Oh the joys of facebook

Facebook, a "social utility that connects you with the people around you" may be a little too connected for me. For example, my sister and her friends, all in college and all have decided to become my friends. Lately my wall has been flooded from my sister who just arrived at UT and is wasting TOO MUCH TIME ON THE INTERNET. I finally received one post from one of her friends and here are excerpts: "hey girl! wow its been forever hasnt it? ...haha gosh how old are you now?" *glup* I'm old? I'm only 25..is that too old? "and what are you doing in indiana?"-my initial response wanted to be something like farming or hanging out with the Amish and making cheese to sell at the Farmer's Market. Except clearly on my profile clearly you can see that I am graduate student at IU. P211 labs here I come!! ;)

Hey..do you scuba?

Truth be told, I try very hard to be organized in the morning but it only occurs 50% of the time. And by organized I mean packing my breakfast and lunch (versus spending $10 on food or starving all day), packing my workout clothes, and packing the computer and cord TOGETHER. Throw in some articles and infant overalls for the lab and basically there are too many things to remember at 7am.

It was one of those days that I forgot to bring a workout shirt (everything else was in the bag-no shirt). I could either go home (which was not an option and a waste of time) or buy one at target (another waste of time) or buy one at the bookstore. At that moment, I decided to go to the bookstore since I was signed up for cyclefit in 20 minutes. So I drove the .5 miles over to the bookstore, park the car and run inside to find a tshirt. Now mind you I don't want an expensive one, I seriously want the cheapest IU shirt possible. Which of course means I am digging through the bin. The bins, which all have labels such as football, basketball, etc are also divided by sizes. I naturally go with just the IU and nothing else logo and look for a medium. Found the correct size and folded up it of course has the words "Indiana University"...perfect! I buy it, tear off the tags and run back into the car. Get back the gym and while changing notice that I accidentally purchased a scuba tshirt. F*** the bins. WAIT..IU has a scuba team? Eh oh well, its a shirt and Im wearing it. Big mistake, I should have skipped working out and exchanged the shirt. Now anytime I wear the shirt, someone will ask me one of the following:

1) Is there a scuba team and if so, can I join? (First response-Not sure, Now-no team)
2) Where did you get certified? (First response-Um..I didn't, Now-in the quarries)
3) What is your favorite place to scuba? (First response-you see I don't scuba, Now-coast off Argentina)
4) Wanna be my scuba partner? (NO)
5) Hey, look she scubas. (sheepish grin)


No other shirt has actually received this much attention, it is quite possibly one of the funniest things, that a stranger who loves scuba so much will approach a stranger who doesn't have a clue about scuba just to get some information.

Can I go on vacation now?

And the west was fun and beautiful...too much fun actually. Had a great great time at the conferences-did I mention it was fun?

Now I'm back to Bloomington. If you look at my daily calendar (crazy) and then my "to do list" (a ton)-they don't match up. At all. The to do list is actually pretty scary for this semester as well as my inbox. And to top off the fun I've had four meetings and yes I have only been back for four days. So the solution to all of this? I have my ideas but due to space and time constraints I shall refrain although the topic sentence (remember when we had those...ahh those were the days) is: Im only one person in the lab and there are only 24 hours in a day. I am still thinking of some motto for the semester since we always have one. Last semester Andrea's motto "Just get it done, it doesn't have to be perfect"...mine will probably be a borrowed quote "Sleep is for wimps" which is true but if you let me I will sleep all.day.long.

And on to the great city of Snowbird...

Oregon was/is amazing. "Is" because I am waiting for my plane at 6 so I have 6 hours of reading blogs, working on the presentation, and potentially reading papers. Obviously I have more than enough stuff to keep me busy for 6 hours. I guess it was a good idea to bring the computer.


This conference was great-so much fun-so many people! Love the west coast and all it has to offer. My mom asked me if I was homesick this morning in her earlier than normal because she can't remember we are on different time zones call. Did she mean Indiana? I couldn't stop laughing.

On to hoping talk 2 is ok....Wasserman and I are presenting our project on network modeling. Whoohoo!! Should be interesting.

As long as there are mountains and hiking trails...

I'm happy. I had a layover in Denver and I just sat there for 2 hours staring at the mountains. Amazing day to travel to see the mountains from the airplane and then on land. At the same time I'm worried sick that I'll fuck up my presentation tomorrow being second after the founder of song learning. EWK! I'm nervous even though I have presented this talk so many times I can practically do it in my sleep. Will they understand the difference between betweeness and closeness!? I freaking hope so. It really is hit and miss with me and talks. At least its in the morning, I tend to do a lot better in the morning after diet coke and a good breakfast. As my friend in the wetlab would say...I should give offerings to the "presentation gods"....I wonder if they want beer or wine tonight with dinner.


13 hours and still traveling...Im about to crash!

Laptop and I are best friends

Literally..its almost like a part of me. And for this trip out west, I really wanted to leave it behind in its case for a long break. I wouldn't be totally out of touch, I would have the ipod touch which is my planner and email all in one.

Not so much. Today I was informed that I still need to be active on email and send things (like apparently crucial if you don't do it, my life will end things). Add to the laptop, now our meetings will take place over the phone instead of in person. This is coming from three different people. I can't wait.

So laptop, I and articles upon articles are making the journey together through all the flights and will be sitting outside drinking coffee and beer together for the next ten days.

Out to the west I go...

In less than a week I leave for the west for some conferences. Excited? Totally. Conferences are always fun and these are two animal behavior conferences with lots of people from UT and IU. Should be fun times. And for once in my life, I am actually on a better schedule to get my presentations finished in a peaceful manner instead of the typical running around like a chicken-literally- and trying to find movies, pictures, etc. And this time I have double the work, two talks on two different projects. I think it has to do with NO ONE in the lab. Just me. I'm forced to work and not waste time talking about what we did last night or what interesting things we did over the weekend.

And by weekend...man was it busy! Two parties, three dinners, a recruitment day, drinks, and a movie later... I am exhausted!

Plans were also made for Knoxville this coming fall (2 weekends in fact!)..can't wait to see the girls from gamma sig and catch up on our lives.

Break is over...need to work.

Changes to come in the infant lab...

The postdoc is leaving the lab which means I am the only student in the lab. Now that I have the lab to myself, I have been thinking about some changes I want to make....

1) Install a Diet Coke machine in the waiting room next to my office.

2) Plant avocado trees in the coding room so I don't have to bring lunch or dinner.

3) Make one room into a sleeping room.

4) Donate all the toys that annoy me to goodwill.