Interviews approach, which means I have to start extruding my hypersensitive, mollusk-like innards out from my cozy calcareous shell of ambient fantasy and general hermetic tendencies, in order to present myself as a Confident, Intelligent Individual with Specific (but not too specific) Interests.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh (squelch squelch squelch).

But damn the wibbles! Full steam ahead! Carpe fishem!

aaaagh.

It is a sad time when brushing your teeth becomes the highlight of your night because hey, it feels kinda good, and it's not reading a paper about models of capillary flow or new production. Why do I always get these delusions of grandeur during which I convince myself, "oh, yeah, yeah, I LOVE biogeochemistry! and models! give me more models!" And normally the models wouldn't be so bad, because I like reading the conceptual parts fine, except that now I actually have to understand the math to a certain extent. [profanity]! (I am learning Matlab, though, and that's kinda cool.)

I had this enormously clever scheme tonight that involved me rewarding myself with samosas (oh god samosas, why are you so delicious) and dark chocolate if I just Finished Reading This Paper Without Distractions. And it worked! Except I still have more to read, and I could have stood to be in bed, oh, three hours ago. Someone buy me a new metabolism.

I just want to read. And write. Friday is supposed to be my day for writing writing writing but even as it draws slightly more nigh, it's looking increasingly distant, and fogged by Other Things I Should Be Doing. Stop shaking your fingers at me, things.

• Completely destroying your sleep schedule for the 50th time: -50
• Living on rice cakes, chocolate, and bananas for a week: -20
• Accidentally scattering rice cake crumbs into knitting drawer: -5
• Only results, two mediocre papers and a body that thinks sleeping more than 3 hours a night at any time earlier than 5 AM is weird: -75
• Celebratory Thai dinner afterwards: +15
• Marathoning 30 Rock and Flight of the Conchords while painting faux stained-glass windows based on children's books: +60
• Doing so under a twelve-hour deadline that ends up with you blowdrying said windows because they're not going to dry in time to be transported: -15
• Crying during Dexter finale and agreeing with stuffu that the fourth season was inarguably the best season so far: +60 (incur -10 penalty for twist-related trauma)
• Grad school interview offers: +100
• Energy involved in getting yourself excited about grad school again (boo hoo, I know): -20

Conclusion: sigh.

Yes, I has an addiction. My lovely roommate modeled for me this time, which made things 100x easier, too. Click for 'em on Etsy

This semester has been weirdly busy, in part because I've been absurdly indecisive about classes, but I think I'm settled now. (Corollary: Sorry I haven't been keeping up with the f-list; I've been doing the whole reading-but-not-commenting thing.) So many good bio classes this semester! I haven't been back to lab yet, but I have been nibbling at my poetry thesis here and there (when I finally meet my adviser next Wednesday, I might ask her about sneaking in some fiction too), so overall things are looking... okayish. Although I am already massively in sleep debt. lol.

I've been reading from Steven Strogatz's Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life, which is cool as all get out. I can see now why my roomie is so obsessed with science writing - I haven't really read anything beyond actual papers and the occasional NYT Science article. :X So reading whole chapters of stuff you're meant to actually understand without reams of background reading and side discussion is pretty refreshing. Makes me wish I were actually good at math, too. oh you rakish biological mathematicians, with your proofs and models!

Today I sat in on one of my roomie's classes (American Women Writers), for the purpose of listening to her professor lecture on Twilight. (She paused at one point and murmured, "This book makes my head hurt.") Fanfreakingtastic stuff. I promised fairnymph a while ago that I would try to pull together an essay on the eroticism of vampires, and the last 10 minutes of the lecture were basically that. *clings to her notes* It was all too glorious! I wonder if she's ever taught a vampire fiction course? xenophobia! class/race tension! queerness galore! Also glorious. Also also, it totally made my day that she referred to "fantasy literature" and "vampire literature."

Also also also, at the end of the class I was writing so quickly that I spelled Edward as "Edwad," which only seems appropriate.

I AM SO OLD NOW OH MY GOSH. jus' kidding. But a whole two decades? rly now? Disturbing.

It was not a particularly earth-shattering birthday, but a mellow one. Various people serenaded me loudly and discordantly at dinner, enough to make the whole dining hall fall silent, and afterwards Emily and I shared a fruit tart on the windowseat and took stupid photos of each other.

I vaguely considered buying myself something by way of birthday present, but couldn't think of anything spectacular enough to top the already-here Wintermute, so. XD But I did receive the package from my last BPAL swap, and bathed (somewhat) in the glory that was Sugar Moon. Wish I had gotten more burnt sugar from it, but the strawberry was perfect. yum yum yum.

This past week, I also had the singular experience and privilege of meeting a friend from the Interwebs! it was vaguely magical, and yet I'm sure that karmic consequences lie ahead in the coming weeks, to make me atone for having broken the Internet-reality barrier. In the meantime, I will revel in the knowledge that people really DO exist behind the icons and smileys!

There are a bunch of Y!J links waiting in the wings, but I suppose I'll save 'em for a separate BJD entry sometime later.

Now if only somebody would do my homework for me... THAT would be an excellent present.

How did I have this much time on my hands in high school?

( Cut for enormous picture... and this is only half of it )

Yesterday, I brilliantly set up a 56-reaction PCR without making any master mixes. WHAT WAS I THINKING? Regardless, I'm looking forward to running the gel Monday... (uh, wait, will we even have enough combs? none of the combs that we have fit the present gel beds - it is genius) I just want something to work! Nick and I beat the hell out of the protocol this time (added DMSO & Mg+, set up a temperature gradient for annealing, ordered new primers, etc. etc.), so I will officially be SCHOCKED SCHOCKED SCHOCKED if nothing works. arrrr.

Also Dave was out of town this week, so I didn't have to do anything on the Drosophila project. yay. I just really... am not that excited by developmental bio.

The wind just changed direction, so now my hands are cold. :( It's raining in an epic fashion outside, but I actually haven't been out of the room yet, haha.

Only one more week, and then spring break! (and I can see Wintermute again! :D) My motivation died somewhere between Thursday and Friday, though, so I've been having a hard time trying to lever myself into action with regard to midterm studying.

Was typing notes for history -
"Pope Leo I (440-461) – theologian, strong admin, may have saved versus ..."

"Pope Leo I (440-461) – theologian, strong admin, may have saved city against Hun invasion."

SIGH.

edit: Happy Halloween!

First orgo exam tomorrow. wheeee!

Just for fun, I'm posting the passage that I translated for this week. it's from Aurélia, the semi-autobiographical work of Gérard de Nerval, an insane 19th-century poet with whom I am pretty much in love, and who was purportedly known for walking a lobster on the end of a pale-blue ribbon.

( lobster! )

Also, just about the perfectest article ever about all the problems of book love.

Madeleine L'Engle died yesterday, apparently - I heard it this afternoon on NPR. Ah - and stuffu and I were just talking about her books again, after we saw the gorgeous, quirky new editions of the original Murray family trilogy. (And I was just wondering how old she was at the same time, too.) I should now REALLY add the rest of her books to my reading list when I next have time, since I never read beyond the Time Quartet and the random outlier of An Acceptable Time, which I failed to understand at all at the time.

I was going to say something about whether or not authors ever really die, but gave up. too tired, no sense forthcoming.

(also up for bookie ogling: the new trade edition of Stardust. We also saw a really really pretty new edition of SOME dystopic classic, but I completely forget which one now - I was sure that it was 1984, but I can't find anything resembling it on Amazon right now. It had a really elegant black-on-white, cutout-style border with volutes and clockwork and such. Maybe it wasn't 1984. or dystopic. boo.)

( textbook babble )

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz, sounds pretty amazing. Tolkien, anime, failure, tangled family dynamics, tyranny... and New Jersey! yays!!

Also, hilarious article here on cases where the publishing industry (specifically, Knopf) just got it wrong. (Anne Frank's diary was rejected 16 times before being published in America...) This only increases my desire to collect loads and loads of rejection letters. mmmm.