|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| So it's been a month, you say?Looks like blogging has taken a back seat to life. Oops. That got me thinking about the evolution of my xanga. I feel like I've written an entry like this before? Anyway, here's how it's gone:
Phase I: It's my senior year of college and a bunch of my friends start xanga blogs. After a while, I jump on the bandwagon, you know, just for the hell of it.
Phase II: I move from CA to CT and start to use my blog to relay stories of adapting to life out here. My friends from college slowly fall off one by one from their blogging and/or stop commenting
Phase III: I start to follow blogs of other people who I've never met in real life and they start to follow mine.
Phase IV: Blogging starts to become a less and less frequent event. Maybe soon I will stop blogging all together like so many others I've followed in the past only to never hear from again. Sad. Hopefully I won't though because I do like going back into the blog and seeing what I was thinking at any rough point in time.
So what's been going on the last month? A weekend trip to New York including good food, drinks, and a cute little old Japanese DJ. A trip to Princeton to see the bf's sister. Margaritas. The drama underlying getting the Aussie bf an official CT license (so they drive on the other side of the road, so what?). More drama that comes with being in a relationship and having to think about someone's feelings all the time (it appears I have no experience in this area and am much more inclined to be selfish... oops. You know I'm not the only one!) A wedding where the guy that everyone thinks is gay marries a woman. A man can be flamboyant without being gay, right? Gin and tonics. Normal busy days at work, feeling like I'm never going to graduate and god only knows when I'll ever have a complete story that can be published as a paper. Blah blah blah the usual. It's freaking hot in the apartment, but I have to resist buying more window units because it's bad for the planet and for my health. Life. You know.
| | |
| Moved out! Moved in!Thursday I officially said goodbye to my bachelorette nest. I have to say it feels pretty good to have all my stuff again, not that I use most of the crap I've accumulated over the last 5+ years, but well, you know, I love my stuff... I love my clutter! Today as the bf was cleaning, he said that I make things much more difficult to clean (because inevitably I have clutter everywhere). I said, "That's why I just don't clean... you love me anyway!"
Today I put the new registration sticker on the car so it's officially registered here in the big CT for 2 more years. Where will we be in June 2011? Who knows...
Work has been pretty crap recently, but well, if all else fails, I'll write up whatever I have come January and hope they just accept it. Who needs papers anyway?
| | |
| Growing up... overrated?So yesterday the bf and I did a scary thing... we opened a joint bank account. Basically the situation is that he makes more than I do, so we've agreed that the best way to "split" expenses once we move in together is to put half our salary into a joint account which pays rent, utilities, car insurance, and groceries. That way we won't have to calculate how much this person owes that person and blah blah blah complicated calculations since he's okay with it not being 50/50 (yay for taking pity on the poor grad student!). If we have money leftover we can use it towards things like getting ourselves to Australia for Christmas, or weekend getaways or whatever.
But seriously, it was a big deal. The woman at the bank even referred to the bf as my "husband." What?!? Yeah, scary. Commitment issues? Yup, we both have them, so this was really a big step. However, we managed to laugh our way through the mistaken title reference. We might (might!) just be growing up, moving on. We might just... be happy.
| | |
| what are frogs attracted to?Straight from Science from April 3:
DARK ATTRACTION  Girl frog comes on to guy with red sac. CREDIT: MARY THERY AND DORIS GOMEZ |
Nocturnal tree frogs use their unique call to lure females through the night, but could the color of their sacs also help to drive the ladies mad? The sight of a pulsating vocal sac can excite a frog. To see if color could also be a turn-on, scientists at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris exposed 70 female frogs to two computer screens displaying images of a male, adjusted to appear as he would at night. Speakers alternately played identical male calls; the only difference was that on one screen the male had a dark red vocal sac and on the other, a pale brown one. If a female lingered for 30 seconds in a "choice area" near either image, she was assumed to be signifying a desired mate. Females were overwhelmingly drawn to the image of a frog with a darker, more colorful sac. Some climbed onto the screen to solicit the virtual frog. So even when lights are low, sac coloration may signal a quality mate, says evolutionary biologist Marc Théry, co-author of a paper online 25 March in Biological Sciences. "This is a fascinating paper," says ecology graduate student Victoria Arch of the University of California, Los Angeles. It shows "the importance of considering multimodal cues" in mating, even in nocturnal species.
... so fellas, if you're having trouble with the ladies in the clubs, you might want to try out your new red sac...
The other day I was missing being single. "Life now is just too methodical!" I thought to myself, "Why can't we just eat yogurt with granola for dinner every once in a while? Why does everything have to be so freaking planned? Why can't I just eat some edamame and sit on the couch watching crap TV for the rest of the night?!? Why do we have to do dishes and laundry and be so freaking responsible all the time?!?" And then I remembered all the reasons why being single was so lonely, and then I told myself to shut up.
| | |
| Ph.D. Comics does it again! 
Not that I have any papers or anything, but I definitely feel like by next spring I will have "5 years of marginally related work" which will then become my thesis. FAIL.
I'm giving my annual talk this afternoon... who would've thought that even though this is my 4th talk here, I'd still be nervous?!? Granted I'm talking about something different than the other 3 talks and part of the reason I'm nervous is that I thought of a lot of this stuff myself and am pursuing it because I want to more than because my advisor wants me to, but still, I shouldn't be nervous, should I?
Nothing else much is new. I had a couple crazy experiment weeks followed by this week where I did nothing but prepare for my talk (er, and analyze data, and some light mouse work, and some lab upkeep).
I also liked this garfield minus garfield cartoon. Maturity? Highly overrated...
Until next time...
| | |
|
