Where's my snow?

Well Christmas has come and gone. There's still no snow. The midwest got a ton of rain, and rather cold weather, but sadly no snow. I'll have to live vicariously through my friends in Colorado for a bit; one even promised to bring snow back to Houston for me. More incentive to fix (replace?) my fridge ASAP.

Karaoke was sadly cancelled this week. Several of us showed up to the pub and right around midnight (when the $$ contest begins) there were a good 60 people wondering why there was no singing. They've decided not to have it until late spring or summer! Apparently the bar was shooting for the disturbing news to send its patrons to drink further - I'm fairly sure it worked. I guess this just means there will be singing during "Thunder over Louisville" weekend.

The lack of singing aside, it has been a great trip home. There was nearly an entire day dedicated to learning how to bake new types of cookies, so I'll be bringing back a number of cookies. At the moment I'm afraid to calculate just how many I'm bringing back and how many I ate along the way. I'll settle for just saying that running will be a tad bit painful when I get back to Houston! Classes don't start until mid-January - which should give me plenty of decompression time to finish up my thesis and a couple other things that I committed to doing (book chapters anyone?). Next semester I'm taking Thesis hours, Functional Neuroanatomy, Statistics Part 2, and a developmental assessment class (developmental neuropsych, part 2). In other news: my best friend, Paul, is most likely moving to Puerto Rico in February. This of course is slightly detrimental to my hopes of him moving to Houston. But on the upside, it's yet another tropical place with good SCUBA diving to go visit.

Enjoying home

Well I made it back to Kentucky, where temperatures are upper-40's to mid-60's... and raining. That's right, it's rained every day since I got here. Not necessarily a change from Houston where it rains nearly every day some seasons... but really I was hoping to enjoy some snow during this trip back to the midwest. I'll keep my fingers crossed that it will (as the weather channel says) snow on Christmas day. I've been reading C.S. Lewis' book "Miracles", so if the rest of this blog entry sounds like his writing, I apologize. You, the reader, should just be happy I'm not reading Hemmingway or Ayn Rand.

Upon arriving back in Louisville, I've been put to a good amount of work: fixing things here, rewiring the new lab, writing some software applications, and giving input on experiment design - it almost seems odd that I feel more useful here than I do at my "regular job" back in Houston. I also got my grades for the semester, that was a nice little pick-me-up. Graduate school grades (for those of you who don't know) are a bit different from undergraduate grades. In grad school, getting good grades is easier in the sense that you are studying something that you are very interested in. It's also easier because most classes have a curve to the exams, so you're not really judged by how well you can remember the third footnote in a chapter and how it might have implications on modern day society, instead you're graded more on whether the rest of the class remembers it. There are of course things to be said about trying to convince your classmates to go to the bar instead of studying, but that's probably another blog entry in and of itself. There are just two other things about grad school grades that I want to mention. First, a "C" in grad school is failing. That's right, C is for cookie and that's about all you'll get as they kick you out for getting a C. And second, if you're interested in doing research for a living (which I am), your grades go on a number of your early grant applications, thus influencing whether you get money to help you do that research you're excited about.

Tonight I'm going on a "progressive dinner", whereby people begin eating appetizers at one house, move to a second house for dinner, and a third house for dessert. It's a lot like trick-or-treating, except that it's really not. Although now that I think of it - having costumes would make it very entertaining!

Sunday we'll have dinner with my friend Kevin's family. Kevin is my arch-nemisis in Dance Dance Revolution - by which I mean that we both started playing at the same time, but then he went off to West Point, bought a Play Station 2, and practiced insane amounts to the point where he's actually good at it... and well, we'll just say that I'm not doing hand stands and flips, while getting every step right.

All and all, it's good to be home.

Kidneys...

Woke up this morning around 8. Started watching Princess Bride so I could get the "To the Pain" quote for someone. Around 9 I went to the fridge to get water, and noticed that all the ice in the freezer was melting. The more important point was that the ice cream was melting - so I decided that was breakfast. That's right - nothing quite says start your day right like ice cream! I also moved a lot of frozen food to the fridge in hopes that I could fix the freezer. I fiddled with some things and took a nap (full from the ice cream). Waking up around noon, I noticed that things were roughly in the same shape - so I headed to the office to do a couple of things before soccer - one last hurrah before flying back to the bitter cold midwest for Christmas break.

Well, apparently in a moment of true inspiration, I decided to block the ball with my kidney - my reaction as of a few minutes ago - "who knew kidneys could bruise so easily". Oh and the fridge is kaput, so that'll be first thing on the agenda when I get back! If only I hadn't already sent out the Christmas list!

The same thing we do every night Pinky...

There's a lot of repetition in my days. This week was a lot of finding new software, running my data through it, deciding I didn't like the results - and trying something else. Of course I also had to write reports on all of it to note the pros and cons of each type of analysis. But in the end, the simple truth is that I get paid to go to school and study the things I'm really interested in. If you ask me, that's not a bad thing to be doing at 25. In short, things are good.

Today, amidst all of my meetings, I went Christmas shopping. I'm in the "nearly done" phase where I'm just looking for little things for one person! Headed home soon - looking forward to spending some time with old friends and eating out at places that apparently they don't have in Houston (Steak 'n Shake anyone?). Wednesday is Kamikaze Karaoke, looking forward to some good laughs.

I recently had my first real liquid helium incident. We get these large tanks of helium (liquid helium is 4 degrees kelvin), and I'm in charge of transferring the helium from the tank to the machine that needs it. This is accomplished through a long (metal) tube. Normally the thing to worry about is accidently grabbing the metal tube after it's been in the liquid helium... Well, somehow when I was doing the most recent transfer a little bit of liquid helium from the tank actually froze part of my super warm glove to my finger tip. I lost all sensation in my finger tip (just one finger) for the better part of an hour. I could rub my hand along something and it was like the finger print area was asleep. Fortunately all is well now. On to more relaxing and packing while my data processes one more time.

Winding down...

The end of the semester is in sight. For whatever reason I felt like a lot of assignments crept up on me this time. Suddenly I had a test, a dataset, a paper, and a thesis... well okay - I knew that they were coming - I think I was just caught by surprise that it was suddenly December and they were nearly due! The tricky part about Houston is that the leaves don't change color and it doesn't really feel like winter in November or December. But while we're on the topic of the end of the semester, I'm looking forward to going home... Houston is fun - but it's good to get out of town for a bit. New Years plans are still up in the air - but it sounds like I'm going to San Antonio with some friends.

More updates later!

I should be working...

It's after midnight, but before 2. I'm exhausted but should be working on a presentation for today. I actually didn't know I had to give a presentation until Monday afternoon. And officially I found out Tuesday when the program sent out an email. It's a presentation on my thesis, and supposed to be the same presentation I gave last month, except with corrections and modifications in the feedback I received. Slight problem, I didn't get any feedback. So I dropped some slides and added one of those really simplistic Independent Variable by Dependent Variable tables for fun and called it done.

Thanksgiving was very good. Lots and lots of food. I've been slowly eating my way through it. Fortunately I still have quite a few chocolate chip cookies left! I wish I had more time to cook... or maybe I wish I devoted more time to cooking! So the picture is from the day after thanksgiving, and I'm sure the tryptophan in the turkey caused it. But this is my brother, asleep on the couch while he was working diligently on his thesis committee meeting presentation! On Wednesday he gave his presentation and on Thursday I had my stats final exam. Feels like it's time to go home for Christmas already! Too bad I haven't bought any presents... or for that matter my plane tickets!

A couple of weeks ago I made the realization that my copy of Office Space is nowhere to be found! I have a feeling that I loaned it to someone and forgot to get it back, at this point I unfortunately don’t remember who or even when I loaned it to someone. So if anyone has it - let me know! Couple the missing office space with the other discovery that my parents have never seen Office Space required me to order it on Amazon... unfortunately it didn't get here while they were still here... so for Christmas I will be prepared!

My horoscope from the Onion:
Remember: You can only run away from your problems for so long before they catch up to you, tackle you, drag you into a nearby alley, and ultimately slit your throat.