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 :)