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.