I'll have a blue-ew Christmas....

Welcome back! Spurred on by fieryboots, I felt I had to post something new. It's tempting to post more frequently on the goings on in my life, but mostly it plods along in a succesion of mundane details. It's only when some time has passed do I realize that I actually accomplish anything.

D & I made our whirlwind Thanksgiving car tour. We usually just go to Philadelphia for a couple of days, but every few years, I like to make sure we get up to Massachusetts for the feast, and time with my nephew. And some Dunkin Donuts coffee. Alright, lots of Dunkin Donuts coffee. And the accents :)

I picked up the rental car after work, and packed most of our stuff in it while waiting for D to make it home from work. He'd been working 90+ hour weeks for over a month at this point, and his office was moving to a new location, so I felt a little bad making him take almost an entire week off. Not that he didn't need it, but if he got fired for taking time, I'd feel really guilty. Still, he brought his work laptop with him, and tried to work from the road during the trip.

We headed out of Pittsburgh on leg #1 of our trip - ~ 3 hrs. on PA-76 east to a town just outside of Harrisburg. 76 is the turnpike, and kind of boring visually, but it was dark out, and I'd booked us a room for less than $50 (thanks, AAA!) We were only 1 hr behind schedule, and managed to keep to that time pretty well, despite some uncomfortable driving. I was trying out a new-to-me rental model (Ford Focus), and I didn't figure out how to raise the driver's seat up so I could look down over the steering wheel. Also in play: 1) it was very foggy going over some of the mountains & I had to slow down to ~35 mph, along with everyone else on the road; 2) it was raining & I caught some hydroplaning at certain points, as Hertz had neglected to check the tire inflation & all four were really low when I checked the next morning); and 3) there was some kind of oil on the wiper blades that kept smearing across the windshield - combined with the rain, dark & oncoming headlights, visibility was pretty crappy. We tried to wash the stuff off at a gas station, but it just came right back. D thought that someone had Armor-alled the wiper blades.

So, not real happy with Hertz at that point. Plus, can American car makers possibly make cars with any bigger blind spots? I thought it was just Dodge, but this thing was awful from that perspective. We got to the hotel, and went out again for a really good meal at a little casual place near Carlisle, PA. It was actually ~ 11 miles away, but the only thing open that had drinks & food past 11 pm. I was expecting awful bar food, but was presently surprised by he homemade stromboli. We had pepperoni, black olive, & mushroom - yum!

Afterwards, we got some sleep, and got up reasonably early in the morning. Although I like lounging in bed as much as the next person, when I'm in a new situation, or traveling, I always prefer to get up early. This has, in the past, been a point of contention between D & me, as he likes to sleep until noon-ish even when we're on vacation (see: Disastrous Seattle vacation, in which Ericka gets super-pissed that someone slept until 2 pm (2!) when she wanted to go to the art museum, but not by herself). But this trip worked out pretty well. Plus, when I looked out our window, I was greeted by the sight of cats-in-the-mist. Between the hotel and the highway onramp (it was only $45 after all!), there was a small field, and three cats were sitting out there, all just sitting and looking in our general direction. It made me smile, and miss our cats at the same time.

We got some breakfast at Wafflehouse (where the waitress obviously liked D alot more than she liked me) and then hit the road, picking up some highway or other (81, I think?) through Harrisburgh and northward. We listened to science fiction podcasts on the radio through D's handy FM transmitter & his iPhone, and did okay despite having to stop to inflate tires mid-morning. Early in the afternoon, we hit traffic around the change to 84, and tuned in to the news. There was an accident up ahead, and 16 miles of backed-up highway. We happened to be right at the turn-off for the Taconic State Parkway, so we took a chance and headed off on an adventure. I'm glad we did, because this was a much prettier drive than the larger highways, and we ended up at the Mass Pike anyway.

So we got into Arlington only a little bit after we'd planned, and got to see some new terrain in the bargain :)

I'll post more of this soon, I promise - it's just getting a little long for a single entry.

Finally! A new post!

Every few weeks, I think about how I should post something, but somehow I never get around to it. My bejeweled high score is up to 191,000 though, so at least I'm using the time well ;)

Otherwise, life has been a long series of workdays for both of us. D is certainly glad to be working, but logging 14-16 hour days is getting a bit much for him. And my work seems to skip along a series of deadlines, so that I have to drop working on some projects to get a poster, or talk or paper revision done. I do feel like I'm accomplishing a lot, but it's hard not to look at everything that hasn't progressed lately.

My paper is almost ready to be published, and I don't see any reason that it won't be published once we submit it. I've pretty much finished analyzing the preliminary data for my dual fluorescence project, and hope to start imaging my data in December. I think the analysis will be pretty quick on that once I actually take the pictures, so that will be done by February.

My last project is really the pain right now. I'm having trouble generating successful cases, and it's always a different problem. I think I have finally figured out a staining problem I was having on my tissue. And I really want to finish all of the staining soon, so I don't risk more antibody problems down the line.

I have no idea when this will be done, but I would hope that I won't be doing any more surgery after January. Then it will be a lot of photographing and counting, and write the paper. I think that will give me a few months to write/defend my thesis, and still be done by June.

In the meantime, I have a job interview for a post-doc in New York City this week. The last week has been all about putting together a 30-minute talk on my work, which is both easier & harder than it sounds. I'm glad that I've already presented some of each of these projects, because I've created most of the graphs, tables, and image panels before, so that hasn't taken too long. And my work on dual fluorescence stuff has generated quite a few as well. Still, I'm amazed at how long it takes to change the colors of the bars in an image. I have almost no blank slide left to fill, but I may have to cut some (I've got 37 slides for 30 minutes right now, so something is going to have to go - or I'll have to talk for 45, which I don't really want to do).

Everything else in my life involves household chores, so not very much that's exciting there. Maybe I'll remember to bring a camera to NY with me, but even if it's pictureless, I'll post when I get back to let you all know how it went.

Good night!

Wedding reception

Well, it's done :)

After months of stress, tears, and struggling with excessive anxiety, we had a wonderful time. The venue was perfect for what we were doing, I think people liked the ceremony-as-it-was, the weather held well, and the people-who-dance-at-weddings got down for most of the night (me included!)

It was wonderful to have the families meet, and to have my mom & sister's family see a little more of Pittsburgh. It may be gritty, but I've come to love it, for all it's geographical and sociocultural quirks. We rode the Monongehela Incline for the first time, walked around Station Square, looked out on the city, gave several tours of the house, and got to stay & eat at the Parador (which I'm pretty sure we'll have to visit again sometime)!

Unfortunately, I neglected to take any pictures, so am waiting to receive some from the kind family & friends who shot tons of photos. Thanks to everyone for a good time, my only wish is that I got to spend more time with each & every one of you! I never knew how much work a wedding involves, even after everything is in place.

Tonight, we'll finish relaxing, putting laundry away, and getting ready for my reappearance at work tomorrow.

Work update

For those who are interested (others disregard, it's bound to get geeky up in here!):

I worked really hard for a few weeks on immunohistochemistry experiments, generating tissue for two separate projects. One, my dual immunofluorescence examination of the colocalization of VAT and CHT in limbic regions recipient of ascending mesopontine cholinergic innervation, had to have all the tissue processed in one big batch, which made for some particularly long days. But after a couple of weekends off and a few shortened week days, I'm back to business. I've started cleaning up/ organizing my files, and cross-referencing/cataloging the physical micrographs, image files, actual tissue, lab notes, sampling notes, and excel analysis files. It's a little daunting, because I've put off dealing with a lot of the unfinished projects, which generated a lot of data, but is hard to classify. But, I inventoried two lab notebooks last night, and I'll probably spend a day or two this week burning secondary back-up CDs.

Then, maybe, I can be done with this project. Finally.

I moved forward with my dual fluorescence project today, when a really nice grad student showed me the post-processing steps to use on my image stacks. I still need to spend some time playing with the masking procedure to identify objects as sets of voxels, but I think this will be a good way to do this project. I'm really grateful to the professor who's helping me do these experiments (and letting me use his imaging system), and to the student who helped me today.

My tract-tracing project is moving a little bit farther as well. I got an analyzable case, and I have the slides prepared, and took some low magnification shots of a far-red fluorescent dye called Alexa-647, that labeled the vesicular acetylcholine transporter (VAT). I had to paste these together in Photoshop, as the 2x image wasn't big enough to cover the entire section.

So tomorrow evening, I'll start sampling 20x triple fluorescence images. This is A--- 488 for green fluorescent latex microspheres, A--- 568 for CTxB, and A--- 647 for VAT. So far, on a quick scan, I haven't seen much colocalization of the tracers, and I haven't found anything yet that had all three labels. But I looked at very rostral sections, where inputs to the AVN aren't very heavy.

So... maybe six months? I'll bet eight ;)

On that front, I'm going to send resumes/CVs/coverletters to whatever jobs interest me, and see where that takes me. It's a strange way for me to do a job search, I'm used to taking whatever comes up first because I need the money, and not-so-secretly hate being without a job. So wish me luck with all of that, and hopefully I'll love my next career move.

Poached fished with ginger and vegetables

Shoot, I just realized I didn't take a picture. Well, my Asian food never really looks appetizing anyway, so you'll just have to picture it for yourself.

I bought a couple of bass the week before last; they were gutted, but still had bones and scales/skin. I foolishly thought that I would save a lot of money by doing this at home, but neglected to properly weight the fact that I don't know how to de-bone a fish. They still had dorsal fins. Ew.

Okay, I really do wish that I'd taken pictures now.

They'd been defrosting for a few days, since I pretty rarely cook these days, but I pulled them out, rinsed them out, and made a first attempt to saw through the bones with a long slender knife, that I think is supposed to be used for filleting. Of course, I was kind of cutting in the wrong direction, but soon stopped. The fish was just a bit too smelly for me to feel safe cooking it, so I tossed it back in the freezer to wait for trash day, and went to the store. I picked up some more bass, this time already prepared for cooking, though still with skin, and some veggies, ginger, and lots of other random things that we needed.

So, about an hour later, I put the groceries away, and pulled out some shrimp stock I made, and froze, back in May. Melted that in the pan, then diluted it, and tried to skim off some of the stuff that was suspended in the liquid.

Poached fish with ginger and vegetables

1 1/2 cups shrimp or fish stock
1 tsp freshly grated ginger
1 lb bass fillets, with skin on

Heat stock in a large, shallow pan to quick simmer, add water if necessary. Stir in ginger, then place fillets, skin side up, and cover for 4-5 minutes. Reduce heat if necessary to poach fish. Remove fish from pan with tongs/spatula. After all pieces are out of the pot, you can add the remaining fillets, and finish them up. Take a fork, and scrape the skin/scales off of the topside each fillet. Try to get it all in one piece, I think it reduces the number of scales that you end up eating unwittingly. Throw it out - I don't know if I want to compost this, b/c of the smell, and I don't know anything else to do with it.

Pour the stock out through cheesecloth and a fine mesh wire strainer, to get the liquid. Don't (as I did!) forget to put a bowl or some kind of container underneath the strainer, so that you can actually get the part you want, rather than sending it down the drain. Luckily, I only did this with half , and my shrimp stock was stronger than I really wanted it to be [which is a whole nother story involving leaving the stove on while D & I both went out for 3 hours.] Dad, I think this means I can no longer make fun of you for doing the same with the great stock debacle of '92 or '93.

Okay, so I diluted the stock some more, in a big Pyrex measuring cup. Rinsed out the pan, and reheated it on mediumish heat.

If you happen to have a handy electric rice maker, now is a good time to start the rice.

And I can't believe I actually use one of these. I have a strong conviction that many gadgets don't really make things easier than doing it by hand. I don't ever make microwave popcorn, though I do use the microwave to heat up coffee/water, melt butter, and bake potatoes. I resisted a food processor for a long time, but for some things, it's worth taking it out for. I used to make fun of people who had rice cookers. Rice is not hard. You boil some water, add some rice, cover it & reduce heat, then check it a couple of times. Voila. But the beauty of the rice cooker is that you don't have to boil the water first, then add the rice. Just put both in, and turn it on. It's pretty much the only step worth eliminating. And, you don't have to check it at all - it switches itself into "Keep Warm" mode.

1 cup (dry weight) rice, prepared
(I used jasmine)

2 tsp oil
1/2 onion, sliced thinly
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup zucchinni, julienned and cut to ~ 1-2 inches
1/2 cup carrot, julienned and cut to same length
1 cup green beans, snapped to same length as above
2 tsp freshly grated ginger

Heat the oil, and add onions, then garlic. Stir-fry for a couple of minutes (3, maybe?) on high, until onions are browning at the edges and crispy. Add the carrots, and a few tablespoons of the stock. cover for 1-2 minutes, maybe turn down the heat a little. Add the peas, and 1/2 C more liquid, to steam the vegetables a little. Recover and cook for a few minutes. Add the zucchini, and recover for 2 more minutes. To the remaining stock, add some rice vinegar, spices, etc, to spice it up a bit.

Add the rest of the stock, ginger, a handful of chopped cilantro leaves and put the fish pieces sans peau back in, cover, and cook 2-3 more minutes. Serve over rice with dry white wine.

We ate outside in the LB Memorial Patio, by candlelight, and with the cats frolicking in the plants :)

It was okay, better than my usual attempts. I think, despite how much I hate it, I need to break out the Wok, and get the oil hotter before I cook the vegetables. At least the Indian is pretty fool-proof, and I have a dishwasher, which makes experimenting with multiple pot cooking possible.

The porch is gone!!!

The dumpster was picked up on Tuesday, and now we have one less porch. =)

I've been working alot - running two experiments simultaneously now, which I swore I wasn't going to do anymore. But I think project #1 is going to work this time. The last time I tried to generate tissue for this project, I got a horrible staining artifact that made capturing decent pictures impossible. So I had to tweak a few things, and try again. I think I got rid of it, but won't know for sure until I can check it on the scope up the hill.

The other project is a tract-tracing one, and right now I'm just checking the placement of my injections. So I headed into work reasonably early, and got started. Everything was fine for awhile, and then the fire alarm went off. This happens more frequently than you'd think, and it's usually cleared up in a few minutes, so I headed out of the building. (Plus, of course, there might actually have been a fire, so....)

One hour later, we were all still waiting to go back into the building. Grrrr....

I finally went to another entrance, where the campus police were not hanging around, and went back in. The fire department had come and gone, and we were apparently just waiting for the building manager to figure out what had gone wrong with the alarm system. I had to adjust my plans for the day, and will be in tomorrow to finish it.

After I burned a couple of CDs (back-ups of finished projects), I caught a bus up to our friend Mike's, and met Drew there. He'd been helping Mike with some yardwork & gardening, and since Mike lives near the Pittsburgh Trader Joe's, we took a spin over there & picked up some things that aren't available at the Giant Eagle (our normal grocery store). Then back home to improvise some dinner.

Things I did not get to today: building a fence around the garden area to foil the groundhog. Putting away the clean dishes. Scooping the upstairs cat box (I may still get to that one, perhaps on my way down to bed.)

Stuff I did manage to do: Well, work. Folded and put away some of the clean laundry. Blogged. Called my dad. Took a shower (Don't laugh, sometimes I just don't remember to).

Another dumpster....

We have another dumpster, to get rid of the lath, windows, door + frame, back porch, and whatever other trash I can get my hands on. And the best part is: (drum roll, please) D got the dumpster permit, dumpster, and scheduled the porch demolition all without any involvement from me! Yay! I can just work on my school stuff, while other things get done! :) (Plus he did dishes today, and mowed the front lawn, which I'd been gently reminding him about for two or three weeks).

So I am obviously happy. My paper is almost done, just one more meeting (I hope!) with my statistician, and maybe one more edit (before the final edit/fixing of stuff we didn't see before), and then it will be off! I met with advisor today, and we accomplished alot, plus I ran the idea by her of not submitting an abstract for SFN this year. I have no positive data yet, so it would be very hard to write one by Thursday. I'd rather spend my time on getting my thesis work done, even if it means paying for the trip myself (if it turns out I feel I should go for interviewing/job-finding purposes). Sorry, let me explain - SFN is the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, which is generally attended by ~30,000 neuroscientists. I've gone to D.C. twice, Atlanta & San Diego once, and this year it's in Chicago. I really want to go to Chicago, but it's an expensive, and extremely tiring, meeting to go to. Right now, I'm cold e-mailing people about post-doctoral research opportunities, jobs, etc., but at SFN they have a NeuroJobs search & interviewing process that lets you talk to people face-to-face. It would be good, but we'll see how I'm doing research-wise at that point. The good thing is that when I broached the subject with Susan today, she indicated she'd be willing to foot at least some of the bill (from her grants/GSR funds), so it won't be as expensive as I thought.

I also made a pretty good Indian food dinner last night. I bought a book a few months ago: South Indian Cooking (or something like that). And another one: An Introduction to Indian Cooking, by Madhur Jaffrey. I haven't actually made anything from the Madhur Jaffrey book, though I am know tempted to go to the store that sells goat meat in Oakland someday, so it can be authentic. After I received both, I went to the Indian grocery store, and bought most of the dal (lentils, and there are more types than you'd ever imagined), spices, and exotic stuff like tamarind paste & shredded coconut & asafoetida powder that I'd need. So it's pretty easy to just cook something up, should I remember.

So I knew I had a bunch of vegetables I had to cook - bell peppers, zucchini, cilantro, kale, tomatoes - and I got to work. Most of the recipes I've tried so far, this started with some lentils (in this case toor dal (small, flat & thin yellow split peas)), simmered in water until creamy. Heat some corn oil, throw in some urad dal (white lentils), black mustard seeds, asafoetida powder, fenugreek seeds (methi) & a chili pepper, cover and cook until the mustard seeds pop. [From last night's experiment, I know that it doesn't really matter if they burn a little bit].

Throw in some onion and tomato, and the toor dal, cook for a minute or two, then add a cup of water & some tomato sauce, cilantro, salt, more turmeric powder, and something called sambhar powder (hot!), and simmer another few minutes. In this case, I added some bell pepper and cooked, covered another 10-15 minutes. Serve over rice [I do jasmine rice, or brown basmati, and a rice cooker is a pretty cool kitchen accesory].

I also stir-fried up the kale in olive oil with some garlic & onions (caramelized before adding the kale) with just a splash of white balsamic vinegar. I thought that would be a good side, but it ended up being pretty good mixed in with the Indian food.

Anyway, the tomato sauce/lentil base is awesome - this is much like the sauch over chicken tikki masala, but the sambhar powder makes it spicier than that sauce. I've made it with carrots before too (sliced pretty thin, added at the same time as the bell peppers above, but cooked longer), and that was good too.

I thought about taking pictures, but it's actually pretty tough - things have to be added pretty quickly, and it's definitely best to chop everything up before you start heating the oil, or you may get caught without the right ingredients at the right time. I'll try next time I venture to subcontinental cuisin. Also, I'd like to thank Kristen for making this possible - the blue enamelled cast-iron pot is perfect for cooking the lentils, and the covered cast iron double handed skillet is good for mixing everything together. I'd also highly recommend wood utensils, and a wire basket wok tool for blanching kale (or spinach, or deep frying anything). The tools are all available at Wal-mart, or any kitchen store (but Wal-mart is way cheaper, although I always have mixed feelings about anti-labor Wal-mart policies).

That's all the new that's fit to print! M (D's mom) & D & I are still trying to get wedding reception plans together - it's insanely more expensive than you'd think, so there's alot of options to be explored at this point. I confess, I have thought about cancelling several times wistfully, but we still want everyone to be there who can, so I guess we're on the hook now :) Still, the house is still coming along slowly, and it looks like we need another Subaru (the old girl is coughing and sputtering, and I think has a bad CV joint), so we'll see what we can get away with.

Love you all, and hope you have a good night!

Time to submit.... a paper

My advisor and I are almost done with my first, first author manuscript. I'm a little nervous, as we're submitting to the Journal of Comparative Neurology, which is pretty much as high as neuroanatomy journals get. I trust my data, and the statistics that my wonderful consultant has done for us, but the text of the article is freaking me out a little bit. I've been wrapping things up in the past couple of days, just inserting citations for statements that I know I've read before, but as I search the literature, I'm not finding much to back up those assertions. I have found where I read these things, but know I'm not sure that I believe those sources.... So I'm afraid the reviews might be scathing....

I'm trying to step up the pace on a couple of other projects as well, since my committee decided that I just need to finish those two things for my dissertation. Unfortunately, the immuno is not co-operating. My co-localization study is almost ready to get off the ground, but I'm getting a weird background staining that I have yet to abolish. Luckily, the professor who's helping me with the imaging is very understanding, and chalked it up to, well science, today when we met.
So I've got a few more tests to run, before I can generate the tissue for that one.

D gave me some good news about the house today though - our back deck is coming off this weekend! So at least we're getting some progress there :) And last weekend we went and picked up some plants (tomatoes, collard greens, cucumbers, rosemary, coneflower, and brussels sprouts (D's choice, not mine)), and put most of them in the ground. We're lucky to get plenty of rain, so as long as we can keep the groundhog away, I think we should be all right.

Sorry it's all about work today, but there's not much else going on!

No phone

Hi Everybody!

I haven't posted in awhile, although I did write a draft last week. But it descended into complaining, and I just couldn't bring myself to be publicly gripe, again : |

Naturally, it's been a busy two weeks, but my paper is coming along, and I'll have another tract-tracing case to examine after this weekend. In house news, we have more contractors coming in to replace some windows in the house tomorrow, and D moved a bunch of stuff into storage on the third floor. Oh! And the heating inspector signed off on our HVAC permit! Yay!

The bad news of the week is that I lost my phone. I've been resisting getting a new one, hoping it would turn up, but I think I'll have to go to the T-Mobile store tomorrow. Which isn't too bad, since I'll be able to get one that actually has an alarm - I couldn't believe it when my phone didn't have one - it's the most useful feature, besides the phone part!

That's about it - I don't even have any good cooking stories for all of you! Hopefully I'll make something this weekend & post again. In the meantime, hope you're all having a good week, and got a bit of the warm weather.

Chili and the dishwasher

We installed one of our dishwashers last weekend, and although it's small, & loud. I have to admit that I even didn't think it would make much of a difference, since it is so small. But the last week has been awesome!!

Both of our kitchens are an in-line layout (stop me if you've heard this before). We're lucky to have high ceilings, and a pretty long room (15+ feet), but the whole thing is less than 8 feet wide. So there's not much latitude when it comes to laying out appliances. Plus there's three doorways in each kitchen, so there's a lot of dead space in the rooms.

We also have a huge old fridge. The upside is that it's a side-by-side model, but it always did stick out from the countertop. So, when D put the dishwasher in, we moved the fridge and turned it 90 degrees. The result? More counterspace (we got a butcher block top for it from the lady that gave us the dishwasher. Less claustrophobia - with the fridge in its new spot, the kitchen seems to open up once you pass that. It's still a little cramped if there's more than 2 people in there, but I feel much more comfortable in there now.


Plus, there now is not usually a gigantic pile of dishes in the sinks, in the drainer, on the one sliver of countertop, on top of the stove.... you get the picture. And I only have to wash big bowls or pots by hand - which is the easy part.

I couldn't be happier :)

As for the chili - one of the graduate students is holding a chili cook-off today, so after I went to work this morning, I stopped at the store on the way home, and then made a black bean chili. I didn't have any ground beef, and to be honest I'm not really good at cooking meat, so I just went vegetarian. And made sure to add only veg stock, so if there are vegetarians there, they can eat it too.

It was a completely new recipe. I usually make black bean chili from an old cookbook, Vegetarian Delights (or something like that), which was my first veg cookbook. I bought it when I first moved to Pittsburgh, with a gift certificate my friend Mary gave me when I moved away. But, I don't know where that particular cookbook is right now. And I didn't feel like searching the house for it.

So I winged it. Here goes (so far it tastes pretty awesome):

Ericka's Black Bean chili - serves 4-6

one can black beans
one can kidney beans
5-6 cloves garlic, minced
2 med-sm onions, finely chopped (I used one white, one yellow)
olive oil
~ 20 oz diced tomatoes in juice (I used one 14 oz can, but it wasn't quite enough so I added another half)
~ 1 tbsp French Thyme

** All spice amounts are a guess. I shake some out in my hand, and just throw stuff in until it looks right.**

1 tbsp cumin
2 tbsp chili powder
1/2 tsp mole powder (mine is from the garden last year, I only got 5 peppers, but I dried them & ground them by hand, and I wanted to use them for something)
couple of shakes of ancho chili powder
1/2 tsp cayenne powder
salt
1 tsp paprika
1 cup vegetable stock (if you don't care whether it's totally veg, you can use chicken stock)
Probably about 1 cup of beer, I used some East End Brewing Company Trippelicious that we had left over from D's birthday - mmmm, very good
1 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

Cast-iron skillet
Rocking French enameled cast-iron pot w/lid.





Heat some olive oil in the skillet, then add the garlic, and thyme. Let it get nice & aromatic, then add onion & saute for 3-4 mins. Add tomatoes and cook for another 2 minutes or so.

Transfer to your amazing French enameled cast-iron pot. Rinse the canned beans off well, and then add them to the pot. Throw some cumin & chili powder in there and add the veg stock. Stir it around, cover it, and let it cook for a few minutes. Open it back up, add the rest of the powdered spices & the beer, and simmer for ~ 20 minutes. Taste it, add the cilantro & anything else you want to tweak, and simmer for another 15 minutes. D suggested I add some lime juice, so I squeezed in a bit and cooked another 10 minutes after that.

Yum!

Project Sunday

We finally have a warm day! And all the ice melted off the car :)

D & I spent the day doing projects. I got up early, went to work, caught the bus back, and then we started. We finished cleaning the kitchen, washed the hallway floor, removed another baseboard heating unit, and set up the printing station. The added bonus was that we moved a large cabinet that was next to my desk downstairs, and used that to put printers on. So there's more room downstairs, and I feel like we made some progress.

Plus, we leave in a little while to go to H & M's house. For superbowl chicken wings - yum! M & I went shopping together yesterday, so I've been thinking about food for two days. We'll definitely enjoy, no matter the outcome, but it would be really good if the Steelers won.

I hope you all are having a productive, or lazy, day, but that you're enjoying it!

Okay, I'm not sure why I uploaded Beaker, but I find the picture amusing at least. We've had some car trouble lately (Subaru is in for a new clutch, and while the mechanics we use are good & pretty cheap, they do take a really long time to finish things). Usually this is not a problem as we have another, crappier car that stands in when the Sub isn't feeling well, but now the Nissan will not start. One of the battery terminals is not performing its duty. So we have jumped it a few times off of extra batteries that we have, but this didn't work yesterday. I think all the spares were dead as well.

So, no motoring for us. Which is okay with us, because it is still ridiculously cold. The only problem is the lack of groceries in the house. The HVAC guys were here all week, and are almost finished, but during the course of installing ducts, they had to move a bunch of stuff in kitchen into a big pile. So last night, Drew & I put everything back in its place, and I tried to make dinner. And got more and more frustrated as the things that i wanted to make were revealed as impossible due to lack of ingredients. But I scraped together some salmon, rice, and frozen green bean cocktail. And we walked to the convenience store for chocolate :)

Today, the lack of groceries is more pressing. Luckily, my friend Marguerite called me this morning & invited me to accompany her to Walmart. So I can pick up some much needed food. And gossip about a particular individual whom neither of us like, but who we are both forced to interact with at intervals. I know, I shouldn't gossip about people, but .... oh well. I'm getting a little tired of this person coming over to my house, drinking all of our beer, complaining about how no-one talks to her (ummm, I do, and I've been trying to find topics of interest to both of us, but she doesn't work, I don't think she reads, and she seems to miss social cues that most other people have learned how to be polite around), or how we make her feel stupid. There are other things too, which place her firmly in the bipolar group for me, but I won't go into it. Suffice it to say, even when I try to see her good points, she usually manages to annoy me to the point where I don't want to see her again for a long time. Which stinks, because she is married to a good friend of ours, who we want to see more often. Unfortunately, I end up having to baby-sit her every time they come over, so that Drew & his friend can talk about computers until they're both too wound up to sleep.

So, I'll enjoy the time with Marguerite today (we don't just gossip, we talk about other things too).

I had to laugh last night, because I think Drew & I are turning into old people. We were invited to a party last night, but instead we were in bed at 10 pm. I had to check the clock beforehand, because I was pretty sure it was only 9. But we made it to 10 pm, a perfectly respectable bedtime for a saturday night, right?

Perhaps I'd better stick to cooking....

Not so many comments when I digress onto the science-y stuff.....

Lots of good things today, although not the weather. It is amazingly cold, and has been for days (I mean, like, 9 degrees cold. I now constantly wear at least two layers, and three layers of socks at least. Plus our bathroom is even colder now, since the HVAC guys needed access to the wall with the plumbing stack in order to run the new gas line to the upstairs :(

But... we'll have a new heating system, and be able to move forward to outlets up there! So it looks like the dry rooms up there, at least, will be finished by the summer. Yay!

In other good news, I got my boss to look over my first draft of my paper introduction, and she did a bit of editing, and pointed out some pieces of information that are missing. So I've got a little more work to do on that.

We also met with our statistics advisor today, and got more good news there. *** Science alert*** - I know everyone will skip this next part, but I want to try to live up to the neuropgh name by including a bit more about what I do.

It looks like I have a difference between my regions on my measure of linear density (I know, it's a technical oxymoron, but that's what it is - # transporters/ perimeter of plasma membrane). The difficult part is that the terminals in these areas are different sizes, and the efficiency of my labeling method varies from section to section. Actually it varies even within a section, as the distance from the section surface increases (I think, this is more a theoretical supposition, but it certainly does vary between terminals).

So, if these measures (i.e. size, and density of labeling overall (# gold particles/area of the labeled profile)) vary systematically between my two regions, these things could be responsible for the apparent regional differences. We try to deal with this statistically, by analyzing the relationships between all these variables. So far, I know that there is a difference in size between regions, and that the overall density of labeling is a significant predictor of the linear density of labeling. We forgot to ask is the overall density of labeling differs between regions, but those results will be in by the weekend.

There was another set of data (well, two actually) that I collected from the same terminals. This is a basic count of whether the terminals in question made a synapse (or not), and whether they contained any dense-cored vesicles (a structure that is associated with neuropeptide co-transmission). We then compared the rates of these occurrences between regions. It looks like the regions differ there too.

So, I have plenty to report in my first major (i.e. first author) paper.

After all that, I came home to my D, who was in the process of making dinner for us (double yay!). He has a job interview on Tuesday, and I know he's talked to a couple of other recruiters in the area. He's also been working on updating a couple of his revenue-generating websites, to increase the revenue part.

I kept company & washed dishes, then we had a nice hot dinner, & both settled down to do a bit of work. But I think it may be time for a popcorn break :)

Hope you all have a good night, and stay plenty warm. I will be encouraging the cats to sleep on my feet this evening.

Still snowing in Pittsburgh

I don't even know what day we're on, snow-wise. The past few days have been colder than I think I've ever experienced before, although the air was so dry & there was little wind, so it didn't feel that cold. Luckily, we're back in the 20s, so there's that. But I still have to go out and shovel in a little bit.

Not much happening here at the homestead. I'm tempted to go to work, but I can't really think of anything to do there, except grab my laptop charger, as the house has swallowed my alternate. It's a tidy-up type of Sunday, and I have already:

1)made coffee (obviously necessary)
2) gotten D out of bed (at 9!!! this is truly an amazing and noteworthy feat)
3) cleaned the bathroom - I've decided I need grime colored tiles for the next bathroom - the white shows some pretty nasty stuff after 2 weeks, and I don't like cleaning the bathroom enough to do it more often
4)done one load of laundry, which I am about to switch over to the dryer

also played two pretty dismal games of Katamari - I only made it to 2000 m diameter, and usually I can get >3200

Also, yesterday I actually finished up writing my introduction to this paper. I have still to insert endless citations & double check that these papers are saying what I'm saying they're saying. Though luckily not all of them (some of them I know like the back of my hand). But there's a lot of old stuff (1975-2000) that were experiments done before people had discovered the gene for this protein, and so they need to be gone over with a fine toothed comb to match up the findings with later stuff... Sorry, I'm boring everyone. But there are parts of my job that are really challenging intellectually, & I guess it's actually those parts that I like. I do hate the tedium of putting in citations though.

Even more surprising, I acutally revised some of my writing. I'm not generally good at this. In college, I usually only wrote one draft, and handed it in. There were a few notable exceptions (one comparative lit paper, that was ~15 pages long, generated 80+ pages in drafts as I wrote and rewrote and rewrote). I'm also getting used to being less obsessed with getting the right wording - my boss is very good at rewording things for conciseness, to get rid of repetition, etc, and so if I feel stuck on something, I can let it go, and know that she'll be able to correct it later, probably with much less effort.

First real paper

On Wednesday I met with my advisor/boss, and she told me to start writing my first paper (well, on my thesis work, I have already published 3 papers thus far, but didn't have much to do with the writing of them.) So I stayed home on Thursday, did a little bit of writing, a lot of laundry, and a medium-sized amount of baking (chocolate chip cookies & cheesy breadsticks).

(I resume writing several hours later....)

Today, my friend M trekked up the hill to my house. Usually, I come down to her house, and we walk to a coffee shop for our Saturday morning girl talk, coffee, and browsing the foofy stores at the South Side Works. Well, just the kitchen place mostly. She runs the cooking blog that I follow (see link to spryte's place at right). She is our friend Jon's wife, and she moved to Pittsburgh shortly after D & I moved in to our first apartment. They live about a block from where we lived then, although they have a house, so it's certainly better than that apartment was :)

She's originally from Wakefield, Massachusetts, although she spent a long time in San Diego and subsequently, makes a lot of really good mexican food. Her kids are pretty cool too, and D & I always have a great time at their house. We made our first, "We're getting married" announcement after dinner at their house, & she has pictures on her blog (it would be around early November, & we ate yummy chicken enchiladas).

We also do a wine tasting once a month at their house, which has been fun the last two months. This month is Riesling, so today we were discussing possible food pairings - yum!

Anyway,.... After M went back home, I decided to make her sister's mini-quiches, since I had bought the pie crust for them, and I had a bunch of small amounts of vegetables left from last night's pizza improvisation. So I made the quiches with broccoli, red onions, feta, cheddar & bacon. And I got to use the silicone muffin/cupcake baking containers that my mom gave me a couple of years ago. I was first dismayed because I had forgotten that my muffin tin got destroyed last year, but I gave them a try, and they rock. The quiches slid right out when I turned them upside down. I don't think I'm going to get another muffin tin now, even if they are a bit hard to clean.

I also put the Christmas box away today, and the sleeping bags & air mattress that were out when we were hosting friends. So my house is starting to look like a living space again, slowly. I can't wait until we put in the kitchen cabinets downstairs, and once the heating system is done (Jan 26) some stuff can go back into the 3rd floor.

In the downer category, D lost his job yesterday. But we've done a good job saving & will be okay while he looks for another. It's actually strangely good timing, because he'll be home to deal with a lot of the house improvement that has to happen (meeting contractors, building inspector, wiring the outlets, electrical inspector), and I won't have to stay home from work for it. So I'm hoping this won't actually impede our house progress much.

Darn, I can't stop eating mini-quiches now. :)

Weird

Has anyone else had an issue with blogger marking their blog as having objectionable and so not being able to sign in? Very strange....

I've had a good start to the new year. After some delay, the dumpster was delivered, and D & I + some random friends got quite a bit of plaster & lath down. This gives us a good look at everything & makes it easier for the ductwork to be installed. We need a couple of windows more quickly than we thought, but I also just got my escrow check. I had completely forgotten about this added bonus of house ownership.

I also had a good start back to work today. I got there at 7:45 (left the house shortly after 7), sent off my data to the statistician, did some administrative work for the Neuroanatomy group that I've been organizing, read some e-mail, printed out some papers to read. In the afternoon, I counterstained some new tissue to look at, and signed up for EM time.

I couldn't get to sleep last night, so I started thinking about my schedule for finishing my thesis. I think, if I work a lot for the next 12 weeks, I can have the material generated for another project, and have 1-1 1/2 projects finished completely. This would be somewhere around the end of March. Then I'd have to finish one additional project and write, and I think I could have this done by Feb of next year - ? -

So I guess I'm planning to graduate around April of 2010. D has already suggested I take some time off after I'm out of school - he says a year, I'm thinking more 3 months - and if things are good financially, I think I'll take him up on it. Especially because that would give me a summer at the house to work outside, enjoy the sun, enjoy Pittsburgh.

I'm going to try to keep up the trend of getting into work early. And really perform well this year, and push to get done. I think I'm ready :)