Unpacking, You're a Wiley Devil

Okay. It might be a month later but "moved in" still means "my possessions are technically inside the house". The furniture is roughly in place since the carpets have been installed, which was the hold-up, but there are still unpacked boxes in every room. I did find which one had my pencil cups a few days ago, so I can stop using the single pen I had in my purse.

I'm surprised at how indecisive I am about furniture placement. Not so much in the dining room (which is incredibly straightforward) or the bedroom (which only holds a bed and a dresser and therefore has few options). But the living room is too full of both possibilities and constraints. What ended up winning out is that there is only a single grounded outlet in the room so all the electrical equipment has to be near that, plus my TV isn't big enough to have the couch all the way across the room. So it's a bit odd, with the couch floating in the room and two bookcases behind. But then, I think it might look better without boxes and odd tables around, too. And the pink curtains...

Yesterday Nathan and I went to the Christmas in the Park in San Jose and went ice skating for the first time. I got the hang of it after a few times around the rink and then promptly fell flat on my back as punishment for my overconfidence. I am developing an excellent deep blue bruise on my butt from that. I'm hoping I'll be able to sleep on my right side again in a few days.

Christmas really snuck up this year. Hopefully it goes well and puts a good cap on the year 2011: The Scourge of Grandpas and House Buying. I copped out and did all my shopping online but I haven't started any baking yet. That will be accomplished the two days before Christmas, which I took off of work. I have said I won't do my normal tray of 10+ candies and cookies, but I've said that before. We'll see what happens.

Move

I am moved in.

Moving is stressful. While I'm good at organizing things ("detail oriented", they keep telling me at work) this has been quite the feat. But on Saturday friends from church, my parents, my cousin Justin, and my boyfriend Nathan (who I don't believe has been mentioned before) loaded up all my stuff and hauled it over. I had been hauling over small loads since the house closed but there's only so much a Corolla can do. I need to find my cards somewhere in all these boxes and write thank you notes.

Or I could buy cards. That's much more likely to be successful.

Right now I'm living with everything arranged temporarily because I'm getting new carpet next week and don't want to put too much furniture or stuff on the floors that would only have to be moved again. The new carpets are required because the ones here are very, very strange. Whenever they installed the current rugs they decided that it would be a good idea to use a four-inch thick carpet pad, with the result that the floor tapers down toward the wall like a trapezoid. And I think they smell weird: I keep getting a whiff of something off but it's not the bathrooms or the heater and it gets stronger if I get closer to the floor. I haven't wanted to really shove my face into it for obvious reasons.

Now off to sleep on the floor!

Mortgage Ahoy

I'm getting the house.

I'm about 60% freaked out, 35% worried about the amount of work required before the end of the month to paint, get the electrical fixed, and move, and about 5% excited.

The Other, Other Superpower

After a casual perusal of the Wikipedia article, I think I'm a supertaster. I Wikipedia-spiraled there at work (starting on Tissue Factor, which was relevant to a meeting), and was surprised at how many foods I don't like that supertasters don't like.

The list is:

Alcohol
Brussels sprouts
Cabbage
Kale
Coffee
Grapefruit juice
Green tea
Spinach
Soy products
Carbonation

I dislike most alcohol unless it's sufficiently masked with fruit or ice cream. I can't drink straight coffee either - it has to be severely moderated by milk and sugar or flavored creamer. I absolutely hate brussels sprouts, kale, grapefruit juice, green tea, and spinach. Soymilk is weird but tofu and a lot of the fake-meat products are fine. So that's most of the things on the list.

I wish I had known this when I was little and could say I wasn't picky, I was just a supertaster. But I doubt either explanation would have kept my mom from making me eat the things I didn't like. One just sounds better.

Wisdom of Our Elders

Since the most recent grandfather passed away in May (really, it's been that kind of year), I've wanted to try and make more of an effort to visity my grandmother, so this weekend I stopped out on my way to the East Bay. Grandma was making peach jam with my aunt when I arrived, so I got to take a jar home though it involved hoteling in two different refrigerators and my dad having to pick it up once from my sister's house because I forgot it.

Grandma was in a reminiscing mood so I got to hear interesting tidbits about her and Grandpa's early married life. They moved around more than I knew about, and post-WWII San Francisco had more shortages than I'd ever heard about. She described how, when my uncle was born, diapers were in short supply such that even with relatives signing up on the secret lists to get diapers months in advance she only had three dozen diapers to start out with. She also told me about searching the city for a colander and after she finally found one, one of Grandpa's friends saw her using it and insisted on knowing where she found it whereupon he leapt out of his chair and rushed off to get one for his household. "Can you imagine that?" my grandmother said. "A man knowing what a colander is?" Interesting glimpse into her life with Grandpa from that vignette.

I also almost talked her into watching "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding", which hopefully she does. That came up when she got on the subject of "Say Yes to the Dress" with the opinion that none of the women on the show should be wearing white to begin with.

That night my sister and I treated my mom to dinner at our new favorite Chinese restaurant. While it doesn't have the dry cooked string beans (double fried! Salty pork detritus to mix with the rice!) that our dearly departed China King had, their garlic string beans are very good and their fried rice also fits the bill. And the chicken is actually breast meat rather than the assorted parts even China King ran to. We tipped extra because the waiters weren't at all phased when my sister tipped her entire glass of ice water toward me across the table. I hope we're even now for the time I tipped my glass of water on her on a plane to Wisconsin but probably not since it was January and she had to get out in the freezing weather while wet.

This week I started taking iron pills for my recently-diagnosed anemia. What the doctor doesn't know because my diagnosis was virtual but I've decided for myself is that the real reason I'm anemic is I gave blood too many times this year and need to stop. But I don't eat much red meat anyway and do think the iron pills are a good idea since they're cheaper and easier than the sheer amount of beef I think would be required otherwise. And I saw my lab results--if the normal range for iron is 15-22 and I'm a 4, I'll take the iron pills. Astonishly they don't irritate my stomach too much. I had very low hopes considering multivitamins that aren't shaped like cartoon characters are unbearable. And that time I took a multivitamin and a magnesium supplement at the same time still haunts me (it was summer 2006, in Harrisonburg Virginia. It was a dark and stormy night, and I used up half a roll of toilet paper).

Putting It In Boxes

One of my numerous hobbies is painting little boxes. Lately I've been thinking of selling some on Etsy. Partly for a little extra money, mostly to induce my sister to start her own Etsy shop out of competitiveness because she is much craftier than I am, and could sell her jewelry for a much higher price than I could ever sell my boxes.

This box I made by painting some address labels I mis-printed at work and then sticking them on a cardboard box. I like how it looks, but it was so easy and cheap I can't imagine anyone actually paying money for it.











This was an experiment last night, where I painted a wooden picture frame white and then decoupaged on some tissue paper.
















This little box I painted a while ago, it just needs the 6-18 layers of gloss I like to coat them with. A cheery little bird. I would like it better if the background were blue rather than yellow. Now I know.












This little box had several different attempts at a design on top. First was a rubber stamp of a black and white cat in red high heels. Then was a rendering of that famous Impressionist painting of people in a park, but it was very bad, and, ultimately, upside-down. I tried sanding it off but gave up and covered it in more labels.








It's hard because I'm kind of a perfectionist and don't think anything is good enough to sell. But I probably only need to have a few saps buy stuff before I'm convinced otherwise.

Another Food Ruined

Among the odd skills you gain in cell culture are being able to open jars one-handed and being able to mouth-breathe for long periods of time to avoid bad smells.

I'm prouder of the jar opening, but the mouth-breathing is possibly more useful. Today I used it because I helped clean out the cold rooms. This wasn't too bad because since they've instituted regular cold room cleanouts we don't have the months- or years-old media that has festered or fermented into syrupy morasses the likes of which normal people can't imagine. Have you ever scraped your fingernail down the crease beside your nose after a long day when your face is oily, and then looked at the gray, unctuous material that collected under your fingernail? Imagine that but by the liter. That's what cells can get like when they're really old. But today we were tossing some pretty normal, uncontaminated stuff.

I still didn't want to smell it. I mean, get real. As we were dumping gallons of the stuff I was carefully mouth-breathing. And then the cleanout leader chirps, "It smells like poppy seed bagels!"

Thanks. Thanks. There's another food I'm not going to be able to eat again.

I started working on painting little boxes again tonight. If I can get up some stock maybe I'll start an Etsy shop. It'd be nice to have a little spending money. No, writing that just feels weird. I'm so uptight about my money matters I would designate any extra income into savings. Whatever, it might still be fun to have an Etsy shop.

Fractions of Work

For a small portion of today, instead of doing work, I figured out how much work I do. Because I do a lot. And I wanted numbers.

Over the past two years, I was on call for our pilot plant or manufacturing 50% of the time. That meant for half of the time, anytime, I could get called about an issue I would have to deal with.

Over the past two years, I worked around 40% of the weekends, at least one day.

Added up, only 13% of my time over the past two years has been completely free - not on call, not in the office or lab. Someone else at my company who wasn't on call or working weekends would be free 37% of the time. If you only got weekends off - no vacation or holidays - you'd be free 28% of the time. And that 13% includes the entire month I took off last December, to make up for all the overtime I had worked up to that point.

Yeahhhhhhh.

Low Standards

As I contemplate my home search, I realize I have low standards.

I know this because I watch a lot of HGTV.

On HGTV, buyers walk through potential homes complaining about the size of the bedrooms, the placement of the bathrooms in relation to other rooms, whether there are double sinks, the size of the master bath, if the metal trim or light fixtures are gold instead of silver, if the stove is electric instead of gas, that the countertops aren't granite, and more.

I have preferences, too, of course. I prefer vanities over pedestal sinks (more storage). I prefer gas over electric. And who doesn't like an updated kitchen?

The thing is I can't afford that much. Well, I understand that banks will lend me more than I feel comfortable with, but that's because we disagree on what "afford" means. And since Bay Area prices are crazy ridiculous (and Peninsula prices even more crazy ridiculous than the Bay Area at large), at my price range I just don't get to be picky.

HGTV buyers care about the size of the bedrooms? I care that there are bedrooms, period.

They care about the placement of the bathrooms? I care about the existence and working state of the single bathroom. More than one bathroom? What's that?

HGTV buyers want gas stoves over electric stoves? I want there to be a stove. Or at least a hookup for a stove, either gas or electric. You'd think the existence of a stove would be a given but it isn't.

So what I'm looking for is simple. A sound foundation, a roof that will last at least a few years, two bedrooms, everything else in working order. And if it was really great, it would have a range hood and a bathroom fan. Which you would think are normal appliances but not out here.

I don't even dare aspire to a dishwasher or air conditioning.

California. It's wack.

In the Blood

I'm gathering I shouldn't keep donating blood.

I donated blood earlier this spring right when I was starting to come down with a cold. Surprisingly, they let you donate blood when you're coming down with a cold. I mean, I told them. I guess that if you need a blood transfusion you have bigger problems.

Anyway, that cold sucked. It took me forever to get over it (a few weeks), and it was worse than the other colds I've had. At the time I thought donating blood made it worse, since I didn't have the same amount of white blood cells as before.

Then I donated blood again last Friday, and I've been tired ever since. I've been having trouble sleeping in the heat but that can't account for all of it.

See, the thing is that I only ever barely pass on iron anyway. My cholesterol (which they test when you donate) tends to look bad because I have to stuff myself with meatloaf the week beforehand in order to have enough iron. And I've never had above 12.5 g/dL hemoglobin on the times I have had enough hemoglobin to qualify. The cutoff is 12.5 exactly, too.

I've always tried to donate blood because I figured other people needed my blood. I don't have any diseases and I'm not afraid of needles, which makes me a good candidate. But with the low iron, the latex allergy (which the technicians sometimes seem to resent me telling them about), and the fact that this happened the first time I tried to donate:
















I guess I need my blood too.

In Which I Explain The Economy

I've had a breakthrough lately I'm going to share.

I work in cell culture, which involves forcing Chinese hamster ovary cells to make proteins they don't want to make, which someone else then purifies out of the soupy, smelly morass and our company uses in clinical trials or sells on the market.

My job is to try and make as much drug as possible. Our manufacturing facilities are a certain size, so how much drug comes out of each reactor is ultimately a function of only two things: how many cells there are, and how much drug each cell makes. There are a lot of factors that change how many cells there are, and a few things that affect how much drug each cell makes, but when it comes right down to it that's all you've got.

There are a lot of options to get more cells. Higher temperature, more food, sometimes less food, better food, special food, etc. How much drug each cell makes is mostly genetic and I don't understand a lot of it. It's harder to change, so we talk about it more. It even gets its own name: "Specific productivity".

The realization I've had is that our economy works the same way. I've been confused by different explanations of the economy. Some people say government spending grows the economy, some say it doesn't, etc. Because how does an economy grow?

Like cells!

(FYI, I know I'm a nerd, no one needs to point this out.)

Economies grow. Obviously. Otherwise we'd still be living in wood-heated houses without electricity or access to dental care. Like Europe outside the major cities which no one seems to acknowledge. Cough. Obviously TVs get cheaper from year to year. Obviously every person has more stuff than before. More food, more cars, more technology, larger homes, more clothes, more cable channels, etc. So where does it come from?

Just like cell culture, there are only two ways: more people who make stuff, or each person making more stuff.

If there are more people who are producing things, be it services or actual physical things like cars or breakfast cereal or knit caps to sell on Etsy, there is a net increase in things. This would be population growth. It could either be more people actually existing (more immigration, more births) or more people working (like when women started entering the work force). Conversely, the productive population decreases with unemployment, when people leave the work force (voluntarily or not).

Just like cells, specific productivity is harder. Each person has to make more things. And that sounds hard, but it happens all the time. The first time you knit a cap it takes forever and is ugly. By the tenth hat you're whipping them out three a day and can do patterns and stripes. Every time you implement a computer system that saves time off of doing something, that increases specific productivity. Every time you automate an activity, freeing up a person to work at something else, you're increasing specific productivity. For instance, a bank with five workers could only handle so many customers a day. But with ATMs that can handle the mundane withdrawals and deposits, those workers can handle more complex transactions, sell mortgages, etc.

And with that concept, everything is starting to make sense to me. For instance, how could our economy grow during this recession? Well, for one, I think they're fudging all the numbers, but even so, the economy can grow if the increase in specific productivity is larger than the decrease in productive population. Unemployment has risen, but companies are doing the same work with fewer workers or workers are putting in longer hours, both of which would increase specific productivity.

It also explains why bounce-backs from recessions can be pronounced. If the workforce increases its specific productivity during recessions because they had to make do with fewer workers, when the population grows again the total production will increase at a faster rate than if the old specific productivity had been maintained. It's as if recessions are opportunities to learn - to winnow the chaff - to get rid of the dead weight - to make things more efficient.

And it helps me understand why the current recession has gone on so long. Mostly, the government's intervention has messed with both ends of the scale. Extended unemployment insurance keeps the population down, because people have financial incentive to stay unemployed (let's face it, we're all lazy and wouldn't work if someone is actually paying us to sit on our butts and watch TV). Stimulus funds to governments and companies to prevent layoffs means they don't have to learn out of necessity and don't increase their specific productivity. It may have prevented additional population decrease, but not enough.

This way makes much more sense to me than anyone who describes the economy as a pie.

Big Hands, Small Hands

I used to have a children's book that was a compilation of fantasy and possibly science fiction stories. It had a blue cover, and my name was written on the endpaper because I loaned it to my friend Jen in middle school. I don't remember the name (this will become a theme). I don't remember most of the stories, though it did have a portion of The Silver Chair which was my first introduction to not liking C. S. Lewis.

But one story I remember because it disturbed me. It was about fat little hippopotamus-like creatures that lived underground in burrows like hedgehogs. They drank tea, too, so it was obviously by a British author. I forget the name of their species (see, a theme), but it was cutesy and full of consonants, like Snuffaleupagus only not Snuffaleupagus because that's the character on Sesame Street and he's adorable. Anyway, they were plump and white and you knew this because the short story had several illustrations.

The plot of the story was that this one fat hippopotamus-creature's home was invaded by a thin, black, spider-like creature and I am at this very moment wondering if there were racial themes that went completely over my twelve-year-old head. Anyway, the freaky, spindly creature scared the bejeebers out of the fat thing and after some cloying adventures they became friends.

In any case, I don't know why but the story, or rather the pictures, stuck with me. The bloated white animal contrasting with the spindly black creature. Sometimes the pictures would float into my mind when I was in bed, and they would keep me from going to sleep. It had something to do with the contrast between the fat and the thin gave me a feeling of too much size that confused my brain.

Anyway, all of this is prelude to a weird thing that happened to me today. I was in a meeting with my boss's boss before she goes to China for a few weeks, and all of a sudden the white and black creatures popped into my mind and my hands felt gigantic! I felt as if my hands were suddenly twice their normal size and weight. They felt heavy in my lap, as if my shoulders were being pulled down.

I tried moving them to different positions, but each time they were stationary the sensation came back. My mind kept replaying the comparison that my hands were the explodingly fat white hippo-creatures.

By the end of the meeting the feeling had abated. The meeting went well so I don't think it was a stress response. But it was very strange! I hope I masked it well, though I suspect I was a little less communicative than normal since there was a running dialogue in my head "What the heck--Maybe if I move like this it will--Stupid white guys--my hands aren't like the fat white things--etc".

The front of the book had a dragon on it. Still don't remember the name.

On the Art of Conversation

Back in the olden days, higher-class women were judged on their accomplishments:

Painting
Drawing
Embroidery
Hemming
Fancy-work
Designing furniture
Playing the harp
Playing the pianoforte
Singing
Speaking Italian
Speaking French

and many other things I'm sure I don't know about because they haven't featured in Jane Austen novels. But one of the important ones was the art of conversation. The young ladies in society were expected to be able to support wide and varied conversation with anyone who came their way in society.

Speaking personally, I'm not very adept, socially. I've come a long way from how I was in high school or even college. Being part of a big church and working at a big company have a lot to do with that. But new situations make me anxious. I'm exquisitely conscious of saying the wrong thing, which I do frequently. I hear all my own mistakes. So when social interactions go badly, I assume they're my fault.

But I'm beginning to think maybe it isn't my fault all the time. Because I've realized the art of conversation boils down to interaction. It's about one person saying one thing, and the other person saying something related to that thing or asking a question about that thing, then the other person saying something else related to what the second person just said, etc.

I think that's why in the past I've noticed there are some people I can just talk to. With whom conversation is easy and effortless. People who come to mind include my sister, friends from high school, the guy from my heat transfer project sophomore year at Tech whose Facebook profile was him passed out drunk in a mini-fridge, and the ChemE I designated NewGraham to differentiate him from the Graham I already knew from band. When you say something and someone responds based on what you said, and you have a chance to respond to what they said? That's conversation!

The opposite, which is what I'm recognizing now, is monopoly. Where one person doesn't hold up their end of the bargain on responding based on what the other person said. I've noticed a few different flavors:

1. Classic Monologue-ing. This variety includes one person talking only about themselves, their activities, and their interests. They will answer questions but will not ask any. They will not respond based on a comment the second person makes, but will instead continue their initial topic.

2. Monopoly Through Silence. This variety, often masquerading as shyness, is one person's refusal to "reply in kind". They also will answer questions but will not ask any. They will also not respond based on a comment the second person makes, but instead stays silent or makes at most a minimal response like, "Mm," or "Interesting". This forces the second person to continually ask questions to draw the first person out. This might occasionally be legitimate shyness, but can also be laziness or passive-aggression.

3. Disconnected/Superficiality. This specialized variety at first bears the appearance of a real conversation because there appear to be related responses. However the responses don't follow the same vein as the original topic, derailing the conversation the second person wanted to have. For instance, "I had a rough week. My grandfather died on Tuesday. We were really close." "I had a rough week too. I'm supposed to alphabetize a whole drawer of files and I really don't want to." A symptom of this is when one person drops conversational breadcrumbs, but the other person won't follow the trail. "I forgot to buy pears at the store today. I've been very distracted. Work was busy, and also I'm looking for realtors because I've decided to buy a house." Here, a conversational response would be "You're looking for a house? How exciting! What type of house are you looking for?" or "My aunt is a realtor. Would you be interested in working with her? She's a fantastic businesswoman." A disconnected response would be, "Pears are awesome" or "I'm so glad I bought my house four years ago and am done with it. It was a horrible process." Thus, in order to continue the conversation, the second person has to abandon their topic and switch to the first person's topic.

And I'm also realizing how exhausting it is to deal with monopolizers. With type 1, you never get to talk. Less effort, but unless you're intensely interested in every single thing that person has to say, you're going to be bored silly the entire time. With type 2, you talk a lot, but it's only questions. Type 2 is energy-sapping. Type 3 is emotionally exhausting because you never get to say what you want to say.

I tried to make Excel graphs illustrating these but it didn't work.

The Fourth R

When I was in college, the band put on an elaborate city-wide scavenger hunt once a year. I only did it once my junior year. Through a variety of circumstances I ended up on a team with several younger trombones and we hurtled around Atlanta in an old minivan finding and deciphering clues.

Since it was the band, there were shenanigans. The instructions said to bring, among other things, water guns and towels. One of the trombones I was with brought his Super Soaker, and once when we encountered another team at a clue site he shot it at their car and almost got them. We definitely weren't near first place but we were progressing decently until the evening when things started getting weird. We reached a clue site where the clue for our team was defaced. We called in to the command center and the person on the phone said they were calling us cheaters and jerks who didn't deserve to go further in the competition. Because the guy shot a Super Soaker! It was confusing that they were so mad when they said to bring water guns, and since he didn't get anybody wet (much). They claimed he almost got a laptop inside the car wet. But still that didn't have anything to do with us cheating at the clues. In any case we ended up stopping a clue later or so.

But the disturbing part was afterward. The competition had a website that listed the teams, and after the competition, the winners. A few days after the competition I noticed on the website that they had posted on the website that our team were disqualified for being cheaters and jerks! I forget the exact phrasing they used, but something along those lines. Our entire team's real names listed with defamatory comments. You found the website when you searched for our real names.

I was MAD. One guy shoots a Super Soaker and our whole team gets vilified on the Internet? Whiny, over-share blog aside, I'm very conscious of my "internet presence" and don't want false, negative comments about me online. So I tracked down the event organizers and called.

The thing was, each year the scavenger hunt is organized by the previous year's winners. And alumni can play, so with their advanced age and additional resources they tend to win. The organizers that year was a group in their 30s who had long since graduated and supposedly moved on.

So I, a 20-year-old college student, called and argued with the lead organizer guy, a married engineer in his mid-30s about why it was inappropriate for his team to defame innocent parties for a stupid water gun. He was so irrational and so unreasonable (though they did finally take it down), I had this thought over and over: "I shouldn't have to be the adult in this situation."

I've been feeling like that lately. I'm an adult. And a defining characteristic of being an adult is being reliable.

Being reliable is returning emails and phone calls promptly.
Being reliable is showing up prepared and on one time.
Being reliable is keeping plans and not changing them unnecessarily.
Being reliable is doing your job.

I'm really tired of being reliable when very few other people are.

I'm tired of being the adult.

Admit It

So, I'm pretty sure my asparagus fern has bit the dust.

Fluffy has been a good plant. I bought him sophomore year of college from Kroger. Karen bought a plant at the same time, and named hers "Penny" because she was annoyed when I paid for mine in coins (and the self-service kiosk stopped accepting quarters so I had to use smaller denominations). He survived the indoor heat wave of Spring Break '04, and a summer with Karen in which she decided he wouldn't fit in her car so she trimmed him an inch above the dirt. He survived all that.

So I guess I kept expecting him to come back from turning entirely brown this winter, but no dice.

Now I'll have to find something else to plant in the giant pot I bought him.

I completely zoned out at work today around 4 pm. I was working on a journal paper I've been supposed to be writing for nigh on two years. I know I just need to knuckle down and do it, but I find writing a journal paper very intimidating. The style of writing in journal papers is completely different than how I write.

I write so you can understand it.

4 pm really is my desired quitting time. After 4, I just don't want to be there. Not that I can't be totally productive after 4. Not that I haven't spent 12, 13-hour days at work. I've seen the south side of midnight more often than I'm comfortable with. It's just that that's the time of day where I don't want to be doing anything related to work. Though normally doing something interesting, like data analysis, keeps my mind off my desired quitting time.

And turns out writing a paper isn't consuming enough, so I felt the 4 pm very strongly today. And then, in looking for something else in my email, I saw my boss's boss said she wanted the paper by the end of June, not by June. So I went home.

Tomorrow will also be a short day at work. I'm taking time off to go on a homes tour with a real estate broker because I've decided to buy a place of my own this year for the following reasons:

1. Real estate prices are down, so now is a good time to buy.
2. Interest rates are currently down but likely to go up, so I want to get in before that.
3. I anticipate heavy inflation coming down the pike, which benefits debt-holders, so it's good to buy now before prices inflate.
4. I have saved enough of a down payment to avoid an FHA loan.
5. I want to be able to paint walls.
6. I want more outdoor space for plants besides three feet of walkway outside my door.

Of course, with what I think is a responsible monthly payment, the only places I can afford are next to the railroad tracks or the highway, are being sold "as is", or are in an area of Redwood City in which all business advertise only in Spanish. The houses my real estate broker thinks I can afford are nicer, so we're going to disagree. Though the prices I told him were 10% below what I'm actually willing to pay so we might be able to find a middle ground.

We'll have to see. I'm fine with ugly but I want structurally sound.

All About Me

I was going through Picasa today and realized that in four years of primarily only having photos of myself that I took on my own, I have chanced across some instances of honest, true portraits of realistic expressions on my face.

Since I'm feeling maudlin and unimportant lately, I'm going to indulge myself by posting some.

Honest happiness when showing off the quilt I made Karen for her wedding.

Ditto for a quilt for Project Linus.

Pensive in Virginia the summer I interned in the middle of nowhere.

Slightly suspicious smile in current living room.

Calm, ordinary smile.

Tired outside a pizza parlor in San Diego.

Lonely in Rothenburg ob der Tauber , Germany.

Speaking At Full Speed

At work, there used to be a guy who was very outgoing. If I hadn't already nicknamed a guy in college Overly Enthusiastic Mark, this guy would have gotten that appellation. He liked talking to people; his frequent laugh would echo raucously over the cubicle forest; he seemed happy.

That changed.

Over time, he gradually got quieter. His laugh didn't echo around the office area. His hands didn't gesture as widely when he talked. And then he left for another job.

The other day I happened across an AIM conversation I had three years ago and which I didn't remember. More importantly, I didn't recognize my own writing. It was witty, pithy, insightful. The me from back then greatly entertained the me from now. But I don't talk like that now. With that certainty, confidence, intelligence.

What the hell happened?

Part of the reason might be that with that particular friend I decided initially to hold nothing back. To immediately shoot down his stupid ideas, not even bother to entertain them. To give my opinion unabashedly, defend my position. "No, you can't wear red shoes with your interview suit, you'll look like Ronald McDonald." "Giving your girlfriend a RockBand action figure as a gift, while fun, says 'we're not serious!' exclamation point included."

But more, I worry I've changed. Have the constant pressures of being polite and PC at work and church repressed me? Is this the price I pay for the improved social skills I've gained from those environments - a loss of myself? That the socially acceptable me isn't really me?

When I was a senior in high school I was frustrated with writing a PC, smarmy, self-aggrandizing college essay and drafted what would be an honest, accurate description of myself.

I'm a weird little nerd who plays trombone, actually has a moral compass, is too mature for her age and her friends, enjoys spending time alone and playing on the computer, sews, knits, cooks, and bakes because she's fifty years behind today's modern woman, who no one understands because I use big words and say what I think.

I think I'm just revisiting that last clause. I want to speak at full speed again.

Unusual Productivity

I am surprised at how much I did this Sunday.

First, I had to get up early and go to church to set up the Communion juice and crackers. Normally I just distribute the juice into the cups, so I went a lot earlier because I'd have to set out the cups and also crack the matzoh into little pieces. Breaking the crackers took longer than I thought I would and I made a big mess. I mostly cleaned it up. Mostly.

But I still ended an hour before church, so I buzzed off to work and sampled my one reactor quickly. Turns out it was doing fine and didn't need any interventions, which is good. I like the quick weekend visits I've been making lately. I don't even take my purse off--I just wear it under my lab coat. Only fifteen minutes today!

I whipped back to church and got there fifteen minutes before service started, so I went to Payless Shoes around the corner, just to browse. But they had a good pair of peeptoe black pumps, which I've been looking for, so I bought them. Third thing done of the day and it wasn't even 11.

Then church, then my friend Christy came over for Excel lessons. I love Excel so when she asked if I could show it to her I was awkwardly enthusiastic. It's unlikely she'll need to know the heavy-duty mathematic calculations I use Excel for, so I showed her how to input data, how to sort it, and how to make charts.

To make up for it, today I did nothing of note. I guess I made some chocolate scotcheroos from the corn syrup cookbook I randomly own, and diddled around on my keyboard trying to re-learn Pachelbel's Canon, which I used to have memorized.

Mostly this week is focused on Wednesday because that's the start of my sister's and my trip to Disneyland. My sister wanted to go, and I haven't gone since high school (which was with the marching band and is colored with memories of the cool kids sneaking booze in their shampoo bottles and the drum major drinking peppermint schnapps in Coke which even at the time I thought was a weird combination), so we're going this week. We carefully planned it to not coincide with any UC's spring break, and not to be the week before or after Easter in order to avoid elementary school spring breaks. Wednesday I drive out to my parents' for dinner and to see them, then I'll stay with my sister so we can get a ludicrously early start down to LA. Ludicrous because it will break my "no getting up before 6 am" rule. But I'm game. I'd much rather get up that early for Disneyland than for a meeting, which I've also done.

I hope the freesias are blooming at my parents' house. There aren't many around here for me to smell. They're definitely my favorite flower. They smell so good. So far this year I've only gotten a few stealth smells in when I can find some at the edge of someone's front lawn. My mom tends to have a lot so I can get good smells in. Last year she let me take a big bouquet back with me to Oceanside after my one weekend visit, and they perfumed my whole hotel room.

Pretty, see:

Argh. Have to go to bed. I want to try and jog before work tomorrow. I have been lax about it, though I've been running around for experiments at work so much my pants are loose anyway. Probably doesn't count, though.

Cage Fight

Associate director: "They're going to lock us into a room until we make a decision."

Co-worker: "Like jury duty."

Me: "Like a cage fight."

I guess we all have different frames of reference.

Since I'm not involved in the cage fight, work has been going very well lately. I'm less stressed than I have been in a long time. Probably since July or August 2009. Even less stressed than during my whole December off, since that was complicated by my giant burn and it didn't end well. Very nice. I've been wondering if some source of stress up the management chain has been relieved. Sometimes I know what's going on that makes people worry but sometimes I have no idea. Maybe now is a good time for everyone.

Whatever. I hope it sticks for a while.

Not that I haven't been working hard. I've had back-to-back experiments and haven't had a day off since March 6. I kind of did it to myself so I can't be too mad. I accidentally got scheduled for ten reactors instead of six and thought, "Hey, more data!" and ran them all. I'm a sucker for more data. Idiot. But it went okay, and I did get more data. It doesn't tell me much, but it's more data.

I tried a new way to cook chicken tonight. I was making a meal for a woman from church who can't leave her house. I've cooked for her twice before and knows she prefers healthier selections because she's injured and can't work out. So what's healthier than baked chicken? I put a half-breast in the fridge to thaw on Monday and figured I'd bake it with the excellent spice rub "Pappy's Seasoning" that's fantastic on chicken. But then today after I got home from work I suddenly remembered the last time I cooked for her I made her Pappy's chicken! Obviously I had the same great idea twice. (Just like how when my friend Yael comes over here for dinner I've twice had the great idea to make couscous with chickpeas and vegetables since she's kosher-itarian). I have standards about this, so I had to make something else.

So I remembered how my friend Allison does great looking roast chickens, and dotted it with smashed garlic cloves and rosemary leaves instead of the Pappy's. But there was nowhere inconspicuous to take a taste, so I have no idea how it turned out. It looks pretty good but I have no idea. I'll have to try it again at a time when I can eat it.

I'm also going to try something new tomorrow night. We're having a potluck for my church group and I'm not going to have much time to cook anything what with work and making this meal tonight. I've been very intrigued by the recipe in Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook where you layer hominy, frozen corn, roasted chilis, and cheese in a slow cooker.

I have hominy. I have frozen corn. I have green chilis in a can which is close enough - I'm not going to the effort of roasting chilis for a slow cooker recipe. I have cheese especially because there was an extra package of Mexican blend after our last potluck.

But I don't have 4 hours of slow cooker time so I'm going to bake it like a casserole because I don't see why you really have to make it in a slow cooker. And I'm going to add layers of ground beef because I don't have two cans of hominy, and that should make it heartier. So we'll see. It could be horrible. But there will be boys there. They eat anything. One eats hot sauces as entertainment. Yeah, beef in the hominy should go over fine.

I anticipate having to explain what hominy is at least four times over the course of the evening.

Instructions Are For Sissies

Yes, obviously, the first thing you're supposed to do with a new recipe is read it all the way through. And I did. ...Enough to get all the right ingredients.

I was making a strata for Bonnie and Allison, who came over on Sunday for a book-less book club--which is bookless because our foray into classics with Lolita was particularly disastrous. Stratas are easy. You layer bread with some other ingredients--here, sausage and Granny Smith apples--and pour over eggs. The perfect make-ahead casserole.

Except the catch. You don't pour over just eggs. It's eggs mixed with milk. I got to that stage of the recipe and thought it was weird the eggs only covered the filling junk halfway. Yeahhhhh, totally forgot the two cups of milk. I ended up dumping out the entire casserole into my biggest bowl and mixing in the two cups of milk. And some extra eggs just in case. So much for the layers the strata is named after.

Then the next day I realized I forgot to put in the sage I paid $5 for at the grocery store.

At that stage, it stayed sage-less. In the end it turned out pretty well. I think the dumping and stirring incorporated the bread bits nicely, so it was a uniform texture throughout the egg portion. Bonnie brought fresh pineapple and berries for a luxurious fruit salad and Allison brought great scones (Ina Garten). We do food good.

Today I was at 99 Ranch and had a devil of a time finding tamarind paste. At least, I think what I got was tamarind paste. But then, I was never sure what I got last time was tamarind paste either. That stuff was a sticky block called "Tamarind Seedless" which nonetheless had tons of crap in it. Today I found a jar labeled "Concentrate Cooking Tamarind". We'll see. Tomorrow I'm making pad thai again, returning to the America's Test Kitchen recipe I first tried but this time without the dried shrimp that made it taste like death.

Half the battle of cooking Asian recipes is getting the right ingredients. When I bought the dried shimp I couldn't find it either because it wasn't in the aisle labeled "Dried Seafood". Perplexing. I should probably just go to the other Asian store that's organized by country. But it smells worse.

Addendum

Another linguistic annoyance. "Love on" in substitution for "show love to".

For instance, "We're gonna go love on some homeless dudes in the park."

Though maybe I'm the only person who thinks that sounds wrong.

I've seen the viral video of the kid in Australia who body-slammed his bully. It's only to be expected that the "experts" say the kid should have walked away or told an adult; that there should have been a non-violent solution. When I was in middle school, the administration enacted "Zero Tolerance" where anyone got caught fighting--even if in self-protection--would get suspended. One of the best parenting moves my parents ever did was to tell me to completely ignore that. My dad said that if anyone hit me, I was supposed to hit back as hard as I could--and my parents would deal with the consequences. He knew that as a good kid, I would follow the rules, not hit back, and die. The school wanted me to be a dependent wimp. My parents gave me permission to protect myself and implied that they thought I was capable of it. It's a world of difference.

Google Star

...My entry about my cousin's hilariously offensive Mexican and Chinese gingerbread men is the number one result when you Google search "multicultural cookies".

Oh dude. Janelle, forgive me.

Mandatory Parties

Today was one of our mandatory--or rather, "strongly encouraged"--work parties. While four years of a full-time job has greatly improved my ability to partake in small talk, these still are slightly intimidating.

Once I got stuck at a table where there was a full-blown politics discussion.

But today was pretty entertaining. We talked about TV shows, how those of us in real scientific fields get frustrated at the horrible science on TV, and I found out there's no need for me to ever watch the V reboot ever again.

Also, we found out a new member of our group used to be an EMT in Oakland and she had storrrrriiieees. Apparently there's a street drug cocktail that mixes Viagra and cocaine. She stopped herself while describing something and said, "Oh, that's not a story that's appropriate for work." Which means it's a great story. Luckily she caved to very little prompting. And it lived up to all the anticipation that "a street cocktail that mixes Viagra and cocaine" conjures up. Horrible, of course, but fascinating.

This week's dinner has been pasta primavera. I had asparagus, cream, mushrooms, and a newly minted Costco block of real-stuff Parmesan, so it was a foregone conclusion. I used whole wheat pasta too and the sauce sufficiently covers the taste, which is a bonus. However, it made eight servings so I am going to get so tired of it by the end of the week. Though even after excessive amounts of servings, I can repeat pasta primavera much more quickly than other dishes. That one time I accidentally made 32 servings of lasagna junior year at Tech? Yeah, I haven't had lasagna since. That really did me in.

This week my dad called and said that if I can come out to my parents' house the day before Easter he would go into the garage alcove and bring down the pots, pans, and dishes that constitute my sister's and my hope chests. I'm 26 and these were bought before I can remember. This is the closest I've ever come to even seeing what my parents have been talking about my whole life. Even though my kitchen is filled to bursting with enough pots and pans and dishes for every purpose, I'm very excited. A whole life's anticipation might come to fruition.

Strange Places

It's no secret that I hate CFLs. They don't last as long as advertised, which doesn't make them cost-effective; they don't work in some of my lamps; and you have to treat them as hazardous waste which I get enough of at work thank-you-very-much.



Hence, the stockpile.
















I finally broke into the stockpile this weekend. I have a hard time going to sleep anywhere near my appointed bedtime (10 pm), and I wondered whether the fluorescent glow of the darned CFLs wasn't partly to blame. So I switched out all the CFLs in the living room. It's only been one night so far, and I got sucked into Heaven Is For Real because when you get to the last 40 pages of a book you have to just keep going, right? At least I do. Books are another big reason I get less sleep than I'd like.


But I notice the light in the living room is more peaceful without the CFLs. They must flicker at a frequency I can't see but can indeed sense.


Upshot is I need a bigger stockpile.


Despite the fact that I'll work 26 days in a row this month, work has been pretty peaceful. I'm running experiments and haven't had any major disasters. One of my oxygen lines was disconnected last week when someone came in during the middle of the night to steal something (yeah) but the cells survived very well.


I'm also taking a half day on Friday to bake cookies for church. I signed up for a service project to make care packages for foster kids at a college in the City, and the organizer asked for homemade cookies. Now, if there's something I can handle, it's cookie baking. Through some recent circumstances I have become the owner of six full tray baking sheets, so I can make six dozen chocolate cookies without even cycling a pan. Being from a large extended family means I'm very used to making large amounts of food. In college for the trombones' Turkey Fry each year I would make around fifty pounds of mashed potatoes. You get used to it.


Maybe that's partly why I'm also used to eating leftovers. I was talking with someone this week about how I only cook once or twice a week and eat leftovers the rest of the time. I do have one limit, though. I don't like eating the same thing for lunch and dinner repeatedly, so if I've cooked two different meals I alternate which one I take for lunch at work. But I gather that other people my age really don't cook as much as I do. Based on how many restaurants my friends from church are familiar with I'm definitely the odd one out. I've gone to various restaurants around here for work lunches, four Thai places with my sister, and the ramen place with my mom and my sister (separately). I guess I get my fill of eating in restaurants alone on work trips.

More than my fill of eating in restaurants alone.


Plus I'm cheap. I admit it. Or "frugal". I heard someone say frugal is when saving money only affects you but cheap affects other people. So I think I'm frugal. My sister would undoubtedly argue that.


Though I'd kind of rather be cheap than frugal because frugal reminds me of the Frugal Gourmet and how he was accused of molesting those kids.


That might be a leap, but I also dislike using the term "unpack" in reference to a concept rather than luggage ("Let's unpack that idea a little more for the next few minutes") because it sounds like the reverse of this exchange from the Simpsons:


Krusty: Try my new Krusty Ribwich. Mmmm. I don't mind the taste.
Marge: Oooh, a new hamburger sandwich.
Homer Simpson: Wow, I can't wait to pack that into my colon!


My brain is a strange, strange place.

Music All Around

Nine hours of lab work today alleviated only by a half hour meeting. I don't know why it took me so long because I didn't have that much to do. I guess I'd have estimated the amount of work I had at six and a half hours. I guess part of it was that when I got in, the autoclave (the cheeky thing) decided to give me a "Low plant steam pressure: Cycle was aborted" error. Yesterday when I loaded my items into it, I had waited long enough to see that it got to the right temperature so it must have decided to mess up after I left.

It's obviously out to get me.

Wheeling the cart all the way over to the autoclave in the other building and back did take up additional time. To get there is complicated. Because of California OSHA or something, every ramp on our sidewalks have to have yellow bumpy metal strips so blind people don't wander into the road (according to the safety rep). Only the strips get slippy when they're wet, and you can't push a cart over them because everything will bounce off. All us seeing folk who have to push carts between buildings end up either in the street or taking a winding complicated path through the four interconnected buildings. Which we're not supposed to do because we're passing food areas with our lab stuff. But anyway, that's what I did today so to get to the autoclave I had to go up an elevator, over a bridge, through a building, over another bridge, through the building to the autoclave, and then back. Twice.

The safety rep did say if someone gets hit by a car we might be able to get the yellow bumpy stuff removed. It's awful that I'm just waiting for that to happen.

I have an experiment going so I was in at work both days this weekend, and will be for the next two as well. That's the way the cookie crumbles. Sunday I fit work in between the early church service (which a lot of people arrived late to, I noticed - Daylight Savings strikes?) and going to a concert of Mendelssohn's Elijah at a Lutheran church in Palo Alto. I haven't been to a classical music concert since 2005 or 2006, probably (basing my timeline on the fact that it would have been our former roommate Laura's concert for the symphonic band in college). I spent most of the time watching either the tall tenor in the middle, who had a wonderfully expressive face and was obviously in love with the piece, or the principal second violin, who managed to look bored out of his skull while playing complicated passages. The music was amazing. It made me want to get out my trombone and play. I should at least practice more often to keep the GT fight songs memorized.

Though I'm not sure it's possible to forget those. I think Ramblin' Wreck became a muscle memory halfway through my RAT season.

Phone Calls

Figured something out just now.

When everyone had landlines, if you called someone at home and they answered, and it wasn't dinnertime, you were cleared for a nice phone conversation.

With cell phones, people answer when they're busy, when they're in the car, when they're just about to enter a movie theatre, what have you. You never know if it's a good time to have a nice chat. You have to awkwardly establish whether now is a good time, whether the person deems you important enough to spend time talking to rather than whatever activity you interrupted.

I think that's why I don't call people except my parents, who have a landline and therefore if they answer, and it's not dinnertime, we can have a conversation; or my sister, who has no qualms about stating that she's in the middle of Walmart and we'll talk later.

Is that the way it is for other people? Have cell phones killed the meaningful phone conversation? It seems like everyone else is forever and annoyingly glued to their cell phones so some conversations have to be going on. But how do you know when to call? Do people pre-arrange times that the other person will be free to talk?

Man I hate cell phones. I don't want to be available at all times. I want to be available at the office and at home, both times I can talk (though at the office, only for short, important personal matters and of course, work things). I don't want to be available 24/7 for work. I don't want to be bothered in the car. Shopping time is shopping time. I remember when I was shopping for my Dad's birthday present and I forgot my cell phone. I hadn't done that in forever, and it was so freeing. There was nothing that could disturb me. What I was doing was what I was doing.

I only grant cell phones their usefulness for emergencies and the "I can't find you, we were supposed to meet in front of the theatre, oh, you're at the other entrance" type of call.

Plus, I want to smack the phone out of the hands of anyone who is texting while talking to me in person. Every. Single. Time.

This and my survivalist bent makes me think I would be well-suited to living in a cabin in the woods.

You know.

Like the Unabomber.

Revisiting the Past's Music and Food

My horoscope today was "It's not fun being bossed around by someone who isn't as efficient or smart as you are, and today you're not willing to do all the work while someone else gets the credit. Fortunately, there is no need to do anything drastic to draw attention to yourself. If you continue to pursue your goals and follow your work ethic, others will eventually appreciate your unique contribution." I found it funny.

I didn't actually get bossed around by anyone today. First, I got to work seven minutes before eight which should have been just enough time to look up which conference room my eight o'clock meeting was in, make a latte, and get there.

That only works if the conference room is in one of the six surrounding buildings.

It was on the other side of campus entirely.

Luckily, my boss's boss was supposed to go the meeting too and I ran into her on the stairs, so we drove over and were late together.

But it was a hectic start to the morning.

After a two-hour videoconference I spent all day in lab building inanimate things and keeping some alive things alive. The lab I'm working in this week doesn't have a computer hooked up to speakers, so it's the CD player or silence. I dug out some CDs I burned two years ago when a similar thing happened (before we got speakers for the computers - now they're just lost because of the lab renovation). Turns out I made two CDs of Rasmus and Travis, and then loaded up the back-end with Weird Al. I don't know why I thought it was a good idea. I do know at the time I was having to come in at midnight a lot and wouldn't have cared what the graveyard shift janitor thought of my music selections. But I've been the only one in lab so it doesn't matter.

Today is my Friday because I'm taking tomorrow off. It's been a month since I didn't have to work on the weekend, so I blocked off the first possible day for vacation. On my calendar, 8 am through 7 pm tomorrow is labeled "Abby needs a weekend".

I keep my gCal private, don't worry.

My associate director doesn't keep his private.

My friend Yael came over yesterday for us to cook dinner together. I learned that just because you think you have such a great idea of a vegetarian dish to make doesn't mean you didn't have that same thought the last time. Luckily Yael said she had liked the Moroccan Couscous with Vegetables and Chickpeas, but I need to research more recipes. I don't have many vegetarian dishes I make besides that and the tortilla and bean soup. I guess there is a whole Internet out there at my fingertips I could utilize. Somehow I rarely think of that for recipes.

Addressing the item on my to-do list, "Eat more cheese", this week I tried Iberico (from Trader Joe's). Yum! Smooth and a little peppery.

Cheese is so awesome.

The Uncanny Likeness of Food

I work in cell culture, which means that we grow immortalized cell lines in specialized media that has everything in it the cells need to survive. It's a scientific-sounding soup with amino acids, vitamins, sugars, salts, and some other things that sound really appetizing like "putrescine". All of which are nice, well-behaved powders on their own.

Then you put the cells in, wait two weeks, and in the end it smells like crap.

Well, not exactly like crap, if you know what I mean. But not good. It's even worse when you have a bacterial contamination and they're putting their own smell in there.

And when you work in cell culture, you have to deal with the smell all the time. Every time you finish a culture you have to pour out the junk and clean the container. Recently there was an episode where one of my project teams was waiting outside a conference room and a cart full of used glassware went by. Everyone else gagged at the smell but I didn't react. The project lead commented on it, and I had to reply that I think I must breathe through my mouth automatically at times like that. I've had long training.

But as blase as I am about the smells, there's one thing I won't do. I won't compare them to food.

Sure, one type of media looks like fruit punch. Another looks like apple juice. But I won't compare the smells to food. I keep catching myself halfway through a thought - like "Hmm, this smells like--no no no stop there".

And today's lunch meeting was the perfect example why. The lunch meeting food was ribs, corn, beans, and cornbread. I took a bite of cornbread, thought it tasted kind of unpleasant, but also really familiar. And then it struck me. It tasted like cell culture.

And that was it. I didn't eat any more lunch.

The thought still horrifies me.

Projects

The latest thing my latex allergy has reduced me to is making my own underwear.

I used to have a supplier, but though their website is still active the style I buy has been out of stock for about two years, so I've given up hope.

With the demise of that supplier, I'm left with three options. Buy the hippie, all-cotton, we-sell-yoga-supplies-too underwear that I've bought before and know doesn't fit; pay $9 a pair for the Barely There style I've also bought before and know is too thin; or make my own.

Frugality, practicality, and distaste for hippies led me to Option 3.

So I've been making a lot of underwear. Each type of elastic works differently, so I've been trying to get the lengths just right. To that end I spent around four hours this weekend ripping elastic off garments to put it back on again. So far I've made pairs too big, too small, and a few that are just right. Hopefully I can soon hit the Goldilocks every time.

But since that's what I've been doing, it's made it uncomfortable to answer all those "So what are you doing on your weekend?" questions. You want to watch the Super Bowl? No, I want to go home and make underwear.

Yes, the most annoying part of my latex allergy is the social awkwardness.