who is a big fat slacker?

why, that would be me!

I’m not going into work today. My boss is out of town…and starting tomorrow…*shudder* 9am to 4pm is TA orientation for four days. only 7 hours, with an hour off for lunch. In theory, it’s not death – until you realize that After the TA course is over…then I have to go to my real job and work somemore. <blech>.

So today. I will stay home. I will pay bills. I will lounge. I will scoop, I will clean my room and hang up my new stars (those nifty ones you can put lightbulbs in – though I fear that I’d be killed by a fire if I did, so I skip the lightbulbs…). I’ll hang with the cats but I’ll still do work (haha! working at home now!)

I also need to go to the bank as the roomie paid her share of rent and utilities, so I’m like rich n’ stuff. Or at least I would be, except that I only get paid half salary this month. so…5 weeks of work for like 500$…wow…I work in a third world country called OSU.

my new profile pic is the cross stitch that I’m working on. I’ve finished the actual sleepy cat…what’s left is the tree. The tree is BROWN and consists of very dark brown floss, dark brown floss, brown floss, light brown floss, very light brown floss, tan floss, light orange brown floss, khaki and dark khaki floss and black. Urgh. too much brown! Oh well, I canna wait until it is done!

I need more days like yesterday in my life. So much goodness, so little time.

another profitable saturday spent at work

which wouldn’t be so bad, I guess, if I didn’t have to fight with football traffic – OSU is on home game #3, which was just won in triple overtime…

piffle, football…I really don’t care – but boy oh boy, the boys who live above me do. they drink, they smoke, they jump and scream…all for football. I suppose that’s not too bad, but for the one habit that drives me nuts…they like to scream…”O – H-” and then my neighbors on the other side yell back “I-O!” It’s apparently a great deal of skill to spell this four letter word…

but where was i?
ah yes…working on Saturdays…guess i should be glad I’m not up to working sundays too…but I will be, soon enough. I’m hitting on crunch time for the master’s degree. currently, i’ve taken all my DNA sequences and i’m lining them all up, like turtles on a log. then i have to look and see where each sequence is different, and then go into a different computer program and verify that the computer program actual is calling the base the right thing.
         well, that’s poorly explained.
*shrug* if you want more explains, i’ll give’em, but be warned, it is insanely boring. It is also time consuming. Right now, i have 40 or so sequences, each of which is composed of about 800 bases. It takes about…2.5 hours to do 150 or so bases for all 40. I’ve already done about 7 or 8 hours? all staring at a computer screen…I cannot wait until we get a flat screen monitor!

in other news…we are nearing D-day for baby poppage! not mine! silly. my sibs. It’s baby number two in less than 2 years and it (so dubbed Lu2) is due the 21st of September. we were hoping for an early arrival this weekend…but it doesn’t look good. i told her to go play on the trampoline, but she said she can’t get onto the trampoline by herself. clearly, she’s just being silly. ;-P

otherwise, things are pretty quiet. got my first issue of scientific american – which i will be posting about when i finish it. it’s all about brains and it is beyond fascinating and bordering on frightening. the only article i’ve had time to finish is the one all about “smart” pills that would allow people (all people who can afford them that is) to have “photographic” memories. it is intriguing, and yet, I’m not entirely sure i agree with the researchers…i’m leery also of fucking with my brain chemistry…dunno…any thoughts? do I have any scientific american readers out there who’ve finished Septembers’ edition?

did you ever wonder it would be like? you know, to shed this human skin…to run through the forests, be-furred and be-clawed. to stalk to hunt to feel the wind in your fur…to smell the sultry scent of prey on the wind…to taste the blood fresh in your mouth…to feel the life struggles ending by your hand…

or to soar high above in the sea of the sky…wind stroking your feather…riding a thermal…feeling like your feet never would have to touch the ground…

or to dive deep in the water…into a world only of sound…not scent…to chase the fish to dig through the silt and find the oysters…to race with the waves and divedivedive all the way into the deep just for the sheer pleasure of feeling the water caressing your body…

somedays, sometimes i do
especially in the fall, when the smell of the wild is so strong in the air that even my nose can smell it. to run to hide to be a part of it…instead of standing like we humans do, away and separate. separated by walls, by clothes, by jobs, by cars, by our brains…

would i give it up though? my shower, my hot water, my heat. my chocolate, my brain, my thinking, my reading my apartment, my comforts…just to feel…I guess to feel like I belong. Spiritually…a part of this world, to enter into the cycles of life…we don’t really, you know. we humans…we’ve separated ourselves so much…so many people don’t see cows, never have smelt a chicken…wouldn’t know how to farm, how to weed…let alone how to hunt, to track, to stalk, to gather…

what would you want?

I don’t know…maybe I’m crazy…but sometimes, somedays…I’d really like to try.

A wonderful bird is the pelican
His beak can hold more than his bellican
He takes in his beak
Food enough for a week
But I’m darned if I see how the helican

-Dixon Lanier Merritt

how long does it take to fall in love?

a heartbeat? an hour? 10 minutes? 2 weeks? how soon can be too soon?

how long does it take to fall out of love?

I’m behind.

I didn’t read anybody’s updates.

MY FREAKIN’ DSL DIED.

All night. No internet. 2.5 hours on the phone with the company – NOTHING. My modem won’t connect with the server or some shit like that. I don’t even care…I just want my internet back.

I sit at work and I whimpered when I got the internet on here. I missed it. I’m an addict. I just wanted to check my email, use AIM and play games!

well

I’m getting ready to run a full on sequencing run.

16 reactions at 2.50$ per reaction…that means, if I have fucked up, it will cost me 40$.

eep

I try not to think about it and think positively that things seem to be going actually well in lab for once.

***

Does anyone else have a cat who plays fetch? Boots was playing it with a very unwilling me at about 530am. She’d pounce on the bed and drop a toy on my head and bat at me until in a fit of anger, I’d throw the toy away. Then she’d bring it back and repeat said events. It took awhile to penetrate at 530 that this was exactly what she wanted. So then I took the toy and hid it under my pillow. And she pouted and laid on my neck in a feeble attempt to suffocate the toy out of me!

But I prevailed!

***

I’ve got a headache. I’ve had it since, hrm…yesterday? Maybe the day before. They’ve been getting worse lately…they all seem to radiate from the right side of my neck where I hurt it when I went skiing in February. I keep thinking maybe I should or could go to the doctor – but I don’t want drugs, I just want someone to crack my neck and say “There! All better!”

I more fear that it is being irritated by stress. I only have a little bit of stress. Pah!

***

I went to the library yesterday to get papers and books for my proposal/thesis that I’m dogging away at. I don’t usually go to the library – for many reasons but primarily because I get so sucked into books! (I own 2,000, you’d think that’d be enough).

I only spent about 2 and a half hours there, after I got what I needed. Wandering around…looking at books. This was the science library and I was stuck for a bit of a while in the natural history section looking at the books on wolves (one written in 1944 that contained instruction on how to trap wolves and pictures of wolves living in Ohio) and otters (giant south american otters) and fishers (weasel relative only a great deal bigger)…

And I realized, that even if I managed to read and remember all of these – that there is still so much knowledge LEFT to garner out there. It’s overwhelming and yet so tempting. To read, to learn … to always know that there is something more to learn, something else beyond the next page, the next book, the next subject…

*heh*

I love you guys.
It’s good to know we’re all horny mofo’s

*sigh*
I did figure out why I was suddenly in need of sex though. You’d think with being on the pill I’d realize that it was impending menstruation. But no. Not me.
Make it even more fun and realize that my roomie is on the EXACT SAME SCHEDULE as me.

So there will be two menstruating, crabby, over-worked, stressed-out, poor women in one apartment. With three cats. And like 100% humidity.

This makes me need ice cream.

you know what

right now

I want sex.

well

I woke up from a good dream to much badness.

Boots wouldn’t leave me alone. Kept sitting on my head, pawing at me. I couldn’t figure out why. I thought she was hungry or thirsty. After all, it was 1030am, I was sleeping in and the cats are not used to that. I woke up and went the kitchen to open a can of food so she’d leave me be. To my utter shock the screen had been knocked out of the kitchen window! Pixel was on her way out but stopped when she saw me and fled to the living room. I closed the window and breathed deep. Pixel was safe. Boots was safe. But where was Possum?

I did a quick search, living room, bedroom. No sign of her. So I grabbed my robe and some flip-flops, a can of cat food and a roommmate and headed out into the rain. Now, it isn’t pouring, but it is definitely a strong rain. I wander for a good 10 or 15 minutes. My roommate was checking the back parking lot, looking under cars and such. I was heading up, looking through the yards. Terrified thoughts floating through my head – How long had she been out? What if one of the many stray cats or dogs that live around here got her? What if she’d been run over? What if someone drove away with her in their engine?  It was wet, surely she’d try to get out of the rain…

10 minutes can certainly seem like forever!

I walked passed a car, calling “kittykittykittykitty! possum!” and then I heard a sad sad “mewar” and I stopped. I walked towards a car about 100 feet from the window she escaped from. I heard another mew. I snapped the can of food and crouched down. “Kittykitty?” a filthy little stripy head emerged, looking terrified. she was grubby and her fur was falling out in clumps…but she’s okay!

So now, here I sit, with all three kitties safe and warm and dry and wonder how to prevent such events again. I cannot take it. She scared at least two of her own lives away and probably one of mine!

And the dream I woke up from…seriously fucked up. I was dreaming that I got asked out by like 4 people in one day. And two of them had “date cards” which are like business cards only “cuter” so that you don’t have to write down your number? Bizarre! One guy, the X-men guy, had Cyclops cards. The other guy, he had a girlfriend that he lived with but they were breaking up, had Hello Kitty! Card and had the nerve to call Cyclops guys cards dorky. Then a girl I knew in high school asked me out (while I was doing Tai Chi, in a diner – most of these askings took place in a diner?) and the fourth guy had no cards but I think was the only single one with no kids…it was very bizarre. I got NO idea why I was suddenly so attractive in the dream – I kinda wish I did!

Wow…it’s 1130. I’m ready for bed. I’m wiped already. And I still gotta go to work today. But I refuse to bike in the rain!