asimplechord

2013 in review:
( books, movies, shows, etc. )

Fewer plays: because we moved from Houston and had to basically use the 2013-14 Alley Theatre subscription as a tax write off.

Fewer books: because I default to re-reading books and comfort-read fics when I am stressed.

No idea why I saw fewer movies this year, but the shows were because a) we skipped Lolla, ACL, AND Voodoo, and my budget is tight while we're a one-income family.

This year, I wrote the fewest words since beginning to participate in fandom. I don't know why: stories exist in my head. Motivation to spew them out: nearly on-existent.

Other things accomplished in 2013:

1. Published four papers, three of them first-author.
2. Ran a personal best for 7 miles.
3. Consistently ran 5 miles in 41:30.
4. Packed and moved >1000 miles.
5. Watched all the hockey. ALL OF IT.

First things first! It is November, and thus time for NaNoWriMo. I'm trying to get back into the habit of writing, so if anyone's still here, give me a fandom, character or pairing, and three words. I might write a sentence, I might write a paragraph, or I might find a picture or gif that's appropriate. Yes? OK.

The rest:

:( I'm still looking for a job.

:) I went to a Chicago Wolves/Rockford IceHogs game! It was odd. Because the Wolves were the home team, but the Hogs are the bb!Blackhawks, and they're so close to home that the audience was pretty evenly split. The lady next to me is a season ticketholder, but she was utterly clueless, because she kept saying that she didn't recognize any of the names of the players or their faces, and she didn't know what was going on. Um. The team that was the Chicago Wolves last year was the affiliate of the Canucks, and is now in Utica. This team is St Louis's AHL affiliate, and they were the Peoria Rivermen last year. So yeah, none of these dudes SHOULD be people she recognizes. But I just nodded and ignored her. And waved to Michael Davies (tiny forward is tiny), former Badger, who saw Aaron's UW sweater and came over to give us a nod.

:)) FRANK TURNER. Cool venue, great show.

:))) Tabby will be in the Chicagoland area soon. And Butch Walker is playing at the House of Blues next week.

I put a bunch of stuff up on craigslist, but if anyone here wants a table and 4 chairs, some bar stools, a butcher-block, or random band memorabilia (MCR Day of the Dead mask, signed and unsigned posters, etc), let me know. I really just want this stuff to stop cluttering our space.

I think that's pretty much it at the moment.

+ Fall Out Boy in Texas happened. Patrick Stump's solo efforts really changed the way he works a stage. And it's weird, because I never really watched Pete Wentz that closely (I usually aimed for Joe's side of the stage in the past, but was in front of Pete for 2 out of 3 shows this weekend), but now I wonder how much his stage manner has changed with Patrick's evolution. Holy hell, Patrick's vocal range. When he belts out the lines in Save Rock & Roll that Elton John sang on the album? UNF.

+ I had a why_me_why_not for the weekend! Except she is gone now, and I feel like we didn't have enough time to just chill and watch hockey together.

+ The house is listed!

+ Bonnaroo is a thing that is happening this week. \o/ /o\

+ I finished the imaging for Other Post-Doc's paper resubmission today. The rebuttal is due Monday. No rush, or anything.

+ Apparently PK Subban is going to win the Norris? IDK IDK, I wish there was an award for highest scoring defenseman separate from being a great defensive defenseman. But whatever. Good for him.

~ Soundgarden. They played the Bayou Music Center Friday night. It was an okay show. IDK, Ben Shepherd was phoning it in, the guitar didn’t sound crisp (I’m not sure if it was Thayil’s playing or the sound system), and they need to either project stuff or have a light show, not both. The song choice was good until the very end, when instead of performing something like Outshined or Slaves and Bulldozers or basically ANYTHING upbeat, they performed Like A Suicide and Rowing. Most. Depressing. Songs. Ever. I had tickets to the show in Austin on Saturday, but didn’t feel like making the drive for a lackluster repeat.

+ The Hush Sound. River City Extension opened for them. I’m perplexed about why they were all shirtless, and I thought they used to have more members, including an actual trumpet player? But I like their music and energy. Did not care AT ALL for Hockey. Just, boring lyrics, too much 80s influence, weird vocals effects.

+ The French Open has begun! This is great, as we ‘ve reach the point in the season where there is no longer hockey every night. I’m excited to see if Sharapova can repeat or if Serena will maintain the stranglehold she’s had on clay this spring. And if Rafa’s return takes him back to the finals.

~ Work stuff. I applied to a couple of jobs in Chicago this weekend. And updated my past employers, since they will probably be contacted by future employers. It’s weird; my thesis advisor has been sitting on a paper for 13 years, not doing any work on it. She’s a serious procrastinator. When I applied for faculty positions back in the day, I got notices from various institutions that they’d love to interview me but they were still waiting on her letter of reference. You can imagine how much I appreciated that. So I emailed the prof the other day expecting to get zero response, but she replied WITHIN ONE DAY. And she’s got a student who’s interested in the subject of that last paper, so it MIGHT ACTUALLY GET PUBLISHED SOME DAY. It’s been so long, and other papers have been published on the topic, so what I wrote will have to be re-evaluated. But it might not hide on a shelf forever. I’m excited about that!

+ Star Trek: Into Darkness. I didn’t have high expectations for this movie, because it’s Star Trek. The even-number movies always suck. But I enjoyed it for what it was, despite some annoyances, particularly the flip in Kirk’s and Spock’s roles between this movie and original The Wrath of Khan.

+ Lagunitas' Gnarlywine. Delicious. I'm not always a fan of Lagunitas, but I'd drink this one again. But probably not much of it, because at 9% alcohol it knocked me on my ass.

\o/ Proofs for the migration/invasion paper came back. I'm not really happy with the figures - we had them the size we wanted, and the publisher shrank them about 25%. I'd've used more of the white space if I'd known they'd do that. But still. Paper #2 for 2013. One more (a mini-review) is under editorial review, there's another for which I'm doing experiments to respond to reviewers' comments, and there should be at least one more submitted from this lab in the year with my name in the byline, because I started the project even if I'm not going to be the first author.

~ A real estate agent from Aaron's future employer came and assessed the house. Their estimate is about $30K higher than the last tax assessment, but we'll list it there and see what happens. She had three things she wants us to do (all stuff we've talked about but procrastinated on actually doing), but there's nothing major. Paint a couple of things, powerwash, re-tile the master bath's floor. Aaron's going to take care of most of that, because he is FINISHED work. He's being paid for the vacation time he had accrued, but Wednesday was his last day of work for Dow.

? There's a fic meme somewhere for hockey fandom that's all about the stupidly hilarious things that hockey commentators say, right? If not THERE SHOULD BE. Like, no, really, how many times can someone talk about Malkin's penetration or someone getting wood on it without earning a smirk and a laugh?

? I want to see Star Trek: Into Darkness some time this week. WHO WANTS TO GO SEE IT WITH ME?

OK. Rafa's playing in Rome on TTC, I've got to finish reading The Good Earth before the Blackhawks/Wings game, and there's choc chip banana bread to be baked for Carmen's crawfish boil, so I should get moving.

1. Work! Boss is out of town at a professional meeting, so there have been no "I know you're busy, but can you please do this too?" conversations. I appreciate this.

2. Aeros. :( They still haven't (and probably won't) signed a new lease with Les Alexander and the Toyota Center. It's 99% certain that they're moving to Des Moines after this season.

3. Also Aeros: Eric Haula is supposed to play in his first AHL game tonight. :) Curious to see the Gophers' leading scorer at this level. And there are plenty of guys he's played with or against on the team, so.

4. Leftover birthday cake for breakfast: still an excellent life choice, no matter how much my trainer disapproves.

5. As much as I'm enjoying Empires' Live In Chicago, I still feel that this must be said: GIMME THAT NEW MUSIC. I KNOW YOU'VE RECORDED IT.

6. Apparently it's a good week for music on the internet: Frank Turner's live EP is streaming, and so is Fall Out Boy's Save Rock and Roll. WELL DONE, BUTCH WALKER. WELL. DONE.

7. Clayton Stoner. Why is he still playing? Oh, right, because apparently the Wild only have three useful defensemen, and they need warm bodies. Can't they call up Kampfer? Scandella? Mara, even? Ugh, that pass was so ugly.

1. this Gally-squared primer
2. the Devils finally won one last night (even if it was in a shoot-out. against the Sabres)
3. running 6 miles in 54 minutes consistently (shut up, I know that's slow; I can either run fast or I can run that long, not both)
4. putting on a pair of trousers that used to be too uncomfortable to wear and realizing they fit perfectly now
5. this morning's surprise awesome result (SCIENCE!)
6. chat-fic with Tabby in which the Staals are a vampire clan, and Jordan's friendship with Jeff is making EStaal cranky


And I think this will continue the happy-making: seeing a local band, Hounds of Jezebel, tonight.


Now I'm going to finish my lunch and listen to the rest of the BHS podcast. As you do.

If you read Russian Machine Never Breaks or watched last night's Caps/Bolts game, you've already seen this, but...

( what's going on with Ovechkin's hair? )



Ugh. Back to reading all the background ever on histone acetylation and gene regulation so I can converse intelligently about the new project for the grant proposal. I love how as soon as I get competent at a new technique and caught up on all the background literature for that topic, my boss decides that we need to move into yet another new direction, so there's a new learning curve to be scaled. :|

a) Clybourne Park. The Alley is producing it this season, and we saw it on Sunday. I really enjoyed parts of it, and think Norris does an interesting job of weaving race and perception as related to urban renewal with things like unpopular war and PTSD. Parts of the second act felt like they were written specifically for a talk-back with a sociology or history class, though. Best thing: the use of popular music through the decades to transition between 1959 and 2009. Some of the dialogue was that sort of train-wreck where you KNOW someone is going to say something utterly, completely offensive because they've boxed themselves in in conversation, and I spent a good portion of the second act cringing. David Rainey, you (or your character, whichever) are an A+ troll.

b) Canadian boys and stereotypical speech patterns. Go listen to the PONDcast for the the preview to the other day's Wild/Blues game. How many times can Marco Scandella work "for sure" into a response? Pretty much EVERY TIME he answers a question. (Less said about the results of that game, the better. Not impressed with his interfering with Oshie like that so close to the end of the game. D:)

c) Watching last night's Edmonton/Avs game, A turned to me and said, "It's much easier to appreciate how talented Eberle is when he's not scoring against our team." YES. YES, IT IS.

d) So tired of my boss right now. He asked me to change EVERY GRAPH in the manuscript so that the bars were bounded by 0.5pt lines. When they've been in the format they're in (1pt) since I first made them. Nine months ago. And NOW, while I'm trying to finish the last little bits of that paper and do a slew of experiments for the new grant, he wants to me to change them? No. That'll involve deleting the current graphs, going back to GraphPad and changing them, then re-importing, re-sizing, and re-labeling them all in the graphics software he favors (which I haaaaaate like burning). For all 15 graphs. I have enough to do. If he really doesn't like that line weight, he can change them all. And then after THAT discussion, he decided that I should re-analyze some of my data. Again. Because the results don't fit his hypothesis. THAT'S NOT HOW SCIENCE WORKS.

e) URGH. The LCD display on our PCR machine is dying. If not, I could just stick these first strand synthesis reactions in it and leave, and it'd do the temperature changes for me. But no. I'm hanging out for the 42degC bit, then moving them to the 70degC block for 15 minutes, and THEN I'm done for the day.



Cranky day. Because in between today's grant/paper shenanigans, Post-Doc Who Thawed All Our Cells, kept coming to ask me questions that wouldn't need my attention if she just LOOKED IN THE INVENTORY that I conveniently posted to the lab server, and which I update every time we get a new antibody. Ugh. I believe tonight is not going to be a gym night. I believe it is going to be time for ALL THE WINE and ALL THE HOCKEY. And Dante and A cuddles.

Who even uses words like 'moxie' in conversation nowadays? Oilers coaches, apparently.


In other random news, the post-doc who was supposed to leave us in April has decided that today is her last day. She just finished writing a paper, and was planning a trip home to India, and decided that there's no point in coming back for a month after a month away. So, done. Hopefully the paper's reviewers won't have more experiments to be done, because they would probably fall on me. :|