or because I wasn't invited with a guest or whatever. If I'm in the wedding party, I actually prefer NOT to bring someone (unless I was dating someone relatively seriously, which has not occured at the same time that I was in a wedding party) because when in a wedding party you may not get to sit with your date and have other stuff to do, meaning your friend is sort of out of luck. (Come to think of it, part of my confusion may stem from the fact that I have been to 7 weddings in my life and I was in 5 of them. At the other two, almost none of my friends brought dates either.)
But...it's weird to bring someone as a friend to an out of town wedding, isn't it? I mean, it's one thing if it is in town, but quite another if there is serious travelling involved. I'm going to a wedding in my hometown this summer and I am tempted to bring a friend, even though I can think of about a million reasons why it would be awkward/weird/wrong. (And, really, why am I thinking about this now? I have no idea. Probably because I just RSVPed for the shower and bachelorette party this week). The travelling part would be weird, I was planning to stay at my house which would be weird, etc. etc. etc.
At the same time, I am envisioning this as a relatively uncomfortable wedding to be at by myself. I will likely know all of the guests (at least all of the bride, my best friend in high school's guests) but have very few that I keep in touch with now or am particularly excited to see (with the exception of the bride herself and maybe a couple other people...not knowing the full guest list I really have no idea). Most of the people that I knew in high school are married or engaged, so I feel like I will stand out more being there by myself and I may get some rather judgemental questions. The small-town busybody factor will certainly be in effect. Ugh. The whole thing seems icky. But who knows? Maybe I will have a great time at the shower/bachelorette party and be excited to see everyone again at the wedding. The last wedding I went to at home was actually lots of fun. Maybe it will all work out after all.
But anyway...is there a consensus on the "correct" thing to do?
(Suck it up and deal with it, I know...)
A new book
I just started reading a new book after having finished the previous one last night. The previous book was
Preemption by Alan Dershowitz. I recommend it only to insomniacs. It was really mind-numbingly boring. I learned a little bit about Israeli history, but really nothing else.
Had I written a post about
Preemption soon after I started reading it, I likely would have expressed a different opinion. The introduction and first chapter were extremely interesting, introducing many intriguing themes and questions that I was excited to hear more about. And then it became utterly boring and didn't really talk about the exciting things. So far, I've had the same experience with this new book
Postwar" A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt. I have a rather romanticized idea of Europe, both generally and a little bit with the view of liberal politics and it was nice to be reminded of both the good and bad strands of recent European history. Hopefully the book continues to be this interesting.
Okay, so I know what you're thinking...a history of Europe since 1945 sounds dull and dry. To let you in on a little secret...all of the books that I recently purchased from amazon.com involve the history of a region since ~1945, which may lead you to believe that I am the boringest person in the whole world.
I feel particularly ignorant about that period of time. In history classes that I took before college: a.) the coverage of "the rest of the world" aka not the United States was extremely poor. But I did get to watch the movies "Gandhi" and "Empire of the Sun" and "The Gods must be Crazy". and b.) it seemed that we always stopped around 1945. I think there are a couple of reasons for (b). First, we were always running out of time in class and couldn't cover the material. Second, my teachers were around my parents' age and were thus born around the 50s. Most of the history since WW2 involves things that they lived through and perhaps think of as "current events" or things that they felt that they would teach in a more partisan manner. In any case, I feel like I don't know anything about that period of time. I took a lot of history classes in college (including one called "The History of the US: New Deal to the Present") but I didn't get much further chronologically in my knowledge (I learned about the sixties and can tell you about The Great Society, but that's about it.) I studied very little non-US history in college as well.
Anyway, I have always felt kind of drawn to post-WW2 history because it is something that I know so little about but also something that is interesting to me in a general history buff kind of way. I actually think that was why I got so much out of the Israel examples in
Preemption...I don't really know much of anything about the history of Israel. As far as the history of Europe over that time period, I can tell you the names of some important people and maybe some important movements but I don't really know anything about them, so I am excited to learn about them. (Yes, I am a dork. So sue me). I hope this book stays as good as it currently seems.
Next up after this one....a history of Africa since independance. Maybe I should start trying to learn African geography now...
(I considered adding a list of all of the world events since 1945 that I could think of to show you how ignorant I am, but it was a little too embarrassing so I stopped.)
The minion
(or should this be in the previous post?)
I have an undergrad working with me in the lab now. I think this is his third week. He is a freshman, which means that he knows very little biology. He has never worked in a lab before. He works 4 hours a week-2 hours on Wednesday afternoon and 2 hours on Friday afternoon.
I have started to refer to this situation as "my babysitting job." I know that it is mean and I know that I was a freshman who didn't know anything once too, but it is a little frustrating. Two hours isn't really long enough to accomplish anything lab wise, so I have to teach him how to do small pieces of what I'm doing each time he comes and I have to coordinate my time so that there is some 2 hour-ish piece going on while he is here. He is a really nice guy but we are having a little trouble...I keep trying to boil things down and explain them enough and he keeps asking questions that show that he doesn't really get it. One day he asked a silly question about an experiment (that is only funny in a science dork kind of way), one day he asked my what types of experiments our boss does (our boss, who sits in an office all day and writes grants and papers and manages us...) etc. I feel like I really need to teach him more so that he understands the big picture of what is going on and can then understand what is actually going on day to day, but when I tried to boil it down more recently, I kept having to backtrack my explanation more and more to cover basic biology that he hadn't learned yet.
So....what should we do today in my ever-so non-motivated day??
Annoying things
(because the annoying things are kind of related, in a rambling sort of way)
Pennies are useless. Pennies also take up a lot of room in the small change pocket of my wallet, so I have stopped carrying them. Instead, I put them in a jar. The jar got full, so I started filling another jar. Etc. Recently I decided that I was sick of having jars of pennies as desk decorations and that jars of pennies=real money. After much careful consideration (in the form of Hey! Here's an idea!), I decided to take the jars of pennies to one of those Coinstar things at the grocery store and turn them into real money. I had done this before and had found it to be a monumental waste of effort, but I decided it might be better this time because I had what looked like a million dollars' worth of pennies and also because I had heard that the Coinstar machines would pay out in Amazon. com gift certificates without the coin-counting fee that was assessed if you got cash. This sounded like the perfect plan! I love amazon.com! More appropriately, I love buying books. I have an unfortunate habit of going to Barnes and Noble while bored. I have had to curb that spending my making endless amazon.com wishlists so that I can remember all the books that I desperately need...not that my "books to read" shelf needs more books. As of Wednesday, when the Coinstar adventure happened, my "books I absolutely must have" list (as opposed to the other list) had a combined cost of $291. So an amazon gift certificate sounded like a lovely idea. Off I went, with a backpack full of jars of pennies.
I will spare you the details of the adventure, but the machine was annoying. I had about 2500 pennies (I could have sworn that I had way more than that) and I am not entirely sure that the experience was worth the $25. For those of you who might be interested in repeating this sort of waste of time, the Coinstar machine will also give you Starbucks cards and a couple of other types of gift certificates for no fee as well. Just hope that you don't have so many pennies that you jam the machine 4 times. And then...off I went again, back home with my backpack full of empty jars and few grocery items that I needed...off to buy things from amazon.com.
I ended up buying three things from amazon. (All non-fiction, history type books.) While checking out, I was faced with a dilemma. What type of shipping should I choose? For those of you who live under a rock, you are offered many different shipping speeds, all with an associated cost (ie. faster=more expensive). I realized that I didn't need the books right away, so I opted for a relatively slow delivery method which ended up costing $5. I think it said it would take 5-ish days. Now, a few weeks ago I made another purchase from amazon.com. I bought my sister a birthday present. It was a little later than I usually shop and I was quite worried about having it get to her on time, so I paid quite a bit extra for shipping. It was 2 days late (taking 3 days total). The cheap-o shipping for this new order? Well, I ordered Wednesday night, it shipped yesterday and will be delivered today. Grrrrrrr.
Please note, no penises were involved in this story. (:P to Jen and momma)
Odds and Ends
Last night I went out to a club with some lab friends. I wore very cute shoes that really hurt my feet. My feet still hurt badly today. They are in fact, still swollen slabs of pain. I think that they are broken. I did not really feel like coming to lab but I had to because a.) my undergrad is coming later and b.) I did not come in earlier this week because I had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad stomach bug. Blech. However, I am very unmotivated to do much of anything other than check the score of the Duke game.
The other day (Monday? It was when I was sick.) I had the best dream ever. I remember thinking that it was the most interesting dream that I had ever had (while I was dreaming). It was a mystery. There was time travel involved. The crucial parts took place on a submarine. When I woke up, I wished that I had taken notes so that I could write it up as a screenplay, because it was so interesting that I am sure it would be a very successful movie. I will not tell you what the key to figuring out the mystery was, in case I ever remember the rest of the dream and make it into a super successful movie.
I am going to
this dinner tomorrow night. I am quite excited.
There are possibly some factual inaccuracies in my previous post. I shall research them while boycotting doing real things this afternoon and get back to you on that. Please do not use me as a source. :)
More posts to come during said boycott, though they will mostly be on a relatively prosaic topics. I also had some interesting thoughts on religion and also on the purpose of this blog. Do you want to hear those too?
Did you see?
Did you see? Did you see? A NASA probe discovered water on one of Saturn's moons! (This is potentially exciting because so far as we know, water is required to have life on a planet and this would be the first 100% confirmed finding of water on a planet other than Earth). This is way cool. (I've been experimenting all day, so this may be old news, but I just saw it on abcnews.com.)
PS (For future info: I am annoyed by pennies and amazon.com. And I had a good weekend other than during a game that shall remain nameless. And cool dreams.) For now however, you will just have to be psyched by aliens.
More stealing
But this time it is very cool. Stolen from
BitchPhDStates I have visited:
Not too bad, but it could be better. I like the little islands (like Kentucky) of not visiting. They look so lonely.
create your own visited states mapCountries I have visited:
This one pretty much looks pathetic. I definitely need to travel more.
create your own visited countries map
A joke
I am not normally one for forwarded jokes or other types of forwards, but this joke, forwarded to me by a co-worker,
seriously cracks me up. Enjoy!
It was the first day of school and a new student named Chandrashekhar Subrahmanyam entered the fourth grade.
The teacher said, "Let's begin by reviewing some American History.
Who said "Give me Liberty, or give me Death"?
She saw a sea of blank faces, except for Chandrashekhar, who had his hand up: "Patrick Henry, 1775" he said.
Very good!" Who said "Government of the People, by the People, for the People, shall not perish from the Earth?" again no response except from Chandrashekhar.
"Abraham Lincoln, 1863" said Chandrashekhar.
The teacher snapped at the class, "Class, you should be ashamed. Chandrashekhar, who is new to our country, knows more about its history than you do!"
She heard a loud whisper: "Fuck the Indians,"
"Who said that?" she demanded.
Chandrashekhar put his hand up. "General Custer, 1862."
At that point, a student in the back said, "I'm gonna puke."
The teacher glares around and asks "All right! Now, who said that?"
Again, Chandrashekhar says, "George Bush to the Japanese Prime Minister, 1991."
Now furious, another student yells, "Oh yeah? Suck this!"
Chandrashekhar jumps out of his chair waving his hand and shouts to the teacher, "Bill Clinton, to Monica Lewinsky, 1997!"
Actual Medical Advice
Earlier this week I was a little freaked out by a potential medical issue, so I emailed my doctor. From his reply (which was overly condescending in tone):
If you were to continue to stand while feeling lightheaded, you might lose consciousness and fall down.I wanted to make sure that you all had access to this extremely important information and do not suffer unnecessarily!!! Ugggh.
He also helpfully defined the phrase "well hydrated." Gee. Thanks.
PS: For those of you who will (have) argued that this is a result of his need to be clear so as not to leave something out in an overly litigious environment and to cover his ass, I think that the previous and equally obvious sentence " If you are feeling light-headed, it is best to sit down until you feel better rather than continuing to stand." served that purpose.
Stealing, bragging and feeling dumb.
Stolen from HD (Hey, I never said that I was creative). I started to feel a little bad as I did this because I had read so many of the early books on the list, but then I felt like less of a dork later when I came across many that I hadn't read. And then I felt even dumber when I couldn't figure out how to underline. I eventually figured it out and felt even sillier.
Instructions: Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you might read, cross out the ones you won't, underline the ones on your book shelf, and place parentheses around the ones you've never even heard of.
The Da Vinci Code - Dan BrownThe Catcher in the Rye - J.D. SalingerDid you know that my old landlord is JD Salinger's daughter? Well, she is.
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas AdamsThe Great Gatsby - F.Scott FitzgeraldTo Kill a Mockingbird - Harper LeeThe Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
(His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. RowlingLife of Pi - Yann MartelThere are no words to express how much I despised this book. None. I really should give my copy away.
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George OrwellCatch-22 - Joseph HellerThe Hobbit - J. R. R. TolkienThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark HaddonI know that Evan really liked it.
Lord of the Flies - William GoldingPride and Prejudice - Jane AustenI really liked the movie.
1984 - George OrwellHarry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. RowlingOne Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Lovely Bones - Alice SeboldSlaughterhouse 5 - Kurt VonnegutI love this book so much, as I love most things that Vonnegut wrote. Trivia: one of the other soldiers who was kept in Slaughterhouse 5 is from my small town. He put the windows in our house.
Angels and Demons - Dan BrownFight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Neuromancer - William Gibson
(Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson)
(The Secret History - Donna Tartt)
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony BurgessIcky movie.
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Brave New World - Aldous HuxleyThe Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. LewisMiddlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
(Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell)
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. TolkienJane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
(Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman)
Atonement - Ian McEwan(The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest HemingwayThis is my other most hated book in the whole world. In fact, I think that a major reason why I hated Life of Pi is that it reminded me of The Old Man and the Sea
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret AtwoodEven though I had already read this book, I had nightmares after I saw the movie. It was filmed on Duke's campus and I watched it in class as a freshman. It is particularly disturbing to see some of the events of this movie take place where you live.
The Bell Jar - Sylvia PlathDune - Frank Herbert
