In case the link doesn't work

As promised, marriage photos:

Downtown Pittsburgh (view from the restaurant where we had lunch afterwards - I'm putting it in at the top b/c it's a pain to try to place photos at the end, as I have discovered today).



Us with Judge Eugene Ricciardi



The reading of legal things:




With the certificate:


Yes, I know it's a bit underclassed to wear jeans, we had planned to dress up, but ran out of time & Drew was sick, so we'll have to wait on looking good.

First married kiss:


Duqesne Incline runs right next to the restaurant we were at. We forgot to take a ride on the incline, but we did catch a photo of it going by.

Facebook | Marce Schulz's Photos - Drew and Ericka get married!

Facebook | Marce Schulz's Photos - Drew and Ericka get married!

South Side Wedding

Well, we did it. D & I got married today at noon-ish (actually a bit after, there was another couple getting married ahead of us). The judge was very nice, and it was a sunny, bright winter day. D's mom & Jack came with us, and my friend Kate (who I've been friends with since my interview weekend at Pitt) was there too. Afterward we all went to lunch on the top of Mount Washington, and enjoyed the view over the city.

The only negative was that D has a sinus infection, and so felt pretty bad throughout the whole thing. He came home, and went back to bed, and he's been asleep for the past few hours.

And, our marital dumpster did not show up :( I put out NO PARKING signs this morning, moved the cars, and waited. Then I figured it would be delivered while we were out, since we don't have to be there to receive it, but there was still no dumpster when we returned. I waited another hour, and then called the people, but I just got voice-mail. So I'll have to track that down tomorrow.

But it was a lovely day anyway :)

Last Autumn Saturday

D & I went to our friends' house for dinner and the December installment of virtual wine tasting. We actually drank wine (the virtual part refers to a thing that she does on Bakespace's blog), and this month was Shiraz. We had three bottles, and M made gyro burgers (yum!).

Amazingly, I still made it up out of bed at 7:30-ish, so M & I went for coffee & to pick up some last minute stocking kinds of things on the South Side. We started doing this a couple of years ago, and I love having time with her, but sometimes schedules get in the way & we don't end up meeting for months. So it was good to get out this morning.

When I got home, I put together a crockpot baked shells kind of thing. I'd tried this before after seeing it on the crazy crockpot lady's blog (thank you Kristen!), and wasn't pleased with it, so I wanted to make a few changes. This time, I browned some hot italian sausage first (o.7 lbs) and added to two jars of sauce instead of just the one. This is so easy in the crockpot, I love it. Layer the sauce (with the sausage mixed in), then some uncooked shells, then more sauce, then some cheese. Repeat until the whole box of shells is gone, and you have sauce & cheese on the top. I mixed the stuff up a little bit as I went along, just to make sure that the pasta was all wet. Put the top on, and cook on high for something like 2 hours. I pulled a few shells out to check on it, found they were still a little bit crispy. So, I added another cup of water, and a couple of diced roma tomatoes. Cooked for another 30-45 mins on high, and then enjoyed.

This was so-o-o-o good! I only meant to have a small plate for lunch, and ended up going back for another one. D liked it too, and now we have a bunch to eat this week.

After a short wrapping session, during which I found myself watching a Dudley Moore and John Lithgowe Santa Claus movie (which is the movie in which they have Puce Pops!!!! Does anyone remember watching this, or making jokes about Puce Pops when we were kids?), I took a bath, took a nap, and then made my friend M's pumpkin spice cookies.

Departmental Holiday Party & House Updates

We do an annual holiday party in my department, people bring food & drink, and there's a new tradition of a "White Elephant" gift exchange. Basically, people bring in wrapped gifts, preferably things that they were given & have no use for, and we draw gifts one at a time. You also have the option to steal a gift, which makes for a fun hour. I had a good time & I'm glad I went, but I have to get in early to make up the last bit of work that I didn't do today.

I also got a snowman tie - so I'm happy. Not that I wear ties, but I like snowmen. So.

In house news, we decided on an HVAC guy, who turned out to be cheaper than the other guy that we liked by $2k. So that money can go to the deck or to buy a lot of drywall. I ordered a dumpster today, and will resume demolition and cleanup (with my respirator this time) next week. We're getting there.

Homemade Macaroni & Cheese

I had wanted to make some homemade mac & cheese for quite awhile - it was something I'd never done, and I had a hunk of gruyere to use. So, I looked around for a recipe & the best (maybe only?) one I found was in my handy-dandy Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

First, I had to make a cheese sauce. This was basically a white sauce with some cheese mixed in - but I'd never made a white sauce before either. I kept waiting for it to boil, as the book said it would, but it never happened. So I think I ended up thickening it too much, b/c I kept stirring for far too long. I made the sauce in advance & when I looked at it the next day, it was a solid.

Hmmmm.... not going too well so far. Well, I added some more milk, and pushed onward. And promptly made too much pasta, because in my head I was supposed to make one pound of elbow macaroni. The book actually says 1/2 pound, but I trusted my memory instead. Not good.

I finally finished making this on the day that I had HVAC contractors in to give me some estimates. It smelled amazing, and I was very excited. It tasted ... bland. The pasta was too mushy (maybe I shouldn't have let it sit overnight in the sauce?) and we both had to add a lot of pepper, and it wasn't particularly cheesy. Hmmm. Fail.

I will try to make it again, but: 1) will make correct amount of pasta; 2) won't let sauce get so thick; 3) will add fewer breadcrumbs to top, more cheese; 4) will add more spices to sauce; and 5) will actually make the whole thing at once, rather than getting lazy after 30 minutes and deciding we can have it the next night for dinner.

holiday stress

I'm a bit worried that Drew might lose his job. He's a lot more worried, but it's hard to tell if he's just paranoid or what. His company had a security break-in, which was not his fault, but the IT manager has cut his group off for a couple of weeks, and D's floundering to get his developers back up and running. So, this is stressful.

He has plenty of money saved, but that's supposed to go for the heating system. And we wanted to get the deck done this year too. This stuff has to happen, because the house is just a great big pile of crap if we don't upgrade it. And he doesn't seem to understand that by being as stingy as he is, nothing gets done, and he doesn't end up with the money in the end either - it just goes to random stuff we don't need. I can handle the bills if he gets out of work (although it would be really nice if he could at least collect unemployment), but I can't take on any more debt (what he suggested for the heating system). And it would be really tight financially - I'd have to stop contributing to retirement & stop saving anything, and I'd still only have ~$200 a month for miscellaneous spending & as a buffer. I'm not looking forward to this, if it happens. I'm going to be really angry at him all the time, and I don't like that.

I understand that he's stressed, and needs to talk about it to someone, but in some ways I wish he wouldn't tell me these things. (If he does lose his job, obviously I would want to know this, I just don't really want to know ahead of time - thinking about it consumes me, and I have other stuff to do. I get angry at him in advance, and dredge up all the bad feelings from the last time he wasn't working).

That was yesterday, or Wednesday.

Then last night, he picked me up from work, we drove home and ate a modest dinner. During the day I had been talking to an old friend, and the subject of holiday presents came up. Friend did not think that my new computer keyboard was a very romantic gift, and I tried to explain that I am the one who asked for a (very specific) vacuum cleaner last year - D & I are not romantic in big showy ways. So the keyboard is romantic to me because: 1) my old keyboard had broken, and the 2 key in the number pad wasn't working. 2 is part of my zipcode, and a pain to lose when filling out any kind of address. 2) The decoy replacement D gave me was truly awful - the shift and enter keys stuck, and I hated it. and 3) every time I use the 2, shift, or enter keys now, I think of how D gave me a Christmas present early because he knew how annoyed I was getting everytime I tried to type.

Anyway, I had tried to explain this, but I don't think my friend was buying it. To him, jewelry is romantic. But I got home, and went in the kitchen, and remembered that D built shelves for me in my tiny kitchen, because I hated working in it before then. And I have to work in it. Just like I have to type, even if my keyboard doesn't work. So these are the things that are romantic to me - the many small ways that my everyday life is better, because he does little things that he hopes I will like. And sometimes big things, like finding the house that we both love. And pointing out the view to me when he sees it & is reminded how great it is where we are. And bringing me flowers that he cut from our yard. Or fresh tomatoes, or fresh mulberries, or fresh peaches. Or finding the cats that we both get a kick out of. Making sure I can print, in color, from anywhere in the house. And coaxing me out into the yard on summer evenings, when I'm stressed out & he knows that 5 minutes out there will take all of the day's frustration away.

So I thought of all of these things last night, and just got overwhelmed with how much I love this man.

More reasonable estimate = YAY!

We've been having contractor drama lately. There have been problems getting people to show up (although it has been really cold in Pgh lately, so I understand that emergency calls take precedent). We got our first estimate on Monday last week.

First, a description of what has to be done. We need a new forced-air heating system (including all ductwork) to be installed (w/AC - I can't get D to compromise on the AC, I think the house does not get that hot) to heat the 2nd and third floors. The upside is that we're having the furnace put in on the 3rd floor, and most of the walls are down in the second floor. We don't care if they make a mess, as it is already, well, a construction zone. So running the duct-work, while still time-consuming, will be quicker than if, say, the walls were all up & we needed to pump all the air up through the first floor (10+ foot ceilings) to the 3rd floor & distribute through both the 2nd & 3rd floors.

The first estimate was $25-30k. This is considerably more than we expected to hear. The representative actually asked me if I was sitting down before she told me. I still need to call her back to confirm that this doesn't include solid gold ductwork, or perhaps they mistakenly thought that we wanted a system for the first floor as well.

Our second estimate came in today at a much more reasonable 10k. By the guy recommended by D's mom.

Just out of curiosity, I checked Angie's list to see if either person had any reviews. The first people seem to charge ~4x what everyone else does - lots of people turned them down because of this. The second guy (Fazio Heating) had a lot of positive reviews & 1 pretty negative one with pictures that did not look good. So, I've selected another company to call for another estimate, & we'll also try to goad our friend, Jeff, into getting his butt down here, taking some money from us, and doing a good job.

But, we'll have heat up there by mid-January :) And then we can put in walls.

Holiday gifts?

Hi guys,

Just wanted to check in with the family about gifts this year. Are we sending homemade stuff? $ limit? We're a little low on cash this year - trying to save up for heating system + other repairs, so I just wanted to check to make sure no-one minded if we did el-cheapo holiday options :)

Thoughts? Comments? I check the blog pretty much ever day, even if I don't post, so you can leave any feedback in the comments section....

Will post more substantively later, there was a cookie day yesterday & more chores today :)

Oh, and Dad - Kristmas Kielbasa is just normal kielbasa with extra spices, I guess. There's a lot of kielbasa and other types of sausage (and pierogis) in Pgh. lots of polish families.

Post-Thanksgiving break

Well, I had hoped to have posted something before this, but every time I sat down to do it,


I couldn't come up with anything to write.

D & I made our trip to Philadelphia without mishap, despite the dubious driving practices of most of the state of Pennsylvania. Only one sharp braking and some swearing on my part, and I didn't damage the rental car in any way. Thursday's dinner was nice, & it was good to catch up with D's father, step-mom & grandmother. We had many rounds of food, and they even had strawberries with chocolate fondue (a nice touch with some coffee). In the evening, we watched Wall-E before turning in. I thought this was cute, but it must have been one of the most boring voice-acting jobs ever. "Ev-uh?" "Wall-ee" were the only two things those robots ever said!

On Friday, we did a grocery store run, visited some cousins, & got a fabulous dinner at a local Thai restaurant. Saturday, D & I drove home again (and good thing, Sunday was freezing rain all day, and I'm glad I wasn't driving up in the mountains for that).

Sunday, we went and bought a door for our kitchen, and picked up some random things at Busy Beaver (local hardware/home improvement chain), and at Target. We didn't fare too badly for a Target trip, and now we have enough paper towels and soap for the next year. At home, our friend M joined us for some Football viewing (Steelers won 33-10 in a very exciting game vs. New England). After football, we indulged in a Sushi extravaganza, and then visited a friend's new house down the street. A very full day, and neither one of us wanted to go to work this morning.

Poor D couldn't sleep last night, and I got up at 6 am to go for some exercise. It was a bit cold this morning, but once I got moving it was all right. I hope that this habit will stay around for awhile, or even that I can turn it into a habit, as I'm tired of carrying around the last 14 pounds that I gained in Sweden, many, many years ago. I don't like feeling fat, and I'm starting to feel pretty out-of-shape cardiovascularly as well. So, root for me to keep up the exercise.

I also noticed when I got home that I was much more alert after moving around than I usually am at 7 am. I put together a list, and drove down to the grocery store to replenish our completely empty fridge. Got back at 7:45, put food away, got dressed, and went to return the rental car on my way to work.

Having already bored you all with too much detail, I'll spare you the saga of forgetting to top off the gas tank, and getting from Hertz to school. Work stunk today, as I'm going through my files and reorganizing. And our lab is just not a comfortable environment socially. Still, I listened to a car talk podcast that I hadn't heard, got some stuff done, read some internet, did some ordering for an experiment next week, and filed my expense report for SFN (which I had forgotten to do last week). A wrapping up of loose ends kind of day.

D picked me up (his day was awful), and we headed to his mom's for dinner (special Kristmas Kielbasa, asparagus, salad, potatoes & leftover desserts from D's aunt N). Had a good time, and headed back with extra left-overs. D's mom & I made plans for a holiday cookie baking time on Sat morning. Then back home, where I did some dishes, and sat down to read blogs. Whew! I've been busy too, it seems.

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving, I know some of you did by reading your posts. I wish that I could have been with you all. Love you & have a good week!

also i hate centipedes

I've been trying to make my peace with them, since they eat other bugs, but I just wish they would stay out of sight. A big one just walked across the floor, right in front of me.

Would it be creepier or not if they were actually invisible?

Two four-day weekends in a row,

separated by one half-day of work. Not bad, except I actually wanted to get stuff done the past two days. But yesterday I felt like road-kill - just unbelievably tired, given that I had just gotten 9 hours of sleep. And today, I was waiting for one of the contractors to show up.

Big mistake.

I'm always a bit curious about how contractors expect customers to trust them with something like, say, installing a heating system, when they can't demonstrate that they can handle, say, dialing the damn phone when you aren't going to make your appointment. D had to call them - 2 hours after the scheduled time - and find out that, "They're running a bit late." No estimate of what time they might actually get here. So I had to take another whole day off.

D is getting the next one of these wait-for-the-guy-to-show-up assignments. I did the last two.

TLC is awesome.

I had a hard time making it to the conference today. I woke up early, went out to CVS to get a lint brush & some other necessities I had forgotten, but then I turned on the TV. We don't have good cable at our house, just a few channels, so I have not seen, "Flip this house" or any of the other home improvement shows that they have on there. I almost didn't make it out of the hotel. I'm watching it now, before I go to bed.

Yesterday, my friend Kate picked me up at the house, and I was pretty efficient about the packing thing. We printed out maps, and got everything in the car. About 1 hr outside of Pittsburgh, I sat up in the back seat, and realized that I had left my poster in the entryway of our house. Luckily, the doors into that area are unlocked (there is another door into the main house that was locked). So my friend Nelson, who was leaving later in the day, agreed to pick it up for me. Disaster averted. But I'm still embarassed that I overlooked that.

We got to DC around 5, checked into our various hotels, and headed out to dinner. Pretty good wraps (but expensive) on 14th & P streets, and then Kate & I headed to a condo that many friends were staying at. Drank far too much wine (but not enough that this morning was bad), ate some very good cheese, and enjoyed ourselves. I walked back to the hotel at 2 a.m.ish, took a nice hot shower, and climbed into bed.

The conference today was good, although I had a little problem finding the poster section. But I talked to two very enthusiastic people at their posters (who I have to remember to e-mail later) & I'm excited to present my stuff tomorrow. And then I can relax and have some fun :)

Hope you all are having a good weekend & love you too!

Happy Compromise

Well, my poster is done! Woohoo! I must've published it to PDF 15 times this afternoon, as I discovered new typos & spacing I didn't like in the stairwell on the way to the printer-guy (my friend Tom). But, I finally got it in, so it's out of my hands now. And I confirmed my reservation with the Georgetown Suites

I did not, as I feared sometime yesterday, make the reservation for the wrong month. And I gave a copy to Susan Erickson, the scientist I'm rooming with. I feel a bit bad that I'm not riding down with her, but I'm afraid I would run out of conversation in the first hour, and the rest of the week would be uncomfortable. Best to save topics for the week we'll be rooming together. Ooh, I need a haircut.

But, I'm off to D.C. on Friday. Again, woohoo! I love the city, and I can't wait to take a real subway again. To walk/jog along the Potomac in the morning. And see at least one museum.

In wedding news, Drew & I got to sit down tonight & talk about plans. And we found a compromise, an option that we had discussed, and I had thought about independently, before. So....

We'll hold off for a bit, and get married sometime next late summer/fall. I don't think we realized how many people would want to be there with us, or how many we wanted to have there (once that option was opened up). So this way, everyone has time to plan. We'd like to have the ceremony & reception in our back yard, and by the fall we should have the downstairs kitchen, upstairs bathroom, & back deck done. (The heating system people will be here on Friday to figure out where to put ductwork for the 2nd/3rd floor forced air).

Sorry again for the abrupt announcement/reversal of plans. I still don't think my decisions through all that well (or rather, I think them through carefully, then rashly pick something because I'm sick of being indecisive). And I'm still too impatient, I 'm trying to work on that. But I think it will be good overall, and I'll probably recruit a lot of help with planning/decisions, so stay tuned :)

I still love you all, and thanks for your encouragement & love. Can't wait to see you there, if not before!

Hold the phone....

So, I'm very glad that I said the date wasn't set in stone (i.e. don't make any travel plans yet). Drew's dad wants us to have a big ceremony, and his step-mom wants to officiate. So, if we do that, we're going to have to wait until after I graduate. Which won't be for at least two years. And I'm not going to be able to plan something like that at that point, since I'll have to find a job. So I don't think this is going to happen anytime soon, and it's pissing me off that we can't just have our wedding the way that fits us - I know this is supposed to be for the family, somewhat, but we're not those people. And I don't actually enjoy those weddings. I kind of just wanted something simple, and functional (kind of like the two of us & our relationship, not showy, not flashy, but strong & practical). So we've got some more talking to do. Sorry to have jumped the gun by announcing this yesterday.

I couldn't figure out who to call first....

so I'm posting it here, for all of you to read. Plus, I'm monstrously busy at work this week (preparing my poster for SFN's annual meeting - I leave on Friday), so I'm not sure when said phone calls will be made.

But... Drew & I are getting married. :)

We're going to the courthouse here in Pittsburgh next month (almost definitely Dec 18, but I don't want to carve the date in stone quite yet). We'll have a ceremony/reception sometime next year in our back yard (incentive to get the deck done!), but we/I didn't want to actually wait that long once we decided.

So, um... Yay! I am actually really excited, especially since we decided to do it soon, but I'm never sure how or whether to tell people. It seems very personal to me, so I haven't mentioned it at work, but I needed to tell you guys :)

I'll make a round of calls tomorrow between making graphs and writing copy furiously. Maybe if you're lucky, I'll even post the finished poster, so you can all have a sleep aid (ha!).

Old & New Friends

So, yesterday was Turkey day at our house. Everything came out well (unlike the pumpkin bread, which I cooked not enough, but is still okay if you toast it long enough), and we sat down to stuff ourselves with turkey, mashed potatoes, homemade stuffing, homemade gravy, kale & onions, & lingonberries. I only made it through one plate, but it was probably a 10-pounder. I was a little stressed out, because our friends Mike & Marilyn were having a party, and I wanted to go to that too - but D & I both drank more than was advisable on Thursday, and Friday nites, and so we weren't really in a partying mode. I would usually have skipped this one, but these friends are moving to Nashville next Saturday, so this would be the last time we get to hang out with them for awhile.

This makes me sad - they are very nice people, and we haven't hung out enough with them. We still have their wedding to look forward to, but aren't sure when that will happen. (They're moving because of financial strain - more jobs for Mike in Nashville than here). So, it was important to me to go. We went, we drank very lightly (I ended the night with 4 glasses of water), and we picked up a new friend. Marilyn is a bit of a collector, and i had previously admired her cookie jar collection. But, they're moving with one carload of stuff, so she's had to get rid of almost everything. Ebay, yard sales, etc are all over, & now she's giving stuff away to charity, or whoever will take it. So I took her cookie monster cookie jar (I needed one anyway), and we're going back today to pick up a cafe table (tall) & 3 stools. I think this will work well in the downstairs kitchen once it's finished.

And I made sure they know that whenever they come back to Pittsburgh for visits, they should stay with us - we have the room & love hosting out-of-towners.

Early Thanksgiving

My friend Daniel has a turkey that has been in his freezer for just about the maximum amount of time. So, he brought it over last night, and I'm roasting it today. I'm therefore chained to the kitchen, but I got my lab work done early this morning, and got the bird in the oven at 12:30, stuffed and seasoned. Now for repetitive basting.

The good news is that I have to do a bunch of computer stuff to get my poster ready for SFN next week. So, I can do that while I'm making turkey. If I ever stop reading random stuff on the internet.

D & I are also thinking of starting a contest to identify what kind of tree is in our back yard. It has weird, pear like fruit (tastes somewhat like pear, but not one that you would actually like to eat) that is round-ish and orange. So far we're not having any luck with scouring the internet for identification.

"make this again" crockpot chicken adobo-ish soup thing

D & I went ot a costume party last night at our neighbors' house. It was fun & we dressed up for the first time - as Beaker & Dr. Honeydew melon. No-one recognized me for a few minutes as I had a bald cap & lots of green makeup on, which was pretty cool. We also entertained some old friends who were in town. We stayed up too late, but had lots of fun.

I was pleasantly surprised that I woke up early, went to the grocery store with Ruth (friend in town, she and her husband slept over our house & reported that the futon is very comfortable), and got a crockpot dinner ready. I figured something soup like would be best, since we usually need comfort food that's easy on the guts the day after a party. I had also seen this recipe in D's "Big Book of Slow-Cooker Recipes", and wanted to try it out.

The name is something along the lines of turkey & mushroom & rice soup, but I improvised (of course) because I did not have turkey, but I did have chicken. Chicken breast, 1 onion, 4 cloves garlic, 2 tbsp fresh grated ginger, 2 cups sliced mushrooms, 2 carrots (sliced), 1.5 cups bok choy, 28 oz chicken broth, 2 T soy sauce, and 1 T hot sesame oil, cooked on high for 4-5 hours. Then mix in pre-cooked rice (recipe called for instant, I used 1 C brown basmati (dry weight, I think this is 2 C cooked), and cook for additional 1 hour.

It was pretty good, and I'm glad I bought some crusty bread to go with it. It was a little bland though, & I even added some fresh rosemary and pepper during the last couple of hours. I was worried it would be too salty, since the recipe called for low-sodium stuff & I used full strength, but in the end I should have added some more salt too. Maybe some cayenne or wasabi powder would be good too - it was missing something. But D pronounced it good, and said it goes in the make-this-again pile.

I also picked up two nice big pieces of beef on a buy one get one free deal, so there'll be beef stew sometime in the future (twice!). And I donated $10 to the Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank, so I feel good about that. Which more than makes up for the moral failing I've demonstrated by eating Milk Duds all day :)

I stand corrected.

It's sticking now. And coming down harder. I was going to try to post a picture, but (not surprisingly) cell phone cameras don't capture snow very well.

Early winter?

Um.. It's snowing. Since last night. I am not ready for this, and cannot locate:

1. long underwear
2. enough knee socks
3. gloves
4. hat

5. scarf that I was actually wearing last week - but have since hidden or eaten or something.

and of course,

6. snow shovel (although thankfully nothing seems to be sticking, and it's supposed to get to be 60 on Friday).

Anniversary, of sorts

Six years ago, it was a crisp New England autumn day & I decided to make beef stew. At some point, my friend & neighbor Drew must have called (or I called his house), and I invited him over to share some - since there was too much to finish by myself, plus I had a nice bottle of red wine & wanted some company.

Six years later, we own a house in a beautiful (and totally different) place (with a beautiful view), we're both employed, healthy, and happy, and we have many plans for the future. Let that be a lesson to anyone reading this who doesn't already know it: don't cook beef stew for a man unless you're reay to be serious about it :) I guess it's a corollary of don't feed anything that you aren't ready to take care of. I also wonder if the fact that it was Fannie Farmer recipe, and his mom grew up in a Fannie Farmer household, has anything to do with it. Hmmm... that might make an interesting study for some grad student. : ) LOL

[Sorry for all the parenthetical expressions; it's much easier for me to write in French sometimes, as they allow for flagrant overuse of embedded clauses; however, I have had countless discussions with teachers and mentors about my sentences that go on, albeit grammatically correctly, for several lines, and I know that they are somewhat verboten in English writing. So I know how to use semi-colons, so shoot me :P ] (And don't even get me started on passive tense.....)]

Anway, we didn't get to do anything special for our anniversary, and I kind of feel like a make too big a deal out of it anyway, but I bought a bottle of chilled champagne on my way home from work today, & we drank that, and then I cleaned the bathroom and made some molasses cookies (while listening on the radio to some disco-night that was apparently going on in a club downtown (or as Pittsburghers say it, "Dahn-tahn")). Drew provided dinner, and fixed the internet. Boring from the outside, but a good day nonetheless (That bathroom had been bugging me for over a week now, and I had planned to clean it last night, but we had friends stop by for dinner last night, so I had to put it off in the name of being social).

In school news, I'm almost done with Project 1b.! Yay! And I think I've finally generated a dual retrograde case for project 1c. I'll get to look tomorrow or Monday, depends on if the coverslipping medium has dried enough that it won't stick to the microscope stage, hands, etc. Hopefully, I'll see neurons that provide acetylcholine to both the VTA (ventral tegmental area, where some interesting neurons that make dopamine are located), and the AVN (anteroventral thalamic nuclei, which have neurons that are connections between the hippocampus and the cingulate cortex, and somehow involved in processing motivated behavior, although I'm not sure anyone knows how yet). If not, that will be interesting too, but for other reasons, it would be really cool if the same cells talk to both places.

Tomato Preserves, part III

The rundown:

Last year I made really awesome tomato preserves from the bumper crop of small tomatoes & chili peppers that we got from our garden. But, I made way too little - and gave most of that away. So this year, I was determined to make more. I actually ended up making two batches this year, since the tomato plants just kept producing.

The first batch - I burned. I was determined not to do this the second time. I picked more tomatoes, pickled/cooked them, and then, left the pot in the fridge for over a week. I reduced them, over many hours, and left the pot in the fridge for a few days. Today, I came home from work early, determined to can the stuff, and get my fridge space back. And I promptly burned the preserves. And possibly ruined my pot too.

I poured the unburned stuff off, further reduced, and canned that. We'll see. I'm not hopeful.

Sunday, 26 days until SFN

I'm starting to get stressed out about the annual SFN meeting. My data's not done, I need to meet with my statistics goddess, and I'm running out of time. Today I logged 10 hours: 3 for a perfusion, 3 on the confocal microscope, and 4 doing data analysis/image processing. And still more images to process before my meeting with Josephine tomorrow.

Plus, I scheduled a dermatology appointment for the morning. Not smart. Ooh, but I just realized and I can work on images while I wait for the four different doctors to see me (the price you pay for going to the teaching hospital facilities, which are right at work).

Keep your fingers crossed that I hit both of my targets during my last surgery: I'll find out on Tuesday if I did!

To keep you tided over, here's some cholinergic axon terminals in VTA:

My favorite Kale recipe

I've been following mostly cooking blogs lately, browsing food at work that I won't have time to make anytime soon, in a sort of window-shopping mode. While, I'm definitely going to make some baked ziti in my crockpot this week, I had to come up with something quick tonight. But, I haven't gone shopping in awhile, and there's a back-log of stored things in the freezer and in cans. So, I set out to see what I could pull together.

I had fairly fresh chicken breasts and Ray's Barbeque Sauce (cheap stuff at Giant Eagle that's not bad), and a can of baked beans, so that was pretty good. And there was salad stuff leftover from last night that needed to be used, too. But, Drew & I don't get that many vegetables when we're in normal, working too much mode (there's a lot of pizza, ramen, and random snacks as meals; it's almost like we're both pathetic bachelors), and so I wanted something else green-ish.

Luckily, I had a gigantic and continuing crop of kale this summer, and while I had the time, I kept picking, cleaning, blanching, and freezing small bunches of it every week or two. So I have a lot of frozen kale. I like kale in soup (and I have some of that frozen too), but needed something quicker. So, I made this:

Kale, Onions & Garlic

frozen kale (I have no idea how much I officially used, enough to feed 2 people)
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced (to serve 2 people, depend on how much you like garlic)
1/2 onion, sliced pretty thin
chili oil
salt & pepper (optional)

Heat the oil in a cast-iron skillet, or some other vastly inferior type of skillet. Throw in the garlic and let it brown a little. Toss in the onions and let them cook until they start softening. Chop up the kale if necessary, and toss that in too. Break up any frozen lumps of kale, let it cook 1-2 minutes, then cover the whole thing and let it cook some more. After about 5 minutes, I remembered that spices are good, and tossed in a handful of salt too. Because I don't cook my kale for that long before freezing it, it's still pretty crunchy when I use it, and this could probably cook for 10 minutes without making it too mushy.

I adapted this from a Food & Wine magazine recipe, that had blackened onion rings with kale, and was really good, but I didn't want to do the whole onion ring thing, as it required a few different sessions in the oven & I couldn't locate the magazine either. This works pretty well anyway, and I've done it roasted with diced potatoes too. Kale is pretty good for you, has a nice spicy flavor, so I'm happy to have figured out how to use it for normal, quick meals. And barbeque chicken is really good.

Why does it take me two weeks to post anything?

Oh yeah, because SFN's annual meeting is coming up, and I have no time these days. What with the trying to get all the work that I should've been doing this summer done. I did write a semi-longish post about a week ago, but I think it's been relegated to the drafts folder for some time, and I can't remember what it was about.

Tonight I made cookies for the first time in a long time. There is another meeting of the Neuroanatomy Club that I started last year, and no-one volunteered to do food, so I had to go to the grocery store, then the beer store, then to the lab to put everything away & start the chilling process, then home to make dinner & start baking the cookies. It's a new recipe from the New Fannie Farmer (or updated or something), and I think it turned out pretty good. More like brownies than cookies really, although I actually thought the amount of flour had to be a misprint! Only 1/4 cup?!? I followed it anyway, and they are very chewy, as promised. OOOHHH, I just remembered the molasses cookies recipe that I got from Drew's grandmother. I have to make those soon.

I ran another Western blot this week, on transfected cos7 cells (transfected with the choline transporter gene, so they'll make choline transporter). So I ran the gel on both tranfected and untransfected cells, and both of my antibodies labeled exactly the same on both lanes. Urrgh. I hate science sometimes. I'll have to pull that Piled Higher & Deeper (Ph.D.) comic strip that talks about how as a child, you think science is awesome because it figures out how things work, and there are objective truths. And then you get to the doing it part, and you realize how hit-or-miss it really is, and how much you have to qualify everything you say/conclude. And how many completely unfounded assumptions go behind what you're doing. But, as I've said before to some of my colleagues, if you spend all of your time trying to prove all those assumptions before you do your experiment, then you'll never actually do it; sometimes you just have to jump in and do it to see what's going on. Then again, I end up with a lot of data that you can't tell what it means.

This weekend I'll be working, but next weekend there is a pumpkin carving party at my friend (and fellow grad student) Mala's house. I may not go to pick pumpkins (just buy one locally), but I think I want to carve one up with people.

Hope you all are doing well, what are your plans for Halloween/Samhain/harvest celebrations?

Manhattan Wedding

We took a day off on Friday, and drove out to Manhattan (okay, we actually drove to New Jersey) for the wedding of D's cousin (well, one of them, there are like a million cousins in this family). It was such a beautiful drive - all of the leaves in the higher altitudes of PA have changed & were in full force. We haven't quite reached that point in Pittsburgh yet, so it was nice to get a preview. Plus it was gorgeous weather & I had an interesting book with me. We reached NJ around 5 pm, and were greeted by D's aunt & uncle. Had some nice wine & cheese, & chatted about current events.

Saturday morning, all the ladies in the group went and did a 5k. We walked, so as not to have any vomiting/heart attacks. And D's aunt won 3rd place for her age bracket! I did not do so well - I was probably last in my age group, but I didn't run, so.... Now I want to try one around Pittsburgh, to see how I'd do if I did put a little more effort into it. Probably would do about the same - HA!

Then we got ready for the wedding. D had gotten a new suit, so he looked sharp, and I was wearing my old red dress. I felt renewed irritation at the woman who altered it for me back in Somerville - she really messed it up & it fit worse after I took it to her. So I'll have to get it realtered (if there's enough material to play with) at some point. We drove into Manhattan & got to the hotel early. A round of drinks, and it was ceremony time. It was a beautiful & simple ceremony, & I'm glad that we were there. Hors d'ouevres were interesting - a mini turkey & beef burger bar, and a glass of wine. Then we all headed upstairs to a different ball room for dinner & dancing. I had a great time, and D has even agreed to go to dancing lessons with me next year, so that the next time we go to a wedding, we won't look so clueless on the dance floor.

The drive back to Pittsburgh was just as beautiful. I always thought that I wouldn't find anywhere prettier than Massachusetts/New England, but I think Pennsylvania has it beat.

Return of the semi-flattering jeans, or Dryer magic

So, way back in June, when I was on a science related trip to Ann Arbor, I went to JCPenney to buy some clothes for the summer. It was awesome - I got so many things for $140, and my wardrobe was pretty complete for the rest of the summer. And I got two pairs of jeans that did not contain lycra, or show off the fact that I have accumulated some fat around my hip-to-waist transition zone. Yes, they are "mom jeans", but I like them. Unfortunately, 34 seconds after I got home from MI, one of these pairs of jeans disappeared. I could not find them. I even started to think that I only bought one pair, and was slightly delusional (chalked up to graduate school, which pretty much makes you indistinguishable from a mentally ill person, since you: can't make it to appointments on time (or on the right day); frequently have to stop in the middle of a room and turn around for several minutes, trying to remember what it is you are supposed to be doing; can't do laundry, grocery shopping, etc on a reasonable time scale - huh, they should add that question to the DSM-IV criteria.... (imaginary psychologist) "so, you're feeling hopeless about the future, you think you are an utter failure, you can't accomplish things, easily get distracted, are lapse on hygiene, cry on an almost-daily basis,.... oh, wait, are you in graduate school? You're perfectly normal then.") Anyhoo, (when did I start using that word?) I did laundry last night before I went to bed, after eating some more delicious crockpot beef stew & taking the garbage out, and I rescued my things from the dryer this morning. The first thing I pulled out was the missing jeans.

Perhaps my dryer is actually a porthole to some parallel universe. One in which "low rise" does not exist. Or thong underwear. Sounds like a pretty cool universe.

My post-debate two cents

I'm so glad I watched the debate last night. This whole election cycle, I've known that I'm voting for the Democrat, and I'm honestly glad that it's Obama, and not Hillary (there is not enough time to explore my complicated feelings about Hillary here; maybe some other time). But I haven't been really excited about Obama, I just think that his proposed policies are more in tune with what I'd like to see happen in this country. And his world-view doesn't seem to be as hostile & arrogant as the whole Republican field's view. Still, I wasn't convinced that he would win. (I'm still not, but that's another story as well).

But tonight, Obama really impressed me. McCain seemed to endlessly spout campaign slogans and stories (that always sound fake to me, no matter which politician is telling the "let me tell you about this american (insert mother of a soldier here, usually) that I recently met who told me something that appeals to patriotism and therefore endorses me as the more patriotic candidate" story). After McCain's long "bracelets" story, Obama told his own ("They're mothering off!" was the comment in our party at this point), and made the point that there are mothers who've lost their sons to the Iraq war who don't support our continuation of the war - e.g. Americans are different, and many don't agree with McCain/Bush that we're winning with our current strategy. I certainly don't, and I know I'm not the only one.

Overall I thought Obama was much more substantive, though not too bogged down in details, and I hope that that level of detail will be appreciated by the American people. All over the web, I'm reading that people think Obama's sentences were too complicated for the American people, so maybe it was a bad thing. But I'm getting kind of sick of the assumption that the majority of the country prefers to be treated like they're stupid. I found Obama's respect for the intelligence of the electorate refreshing. And I think he did a fairly good job of not sinking into mudslinging mode, but rather focussing on his specific vision and what he sees as important challenges facing the nation. Come to think of it, I have felt in the course of this election that Obama has been pretty dignified as politicians go - so I'm probably biased, sue me :)

I won't go on too much about McCain comments that made me scream at the screen. (FREEZE ALL SPENDING EXCEPT DEFENSE????? Are you kidding me? And keep the Bush tax cuts permanent at the same time? With: 1) a serious financial sector crisis; 2) crumbling infrastructure (think Minneapolis bridge collapse); 3) natural disasters causing more damage lately (think Katrina, and Ike); 4) challenges to our educational system (we need better science & technology education, a better trained workforce, and probably better financial education); and5) a major shift in approaches to supplying energy needed, we can't freeze spending. At least they could repeal the Bush tax cuts to pay for the damn war - if the ultra-rich (i.e. people who run oil companies & defense companies) are going to reap huge profits from American military actions, let them pay for it, not the taxpayers who earn much less (but have fewer loopholes available to them, and are much more numerous). Let us get something in return for our taxes, and people might be a little less bitter about paying them.

Obama's economic policy excited me. I really don't think the health care reform thing has a good shot at happening, but increasing taxes on the over $5 million crowd does not bother me. I'm waiting to see what happens on the Wall street bailout, and fully expect it to be unfair (I say let them fail, possibly provide some home-ownership relief for actual individuals or maybe a low cost loan program + tax exemption or deduction for down payment + closing costs (if people refinance at better terms or buy a house), and invest some money in emerging technology (and maybe, just maybe in manufacturing?) to boost jobs in those sectors. Wouldn't it be nice if American companies made something again?). Plus I had extra excitement left over from an NPR story on three companies that are opening in Western PA, that all make different kinds of solar panels (traditional polysilicon, some kind of carbon-paint, and the parabolic mirrors for the heated oil kind), so I'm on a pro-alternative energy industry kick right now. Maybe I'll look up some stock in that sector & start following it.

Okay, that's enough swooning for now. Got to go attack the weeds that are taking over the sidewalk.

tomato preserves time

Yay! I have enough tomatoes to start making preserves. So I boiled some up last night, & the slurry is now in my fridge, waiting until I have 16 hours to reduce it, then can it. Sadly, I could not locate the meticulously kept notes from last year, so I had to wing it - but it smells like it did last time around! I'm taking that as a good sign.

I went to the eye doctor yesterday - a new one near my house, and they're not jerks. Contrast this with the last time I went to the eye doctor - I was seriously overcharged & in the end given a pair of glasses that gave me a migraine within 3 minutes of putting them on. But I should have known that anyplace that gave me a 5 color printout of a map of the surface of my retina (???? wtf am i supposed to do with that? i just want some glasses!) would probably rip me off. That particular organization has since moved to a much trendier retail location, so I'm sure it now costs several thousand dollars to get your eyes examined.

But, my new guy is good, just did a standard eye exam. Is getting me some new type of contact to try. And I found a pair of glasses I like off the "frames provided by your insurance company" rack. Which usually only has Gary Larson-esque glasses that are hideously ugly. The ones I found actually look better than the 5 pairs I tried on from the "designer" section (which would have cost me a couple hundred dollars that I don't have). So I got free glasses, splurged for polycarbonate lenses ($30), and will pick up the tab on the contacts when they come in. I also asked about laser eye surgery (for which I am a candidate, but I'm pretty sure it would cost ~7k, and for that much money, I can think of a lot of other things I'd like instead.) I also found myself wondering if there is some physical attractiveness standard for opthalmologists. Except for last time, the ones that I've had have all been improbably cute. This guy is no exception (and the last time, that guy was old, so maybe he was really cute when he was younger?). Do they turn them away from opthalmology school if they're not attractive enough? Or do they get extensive cosmetic surgery before being allowed to practice?

Plum Harvest

We had a plum tree mishap this week - it seems there were ants eating away at the tree, so 1/2 of it fell over. So we harvested plums on Thursday, & had a small plum sorting session with me, D & his friend M. I got a chance to check out the new jazz CD that I picked up in Newport last weekend, & we discussed making a videogame called Virtual Migrant Worker. Or alternatively titled Plum Harvest II. (I think the II makes it sound better, but am not sure if you have to come out with Plum Harvest original before using the II designation.)

Today we had planned to go to Ikea early in the morning. But D felt sick last night & this morning, and I can't say I'm 100% today either. I cleaned up the kitchen instead, dealt with the significant volume of recycling that we have accumulated in the last two months, & petted the black kitty (who had a multi-day adventure & only returned last night). Oh, and laundry (which I have to go switch).....

Done & done. It seems there is no hot water running to the washing machine, though I am not upset enough by this to go figure out which valve is incorrectly closed.

I'm hoping we'll make it to Ikea tonight, and get a new mattress. The current one is, well...., it's time for a new one. And new pillows. And lingonberries. (And I'm sure D will sneak several tubes of fish paste into the cart)

Kristen posted her menu for the week, and it's inspired me to take another stab at getting D to sit down with me & plan menu/shopping for the week. While I don't have the whole week planned out yet, here's tonight's dish:

Yellow-fin tuna (grilled, with a Sesame Garlic & Worcestershire sauce), mixed grilled vegetables (if they're still good from Thursday) and brown basmati rice. Also whatever kind of salad I can pull together from vegetables-that-must-be-used-or-composted-in-the-next-couple-of-days. Well, I'm off to help with stick reduction in the backyard (cutting sticks into smaller sticks).

Silver Enhancement

Well, I went ahead with my silver-gold staining today anyway. I figured that the expensive reagents from this experiment had already been used, so I might as well prepare sections for EM. This necessitated another 12 hr day, but I think it was the right call. Tomorrow I'll re-run the c-fos staining & urotensin staining to make sure that I didn't just mess something up.

In response to an earlier comment, my birdhouse (oops, it's actually a bird-feeder) looks like this (so far):



I want to paint some leaves & such on it, and I'm finally getting to use the paint brushes that my sister sent me many years ago! I like doing creative stuff, but I never seem to get around to it.

That's all for now - it's late & I stood all day today at the bench. I need some sleep :)

Crappity crap crap

Urgh.... well, my c-fos staining did not work, my urotensin staining did not work, and now I'm not sure whether it's worth doing the EM staining for choline transporter. Another fun day in the lab.

I'll try again tomorrow, maybe I just messed something up - but I suspect that the urotensin antibody I'm using is no good, and I probably did not hit my target either.

At least I got to go home a little early, and even picked up some paint in order to finish painting the birdhouse that I started quite awhile ago.

Return from FL & Another Day off

We made it back to Pennsylvania rather uneventfully, and had a long drive back to the house due to highway traffic & some creative use of backroads. But it was a beautiful afternoon, sunny but cool, so it was pretty enjoyable. When we reached the house, we took a walk through the backyard & looked at our produce.

The peaches are just starting to ripen, the plums & pears too, and the tomatoes aren't far behind.

(Okay, I meant to post pictures of the trees & peaches & such, but apparently I don't actually take pictures, I just think about taking them). Perhaps later.....

In other news, my insane experiment that was supposed to happen on Monday (and was the reason that I went to work all day on Sunday to prepare) did not happen. We were out of anesthetic, & I didn't know where to borrow any at 7 am. I actually did this experiment today (Friday), and it took over 14 hours, so I'm glad that I scrapped it on Monday, since I wouldn't have gotten out of work until well after midnight. Science really stinks sometimes.

Thankfully, all of the adverse event stuff that was happening after my recent surgeries has stopped. DR #11 is alive and frisky after a ~ 4 hour procedure on Wednesday. And my two guys today went pretty well - we'll see if I got the activation I'm hoping for on Sunday. Sorry for the dorky stuff - I'm injecting this peptide into the brain that is supposed to cause increased neuronal firing in the brainstem cholinergic neurons, but so far it's only been published for live animals by one group - and they didn't show any c-Fos staining (a protein that is a marker of increased neuronal activity). This is what I'll be doing this weekend, but keep your fingers crossed for me - I've never done this staining before either! Love you all, & I'll post pictures when I get them. In the meantime:



I figure I can post this because it's not data, just an example of how coverslipping errors can produce cool-looking things. This is an area of my tissue where the mounting medium didn't completely cover the section, so there are air bubbles between the coverslip & the tissue - not good for data collection, but I liked it enought to shoot the image anyway. It's also the background on my desktop computer now.

Feeling better

Once again, sorry for the depressing post last time. But I'm pretty sure none of you are strangers to various forms of social anxiety, so I figured it was a good place to post my feelings. The last couple of days have been much better, although I got a migraine today around 2 pm that is making me progressively more nauseated. Bleh.

Since rebuilding one of our garden divider walls, I haven't done much in the yard. Still have to call an electrician; still have finish taking out the 1st floor kitchen ceiling (and floor); still have to get the new heating system squared away; and put up insulation; and put up drywall. This whole house renovation takes much longer than I thought, but a few months ago I decided to be okay with us not really getting much done on this until after I graduate. Since then I've been much happier; but I still wish I'd win the lottery or something, and just be able to hire someone to do all of this (although it's still difficult for me to deal with calling workmen & get them in for estimates).

As far as work is concerned, I'm still running in circles. I am getting closer to being done with Aim 1b of my thesis (only ~250 pictures to go), and will start Aim 2 once I get back from vacation. It would be nice if this would just work right off the bat, but I've been in grad school long enough to know that this will not happen. And in a strange, sarcastic sense, I'm actually looking forward to seeing what weird technical problem comes up this time. Otherwise, I'll continue to try to carry out the dual retrograde tracing (persistent problems with tracer detection, and survival issues), try to get rid of my extranneous bands in my Western blots (ugh, I don't even want to get into it, + communication problems with that PI), resample my dual fluorescence tissue (I didn't save the images from each separate channel for alot of my sampling and only recently realized that this is giving me false positives, but at least I have actually settled on a darn analysis protocol). Still, I had wanted to be done with Aim 1b last year some time, then start work on all this other stuff. I apparently am continuing my trend of not being able to say no to people when they try to make me do things that don't make any sense. But it's hard to contradict someone who has the power to say you don't graduate :)

Still, with any luck, and a tremendous amount of work, I may actually graduate in 2009. We'll see. Also with any luck, we'll have a finished back porch, and upstairs bathroom, & so I will actually be able to throw myself a party (though I may be even more stressed out by this than by my thesis defense!)

Shame

I actually hung out with some of my fellow grad students tonight, and we ended up coming back to my house for a tour of the back yard, since they were dropping me off anyway. I had a good time, but still felt uncomfortable, and the feeling really only grew after they left. I almost always feel that I said something wrong, or just that I am wrong, after spending time with people that I work with or go to school with. And I am always uncomfortable with having them over to the house (with only one or two exceptions). So, after they left I was feeling pretty crummy, and I put my finger on it. I'm ashamed of my house, my neighborhood, my life. This isn't something that comes from any specific person (and my three friends are good people, and I'm sure that they don't think or feel any negative things about me because of my economic position). Rather it's just the awareness that I have that I don't have the same things that they do, that I'm part of a different class, and that no matter how much time I spend in their schools or workplaces, I will never actually be part of the club.

I know that this is not some club that they all decide to keep other people out of. And it's not like I would really change my station in life - I like our house and our neighborhood, and I'm more comfortable with D & our neighbors & friends from the same walk of life than I am with anyone from work/school. But at work, I'm an outsider, and a closeted one at that. With some people, it's fine & really not an issue - I can just keep my personal life personal. But many of the grad students & professors have circles of friends that are entirely internal to the academia, and I just don't fit in there. I felt that way at college too; I guess here it's a little less conspicuous, but it's essentially the same feeling that I had then - when I had to work, and I spent alot of time in Plymouth with people who weren't in on the college thing. I feel like I'm straddling two separate worlds. My involvement in school, etc., kind of inhibits my relationships outside of that arena, and my life outside of school/work inhibits those relationships at school/work. And I feel bad that I relate to people only in a very superficial way - small talk, or discussing pop culture or something. Plus, there are other people, my boss included, who obviously have a problem with my not wanting to discuss my personal life with them, or invite them over, etc. Yet these are precisely the people that I feel would be most uncomfortable with the stark differences between my life & theirs, and I fear that if they knew anything about me, they would realize how much I don't belong around them. Which really makes me miss Boston & Tufts/NEMC - I just don't remember feeling this ashamed of myself when I worked there, and I was much less responsible & grown up there!

So, starting now, I am no longer going out for beers with people after work, because it just leads to this whole shame/awkwardness spiral. I will work late, go to the gym, or walk home & cook dinner for D & me. I will really, really, try hard to quit smoking (at least enough so that I don't do it in front of other people). And I will stop feeling like I have to make lifelong friends out of people with whom I have very little in common.

Sorry for the depressing post, but I just had to get that off my chest.

Fabulous Brick retaining wall, part II

Sorry, everybody, I haven't actually taken any pictures of the brick retaining walls in the garden. This is sort of a shame, because there were several stages of the garden building (and it's not quite done yet), but it was also pretty ugly for awhile. Plus, I just don't take that many pictures. But it's finally shaping up, and I've loaded it with transplanted yellow-pear and cherry tomatoes, four different kinds of peppers, corn, carrots, eggplant, melons, more tomatoes, broccoli and some flowers (to attract the bees). We have one section left to dig out and level while adding
some better topsoil. And then it will be on to the front garden. D bought this book off amazon:

The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City (by Kelly Coyne & Erik Knutzen);

and it's made me alot more comfortable about our jungle-like garden. Plus, I'm going to try out their suggestion to mulch over the beds this winter, & see how next year goes.

We've had dramatic weather here for a couple of weeks now, daily thunderstorms & the like. Being right at the top of the hill, we have an amazing view of any lightning the strikes over the city of Pittsburgh. And I'll post sometime later about a very strange lightning storm that I saw last weekend, once I get the description of it right :)

Naturally, we haven't been able to do quite as much work on the yard as we wish, and we're both trying to balance a big workload at work with moving forward on the house. We bought some insulation today for the second floor, and a new cordless drill (the last one's battery pack won't recharge). So next weekend, we'll (hopefully) start wiring some of the second floor rooms, and I may start removing the old heating system. We'll have to see how it goes. But for now, I have to go to sleep - it'll be a tough week coming up at work, but once it's done I'll have actually finished one experiment of my thesis!

Fabulous Brick retaining wall

I'll post pictures in a bit, but I am so excited that we got something accomplished concerning the garden today! I dug out quite a bit of earth for our back vegetable garden, and D arranged bricks in a wall structure - so now we have at least two levels for our gardening efforts. We might still put in another wall, and turn it into a 3-tiered bed. Our backyard can be a little difficult for planning, because it slopes in two directions simultaneously. But we have plenty of bricks and cinder block to try to contain things.

Now, bricks were not exactly my first choice for a retaining wall (since I don't feel that they stand up well to the continued pressure of the soil trying to redistribute itself. But, they were free, and D wanted to use them. Only time will tell if his designs will work better than I suspect.

After a bit of yard work, we headed inside for a cool drink (water, which is all that we had), and then walked down to our local hardware store (Keystone). I picked up a detachable shower head with hose, and D got some fireworks. The shower head is not as nice as the one that came with our faucet setup, but it will make it much easier to rinse down the shower when I'm cleaning the bathroom.

Kvetch, kvetch

Sorry for all the kvetching in my last post; what can I say? sometimes that stuff just comes out. Having taken the morning off from work, I am in a much better mood, and now blogging again. Thanks for all your comments too.... the thing is that I am also lazy, and our combined laziness yields a house that looks... well, you can imagine.

But, watching the cats do really crazy stuff this morning, and doing some yard work last night helped. We have a small strip of what I would like to call grass, but is really just weeds, between the wall of our property and the sidewalk proper. Since the weed-wacker broke (sometime last year) I have not been good about keeping this trimmed. And, it's overgrown-ness is highlighted by all the neighbors' neatly trimmed sidewalk areas. So, when I got home last night, I sat on the porch for a minute, and then got to work with the long garden shears. I got most of it done, and will finish up the rest when I get some time this weekend.

I am a very poor 1930's wife

I had seen this test on a Slate.com posting, but the document shown there was only the first 10 questions. Somebody had the good sense to go get the whole thing, & make it interactive. You can take the test here.

That being said, I scored a 2 (very poor...failure) as a 1930s wife. When I redid the test as D, I(he) scored a 27 (also poor, but not a failure) as a 1930s husband. Hmmm..... does that mean that he's better at this relationship thing than me? Or that it's harder to be a good 1930s wife than a 1930s husband? Or is all of this irrelevant? I'm going with that last one.

Perhaps I should retake it with me as the husband, since my lack of femininity seems to hurt me on these things (that and not having or wanting to have minor children to take care of). Which is strange, because I think of myself as being pretty far along in the feminine role between the two of us - I do more of the meal planning, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, planning vacations, reminding him to get presents for people's birthdays, or Christmas, or other holidays (or just going and doing it myself), and in general arranging things so that 'our' goals are met as a couple. I wonder how much weight they attached to that complaining question in that quiz. If it's alot, then I totally fail there, but I feel I've earned the right. I also do more of the working (though not more of the earning, but we're 50/50 on shared expenses (my credit bills, extra mortgage payments, savings, phone & retirment all come out of only my money).)

Urrgggghhhh. This is why it's so easy for me to imagine myself happy outside of this relationship. D used to say that he was here to make grad school easier for me. But so far all I see is the huge increase in housework, and utility bills, without any concomitant increase in help. Oh, and the expectation that I will of course want to be social with all of his friends, and babysit their wives/girlfriends (who I have nothing in common with except similar anatomy) while the guys go off & have fun. Strangely, he never feels obligated to accompany me to social outings - and he frequently declines, because he's not friends with any of "those" people.

Sorry, I keep thinking I'll stop complaining in the next paragraph. But then I just start on a fresh rant. Hmmm.... good things, good things. He's entertaining in his own weirdness. Yesterday I came home to find him picking berries off the mulberry tree. Repeatedly and until his hands were all stained purple. He doesn't criticize me. He will help, if you specify exactly what you would like done, and ask 7 or eight times, and then explain that helping "later" (as in when you remind him 7 or 8 times the next day, and the next, and the next, until he finally does it) isn't helping at all - since I could do whatever needs to be done in much shorter time. Um. I know there are other good things, or at least that if I keep coming up with bad ones, I will be in a very bad mood by the time I get home, so I better quit while I'm ahead.

A New Year

No, I haven't lost touch with calendar reality, but every year on june 15th we (the graduate students of the CNUP) have to turn in an annual review. I suppose this is the closest we get to having a real job - I remember having to do self-evaluations of my work at the end of each year as a technician, but then again, I usually got a raise for my efforts :) - but it's also a big pain in the butt. Particularly when you have a bunch of other things to do, and at least one other progress report to write (that one has to go to my thesis committee, was technically "due" on the 10th (although I don't think anyone is itching to read it) and hasn't been started yet). But, I finally got the thing done and handed in this morning. It is a dismaying sign of how lazy I have become that I found three or four typos after I had hit the print button, but didn't bother to reprint the corrected version. I doubt anyone reads these things that closely, especially when it comes from a 5th year graduate student, but if they do, it may inject some humor into the mind-numbing process of reading them.

With that done, this marks the beginning of my 6th year of graduate school, and I believe the beginning of my 23rd year of schooling overall. And I'm still not sure why I'm doing this to myself. But its cool to think that several hundred years ago, I would have qualified as a Druid a few years ago. If I remember correctly, they had 20 years of formal education before they "graduated". I wonder if that's where we get the tradition of funny robes & hats at our modern graduation ceremonies.

So, that was pretty much what I did this weekend. On Friday night, there was a big party that I just didn't feel like going to. D & I stayed up far too late on Wednesday night, drank too much wine, and I was incapacitated on Thursday by something that I'd like to call an alcohol-induced migraine, but was more likely to be an actual hangover. Just when I thought I was over the drinking too much thing (its been over a year since my last hangover), I get pulled back in. Granted, I get hangovers from 4 glasses of wine over 6 hours, but still..... i'd like to think that someday I will be an ultra-responsible person that doesn't ever overindulge, but I think for that to happen I will have to give up drinking all together - which might not be a bad idea.

In any case, I wasn't feeling up to a party that was most likely to be like a frat-house type of ordeal. So D went by himself, and I stayed home, ate popcorn & watched a movie, painted my toenails, pulled my eyesbrow hairs, and all that other stuff that women do when they get an evening to themselves at home (okay, the eyebrow plucking was pretty much the extent of that). Saturday, I got up & went to work for a few hours, so that I could get some uninterrupted time on the confocal microscope. Since it's a shared piece of equipment, you can usually only sign up for 2 hours/day of usage, but few people use it on the weekends, so I can spend 4 hours down there before I start to go a little batty from sitting in the dark for so long. Unfortunately this didn't turn out to be uninterrupted time. There are particular individuals who, for some reason, are completely unable to look at the calendar (sign-up sheet) on the door of this room. So, an hour before my time was up, the door was thrown open, letting all kinds of nice, interfering room light into the darkened fluorescence imaging environment, and I was asked when I would be done. I was able to suppress the response I wanted to give, "At four, like it says on the f'ing sign-up sheet", and was polite. But, I resigned an hour of my time, for no good reason. Or perhaps because I wanted to be able to complain about it later. Or maybe I was just lazy, didn't want to work anymore, & figured I needed to get to the grocery store, get home, and start my annual progress review.

On Sunday, D & I got up relatively early, and were out the door by 11 am. Don't laugh - this is a pretty major accomplishment for us. We went to Lowe's, bought some grilling stuff, a drill press (well, D bought a drill press, I don't as yet have much use for one, but it's kind of comforting to be acquiring big tools for the house), some silicone sealant (so I can re-caulk around the tub), and various other things that jumped right into our shopping basket. I then went to DSW shoe warehouse to see about some new sandals. The only pair I have left is a pair of Doc Martin like sandals, and they're a bit clunky for me lately, especially as I have started wearing some skirts. I managed to find a pair I liked, that are comfortable, don't have bows or beads or stiletto heels or that weird big-toe separating loop. The bad part is that they cost me $60. But, with any luck I will get close to a decade of use from them, so it might be worth it after all (Heck, even if I only get 2 years out of them it will be worth it). I also bought another pair of brown shoes, since my Clarks have a big split in the sole that lets in water. But I put these on this morning to go to work, & they didn't feel as comfortable, & they were pinching my right foot (which is the smaller one - I have no idea how they're pinching that foot, but not the left one, perhaps my feet swell differentially at night?). So I will probably bring these back.

Okay, that thread is getting a bit boring. After the shopping extravaganza, we picked up some discounted gas (my Giant Eagle card & fuel perks points brought the cost down to 2.54 per gallon, ~ 28 bucks to fill the tank), then headed back home. I did more work on my report, and we headed to D's mom's house for dinner. When we got back, I still had more tweaking to do on the report, so I did that with only a few breaks to play some Guitar hero. This game is way too addictive. I'm thinking about playing it again right now. After I was finally satisfied with my progress report, we each played a few more songs, and went to bed. Which was good, because I managed to get up this morning at 6:30, with no going back to sleep.

Summer is definitely here, now.

Well, I'm sure you've all had your share of strange weather this year (and last year too, come to think of it). But this past weekend it was 90+ every day, and it doesn't look the heat is going to let up anytime soon. D wrestled our small & solitary air conditioner into our bedroom window on Saturday, and last night we ate outside on our patio. This still isn't completely finished, mainly because no-one can get up the motivation to lift those giant rocks again - it's pretty much a one-shot deal. Once someone has done this once, it's very difficult to convince them that they want to do it again. And, we have to lift them up in order to add more marble chips & get everything levels. But, it will get done someday.

Otherwise, I got a chance to clean up the house - especially vacuuming, cleaning the kitchen up (including the floor), and getting some laundry done. I'm getting much better at grilling, too. We ate bar-b-que chicken wings and vegetable kabobs last nite, while watching 60 minutes on a small b&w portable tv. We also broke out some new citronella candles. I'm still not convinced that these work to repel mosquitoes, but I hate having bug spray all over me, so I'm giving it a whirl. If they don't work, I may try out a new trap I saw recently - that uses CO2 to attract the little bloodsuckers.

Not much else to report. I'm anxiously awaiting my copy of DMR, and trying to get a lot of analysis done while I have the time this summer. Plus, I'll be really pushing to get some other experiments done (these will generate cool pictures that I will have to post).

Beer!!!! Real Beer!!!! At the liquor store, where you can buy wine too! And not just the wine that the state of PA has decided to buy & resell to you!

Okay, so I don't want to sound like an alcoholic ( I may still occasionally be surprised by a hangover, but overall, I don't think I really drink that much). But.....

I hadn't realized how much I suffered because of the state system in Pennsylvania. I do miss being able to buy a bottle of wine & a six-pack in the same place, in fact, I miss being able to buy a six-pack for less than $20.

PA's system is this: the state runs the alcohol game. They buy certain wines, and spirits, and sell them in state liquor stores. But, you can't get just any wine you want. And I think, you can't have wine sent to you from a vineyard out of state either (although that may have changed recently). And, most importantly, you can't buy beer there. If you want beer, you have to go to a beer distributor. They generally carry crappy, hugely commercial beer. And you have to buy a case - there are no smaller quantities available. Don't ask me how this supposed to discourage drinking in large volumes, I have never understood it. Except that when I first moved there, I didn't have access to a car, and I wasn't going to carry a case home (plus it would take me over a month to drink that much), so I stopped drinking beer. Except at bars. The exception to the case rule is that you can buy a six-pack at a bar - but at bar prices. Hence, a six pack costs, on average, $20. I guess that does cut down on beer consumption. Plus, now there is an additional 10% tax on poured drinks in Allegheney county (which includes Pittsburgh, thanks Dan Onorato!), so drinking at bars is now pretty distateful to me, and D flat out refuses to go out for a beer.

So, to get back to my point, I decided, on the way back to my hotel room, to stop at a liquor store, and pick up a bottle of wine. I'm still in Michigan, so it's different here. I walked in, and was instantly stunned. So many different wines! So many different beers! I didn't know what to buy, and I decided to pick up some extra, different beers (i.e. ones we don't get in PA, and that our friend Mike hasn't brought to our house yet). I spent way more money than I planned to, but still less than equivalent beers would have cost me in Pgh. (Oh, Pgh is the abbreviation for Pittsburgh, which only people who live there recognize. You can even mail things with Pgh as the city, and the post office knows what it is. But maybe only if you mail it from Pgh. THis also relates to the URL for this blog: I do neuroscience in Pgh. Get it? Very creative, I know ;)

Here are the beers I purchased (I tried to get local ones, the lambic was just because I love the stuff, and it was really cheap here):

Arcadia Ales Cocoa loco, brewed in Battle Creek, MI
Existetinal Ale, brewed in Holland, MI
Issaquah Brewery Menage a frog (okay, it sounds gross, but it has a cute picture of frogs on it!), brewed in Issaquah, WA
Lambic Framboise, brewed in Belgium somewhere (I've gotten up off the bed too many times to try to photograph these, only to find out that the stupid SD card shouldn't be formatted after all, and now I can't see the pictures on my computer. Darn technology!)
Unibroue Ephemere, the apple one, this is a brewery in Canada, and very good! When D & I were in Seattle last year, we went to a National Park on Puget Sound, and afterwards we found this place in the middle of nowhere (Stanwood, WA, the Stanwood hotel) and had a really good Chicken Philly sandwich, and Ephemere on tap - served in Bell Jars. It was awesome!

Okay, enough about beer. Someday I will actually post pictures from the camera - but in the meantime, here's one of my work photos. High affinity Choline transporter (green) + vesicular acetylcholine transporter (red) in the retrochiasmatic division of the supraoptic nucleus:

Michigan, part II

So, I got here fine, & have been going into the lab every day & talking with people, and watching experiments. I am not, in fact, giving a talk, and that has made me even more irritated with my boss for suggesting it & making me spend two weeks working on slides, etc. I could have been using that time to read more, prepare for these discussions, & actually get some friggin work done! But, on the good side, it has been very interesting up here, & Dr. S is willing to let me come back to run some experiments. I have to talk it over with my boss & committee, check on the money situation, & gather some data on a separate, yet parallel, project, but the possibility is there. And, although he disagrees with my ideas, he's willing to try it out. So yay!

Michigan

I'm going on my first real work trip tomorrow. I'll be driving to Ann Arbor, MI tomorrow afternoon, & Monday I will go meet Dr. S. to talk about enzyme-mediated microamperometry experiments (sorry, just had to geek out there for a minute). It's a cool technique, & I'd like to use it, but I have to find out more about some of his lab's previous experiments (things I couldn't get in his papers) & try to convince him that its worth looking at my brain area (of interest). I'm not sure that I will be able to, but I hope that he'll find the conversation worth having.

That said, I am terrifically nervous tonight. And, apparently, alliterative. I laid in bed for almost an hour with my mind racing, then got up to blog - a la Doogie Howser. I am mostly packed, but still have to go to the lab tomorrow to work on some images. While in Ann Arbor, I'm going to give Dr. S's lab a short talk about my thesis work, and explain some of the reasoning behind the experiments I want to do. This is the part I'm afraid of, and consequently the part that I have put off the most. My current boss promised I would do this, & I am slightly annoyed at this - it was not how I wanted to spend the last two weeks, and now I feel unprepared for my discussion with this guy. And I really respect his work, and am pretty intimidated by him. But, I'll get everything done tomorrow (images in the morning in Pgh, and charts/polishing slides once I check into my hotel.) And I know it will be alright, however it turns out, I'm just still keyed up - excited, I guess.

I do feel bad that I missed a Dad's & my sister's birthdays this week - I sent an online message to my sister, but will call you both tomorrow. I love & miss you both & hope you enjoyed your days.


Now I am actually yawning, but it may be Braxton-Hicks yawns (it's a lame joke, I know, but I'm a scientist - we're where lame jokes come from). I'm going to stay up just a bit longer to make sure :)

My Mom, Part II

My sister wrote a wonderful tribute to my mom for Mother's Day this year here. It made me cry, and also brought up lots of memories of my mom, that I'm not sure anybody out there knows. My sisters will, of course, remember some of it, but these are the things that have shaped my perception of my mom, so some of them may not be things that even they have thought about or known.

Some of them are extensions of things that Kristen said :)

My mom is silly. The "pinching heinies" thing is no joke, I actually almost told a story about it to D's parents at dinner last week, but I wasn't sure I could do it justice, and without knowing my mom, I'm not sure that other people would understand (It's a great song though, and there are funny stories too!). I don't remember her pinching all that much, but I don't remember that not happening either.

My mom also has the best laugh in the world. It's cute, but not like a fake laugh. She giggles, and it never fails to make me smile, and usually join in. My laugh is nothing like it, and I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone laugh like her, except for her mother, Betty. And she laughs alot, which may be more important.

My mom is great with kids. Part of it is that she's silly & enjoys playing. But there's so much more. My mom ran a daycare in our house when I was growing up, and it was probably the best daycare in the world. She taught all of those kids so much, not just about sharing and being nice, but about the world, and how to do things. Every day, the kids would sit in a circle, and recite the date (day of the week, day, month) and what kind of weather it was. She made a calendar with velcro slots in all the days, and cardboard tags with days, months, and weather symbols to stick on the calendar. She'd choose kids to pick out the right tags, and let them put it on the calendar while everyone said the words. Those kids were so excited and proud to be the one putting up the tags, which I think are the two emotions that my mom is so good at instilling in kids. She is great at creating opportunities for people to be amazed at what they can do. I think this is what empowerment is, and I feel like this is one of the great gifts that I got from my mom. Feeling like anything is possible for myself, if I work hard enough at it, and keep trying, has influenced my view of other people so that I see the possibilities of what they can do and want them to have the opportunities to discover what they are capable of. I think this is what life is all about, seeing what you can make from the circumstances that you run across, and I think more people need to have this view of life.

My mom also can make pretty much anything she needs. When we were small, she made our clothes. She always had craft books, so that we would have things to do in the summer. She never pushed us aside, so that she could show us how to do it better. She always let us learn by doing it ourselves. (At least I never remember her doing this. This is excellent training for scientists, by the way, because it teaches you how to evaluate what you are doing, and think of a better way to do it). She would bake cookies, cakes, muffins, etc., and always had us help by measuring and adding ingredients. She did this with the daycare kids, too. And, as Kristen mentioned, she always had us help with Thanksgiving dinner. I always felt so privileged to be given something important to do, and to be included in the group of women who were preparing food for the day. I still believe strongly in the value of shared work in building personal bonds, and I find it so satisfying to do things in the service of other people (okay, not always, but in my better moments, when I know some humility, and grace).

My mom raised us to pull our own weight. This was perhaps the hardest thing to take as a child, but perhaps it was the most important. I imagine it may have been one of the hardest things to implement as a mother. I'm sure there was a lot of whining about it. We got added to the chore list young, (maybe at 5?), and everyone had something to do each week. One of my earliest memories is of going to get my mom so that I could show her that I changed the sheets on my bed, by myself. I think I was 4. I had the shock of my life at 22, when I realized that some people didn't know that you were supposed to change the sheets on your bed every week. Or at all, for that matter. My mom taught us to be capable - cooking, cleaning, personal care - all the stuff that you need to know how to do to run your own house as an adult, even if it's just you living in it.

And, through chores & other things, my mom gave me my sisters. I may not always get along with everyone in my family at one time, but it's amazing to me to think about the fact that my sisters have known me since I was born, and can probably remember me being born. They have looked out for me most of my life, & still support me emotionally. Plus, they are just some of the coolest women I've ever met.

Okay, it's taken me over a week to get this posted, so I will curtail it a little bit, in the interest of getting it published in the first place. But maybe there'll be updates :)

Meme (shoot, i don't know how to write pronounciations, it's like miasma, but take out the 'as'. and the uh at the end, meme)

Well, the dumpster weight came back at 5.49 tons. That sounds really impressive, until I reveal that it rained pretty hard the night before they picked up the dumpster, so all the plaster inside of it soaked up enough water to probably increase the weight by at least 1.49 tons. Which makes me wonder why Noah didn't just remodel his house right before the flood, and let the plaster soak up all of that water. Not trying to be blasphemous, but I've got to keep the jokes coming in this family.

Shaun tagged me for a meme, so here goes:

I will:

1)use as many colons as possible in this post (just kidding, that's not part of the meme, ooh, and a typo just revealed to me how to spell meme phonetically - it's meem!)

No, really this time:

1. Write the title to your own memoir using 6 words.
2. Post it on your blog.
3. Link to the person that tagged you.
4. Tag five more blogs.

So, 6 words isn't really enough, but I'll eliminate the first two I wanted to use, since they only refer to the last 5 years of my life. And what I'm left with pretty much describes most of my life anyway, so perhaps it's better that way. Here's mine:

It seemed like a good idea...

It was originally going to be: Grad School: It seemed like a good idea. But, when I think about it, this applies to most of the decisions I've made. So it's gonna stick. I could come up with something extremely science-dorky, but then no-one but other science dorks would even consider reading the book, and I wouldn't make Clinton-style money off of my memoirs. And I'd probly get angry letters from scientists that I forgot to cite, because they too had a bad time in grad school, and they went before me, so I must have plagiarized my disillusionment from them.

Actually things in science-land have not been so bad lately, I gave an anatomy talk yesterday that went over well - even though the consensus in the end was that I have a talent for choosing really hard questions that look really easy in the beginning, and that no-one else in their right mind would want to do this particular project. And we can argue back and forth on the right way to do it, but as our department chair said, "It basically comes down to what you feel is good enough".

Otherwise, not much to update, I'm going to try to work in the yard today, and catch up on family calls: first on the list is Johanna (i have your cell phone number and am not afraid to use it). I just have to find my phone, and discover its not charged, charge it, then forget who I wanted to call, and end up doing the same thing tomorrow. To all the mothers out there - I hope you have a wonderful mother's day, you are the most amazing women I know (okay, that goes more for the mothers that I am related to), and I love you very much.