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today's to-do list:

request copy of last paycheck
inquire about pay for accumulated vacation leave
donate blood
sign/post paperwork for the mortgage for the house in Chicago
read at least one review on follicle development
clean out the closet that holds home improvement odds and ends and holiday decorations
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\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.
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It's been a while since I posted anything other than the notice about moving, so in the last couple of weeks:

1. This happened. It was a pretty great show. One of the best parts was that there was an 11-yr-old kid next to me at the barrier with his dad, and he was the big TGA fan, somehow had conned his dad into letting him see multiple shows on the tour. (I was sort of horrified that he didn't have earplugs, though. Come on. That's permanent damage you're doing to your kid, man.)

2. And so did this (not my video, I was busy doing chin-hands at them from the next spot over on the barrier). Shortly after that song, BRMC invited the entire crowd to come around the barrier because we were too far away.

3. Saw IM3. More eloquent folks than I have reviewed it, so I'll just say that while I thought there were some flaws, it was a vast improvement over IM2, I enjoyed the portrayal of Tony post-Avengers events, and I'm curious to see how the ending is integrated into the next Avengers movie.

4. Watched a lot of hockey. (I probably should stop doing so while on the treadmill; one day I'm going to flail over a goal or lose my balance watching the puck move across the ice in a direction that opposes the one I'm going. But this way I can watch and exercise, so.) I'm sad that the Wild lost, but not surprised. There's lots of heat on Yeo, but a) he's a second-year coach and b) the Wild had more problems than signing one star forward and one stud defenseman could solve in a single shortened season. Brodin is magic, Darcy might grow up to be a good goalie, and I hope to watch Zucker run his mouth, chew on his mouthguard, and lay out bigger dudes like Brent Seabrook again, but just getting to the playoffs was a milestone for them, I think. To be honest: I picked the 'Hawks to win in 5 for my bracket, because I'm a realist, no matter how much I'd've liked the Wild to win.




The Art Car Parade is the weekend, rain or shine. And I'd like to see Harvest of Empire (I meant to see it last weekend but ended up seeing IM3 again). And there's cleaning to do, and I need to start sorting through things that will be donated to Goodwill or put onto Craigslist or whatever. Plus I should probably read The Good Earth for bookclub. I read it years ago, in school, but have no memory of it whatsoever.

Hope all's well with anyone who's still here. ♥

official

May. 3rd, 2013 05:41 pm
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I told my boss, and my family knows, so I guess it's OK to say it in public now: Aaron has a job offer in Chicago, so we're moving there ~July-ish.

LOL

Apr. 24th, 2013 01:04 pm
asimplechord: Larsson vs bbOilers (Larsson vs bbOilers)
Staal collective, in full glory. I... don't really see the point?

I guess this is to make roster space for the Checkers, who are heading into Calder Cup playoffs this weekend, and would probably like to have the skills of Riley Nash and Tim Wallace back, while the Canes are basically done when the regular season is over?

And to set an NHL record when/if all four Staals are technically on the team rosters when the Canes play the Rangers tomorrow, even though Marc Staal is still hurt?
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I've been waiting for my credit card company to call me all day. In the last two days, I bought A's birthday gift, most of the groceries and decorations for his birthday party, and four tickets for Fall Out Boy's fall arena tour, on top of the Soundgarden tickets and Buzzfest tickets already purchased. Even if the bank doesn't call to check on the activity, I think my wallet is whimpering in pain.

While I'm thinking about the birthday part... what do people do when couples get divorced and other couples are still friends with both parties? cut while I ramble about background details )

What do people DO when their friends get divorced? Pick sides? Try to stay friends with both?

I guess I'm lucky that this is the first time it's really happened in my close social circle.
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1. Aaron has pneumonia. Apparently there's a mini-epidemic in our 'burb of runners coming down with it, and their expanded lung capacity makes them not realize how sick they are until they are REALLY sick. The doc gave him a shot and a scrip for an inhaler and antibiotics, and he was noticeably better last night, so I think he'll be okay in the next day or two.

2. Reviews back on the last manuscript submitted. The suggested experiments from two reviewers do not appear too onerous.

3. GREEEEEEN DAY. (I'm still going to SXSW for Friday and Saturday at the very least, even though this has turned into the most hectic week at work and home.)

4. Flyers vs. Devils tonight. I'm hoping that the Devils' recent slump has reached its end, and they'll put the Flyers into the bottom of the Atlantic division in their next couple of games.

5. Jason Zucker :( Chances that Granlund goes back to MN? I favor sending Larsson up instead, or maybe Fontaine, because I don't think Granlund's fast enough to contribute the way Zucker does, but Larsson's solid enough offensively and defensively and Fontaine's right behind him in terms of scoring, while Granlund would benefit from more playing time back with Houston.
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Today's random:

- Does anyone else find it odd that ESPN broadcasts zero NHL games, but they've put out two ads featuring Henrik Lundqvist in the last couple of months? (The Swedish chef one was AWESOME.)

- Signs for the departmental seminar have been posted. I keep look at this and wondering how the dad from American Pie had time to be an actor and a scientist/professor.
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Who thought it was a good idea to run 6 miles, do a full set of squats, lunges and other lower-body weight lifting, and then spend four hours standing and bouncing for a Flogging Molly show? My quads and calves are super unhappy with me right now.

I'm marginally less cranky about the division of labor on the new grant proposal now that I've had a weekend off to think about it. Well, okay, that's not entirely true. But I'm telling myself that it's job security: the Chief trusts that I can learn to do these experiments under deadline, and once I've established protocols for them, I can pass them off to other people.

Time to go fire up the epifluorescence microscope. And crank the volume back up on the mid-day broadcast of the Aeros game. Or the Devils game. Whichever. It'll get me through three hours of image acquisition and analysis. Hopefully.
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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. :|
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D: The coffee shop in the ground floor of my building used to sell a small coffee (12 oz) for $1 (with tax). As of today, it is now a Starbucks location, and a small coffee costs $1.72. *sigh* Sbux, I liked my not-corporate, cheap coffee in the morning.

? What constitutes "new artist" for the Grammy's? Because Some Nights was fun.'s second album, and I remember a couple of years ago when Katy Perry was nominated that she'd released several albums as her inspirational/Christian incarnation before remaking herself into a pop singer.

+ Go, Devils. :)

+/- Still hoping that some of us will get off the waitlist onto the "yes you have tickets" list for the All Star thingy on Saturday. FOB what.
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What was that last night, Wild? Jonas Brodin is doing an amazing job as a small-ish, young defenseman, and Charlie Coyle had a decent night for his home debut, but. What. Seriously. OTOH... DEVILS. :)

Morning random:

a) Writing "I suck at summaries" anywhere in your summary pretty much guarantees that I am never going to click the link to your fic. Even more so if it's a work in progress.

b) BBC News reported this morning on a prisoner who concealed his mobile phone in his rectum. Guards became suspicious when a ring tone was heard during a search of his cell. Ow.

c) It is Friday. Paper is submitted. Book club (ie, wine drinking with book discussion as an excuse) tonight. HAPPY WEEKEND!
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Well done. You can't even get the given name in the title correct even though it's the first word in the capsule.




In other random news, this morning I received an email requesting that all guests attending a baby shower please wear pink to celebrate the baby girl who will be arriving. Because OBVIOUSLY we want to get this child started off on the correct foot in terms of gender expectations and conformity. Fuck that shit, I'm wearing a band t-shirt. If they don't like it, I can take my gift to Goodwill.
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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.
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Watching last night's Badgers/Seawolves game, because we had plans.

When UW's Tyler Barnes scored and the guys all piled into each other to celebrate, A turned to me and said, "That's why they wear full cages: because otherwise they'd all be kissing right now."

...


Yeah.



Unrelated: whose idea was it to drink multiple mojitos and only eat a couple of pieces of sashimi and half a spicy tuna roll? I need so much more coffee before I am functional.
asimplechord: Larsson vs bbOilers (Larsson vs bbOilers)
hockey related news: )

Totally earwormed myself with Cake's Going The Distance, so I'm going to go listen to that. And ponder the joy that is a day without my boss coming to check on me every couple of hours. (He's out of town for the next couple of days.)


ETA: Who gave Matt Dumba #55? SERIOUSLY? HIS NAME/# COMBO IS DUMBA55.
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a) Does the new album in March mean BRMC might be at SXSW? PLEASE YES. Although, really, empires and Butch Walker are enough inducement already.

b) :( Our friend W will not be able to make it to HTx for the marathon this weekend after all. Spouse's work travel/child care/not able to get a standby seat on the company shuttle issues. Sad, because we haven't seen him since the marathon last year.

c) My ankle is still so sore. I don't know what I did to it - it didn't pull while I was running, but I woke up one morning a few weeks ago and it was so sore it hurt to walk. I've been icing it for ~20 minutes a night, but it's still swollen half the time, and this morning I skipped the gym because it hurt just to walk down the stairs when I got up. Tonight, no excuses. I'll just have to use the elliptical instead of a treadmill to lessen impact.

d) We're supposed to stay with friends in midtown tomorrow night and then (I will) bicycle over to Allen/Montrose for brunch to cheer the marathoners (including A, who's running the half-marathon) on as they go by, but if it's really going to rain, I'm not sure I want to add biking in the rain (least favorite) + sore ankle together. Perhaps I will be a sofa slug instead. Least supportive spouse ever, that is me.

e) Finished Lori Armstrong's Merciless. On one hand, I appreciate that Mercy is a flawed human being who makes no excuses for her drinking and other behavior. But I really do not understand how the character and the author are going to reconcile her actions with her relationship with the law (in the form of her lover, the county sheriff).

f) One more gulp of coffee, then into lab I go.
asimplechord: Larsson vs bbOilers (Larsson vs bbOilers)
Ugh, back to work. It's not even that I dislike my work - I don't - it's just such a drag getting back into a work routine.

Random query: why do couples/families label joint property or invitations as "The Smith's". Seriously, do people not learn about apostrophes and possessives any more? The Smiths' or The Smiths, depending on context. I've gotten four different Evite invitations (don't get me started on Evite and my hate for it) with that misuse. And they were all from people who are college graduates, at a minimum.

Last night was the first Aeros game of the New Year, and was yet another matchup against the OKC Barons. Given the progress that I hope is happening with the NHL/NHLPA, it might've been the last time I see Hall, Eberle, and Schultz up close for a long while. There's another couple of home games this weekend, so hopefully that was NOT the last I'll see of Granlund, Coyle, and Zucker. Brodin's apparently back in Houston again, but not playing. The IR is massive again, too: Scandella, Bulmer, Palmer, Brodin, Kampfer, Broda, Foucault, and Fontaine were all scratches, and they signed Derek Couture to a PTO on NYE. He dressed and played a significant number of shifts (and committed the most boneheaded, obvious penalty, boarding Justin Schultz, and leading to Eberle's only goal; man, Hackett looked pissed - someone's stick broke and flew into the net, distracting him, and that's when Eberle's shot went in). NGL, I was a bit worried that the team'd be flat, given the OT loss on the 29th. Plus, whenever they score, they do this slow-down that usually leads to an immediate opposing goal. Which the Barons take advantage of by always putting Eberle, Arcobello, & Hall out, post-goal. Sign I'm overinvested in the Aeros: it makes me super twitchy and nervous when Hall and Eberle are on the ice together, skating into the Aeros' zone with the puck. But seriously, some of the prettiest drop and blind passes between them. I can appreciate them. I just prefer they not happen against my team. Also pretty? Jason Zucker's three points. (Not so much his hooking penalty, which led to Hall's goal in the 1st - Hall's goal is at :43 here, and the scrum of Barons hugging was literally right in front of us. I was not amused. I am sad that they didn't include Hackett's celebration over the ENG in the highlights.) And Johan Larsson's empty netter. I don't remember seeing Petersen play before - was he injured early in the season, or is he a call-up? Lines are kinda scrambled again, with all the injured forwards. But a win's a win, right? Especially when it leap-frogs the team to being one point behind the Checkers in the division.

After the game we came home and watched the Rose Bowl. Eh. I don't understand why Alvarez didn't start Stave. Or play him more than that single pass. Three Rose Bowl losses in a row. :( At least they got there? Even if it was by default. (Thanks to OSU, PSU, and the NCAA for that.)


Finally, thanks to Bob McKenzie, for giving me the most ridiculous mental image. I'm reading his book, Hockey Dad, right now, and he says at one point Backcheck like your hair is on fire. Imagining a peewee player with a helmet on fire, streaking down the ice. It's worse and more hilarious than the stupid flaming puck that ESPN/NBC/Fox/whoever tried for one season.
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In the past whenever I used a gym, it was always one that run by the university by which I was employed or educated, and the equipment was not particularly new or fancy. In fact, if I was planning on running, I preferred to go outside or to use the indoor track rather than a treadmill, because treadmills :(.

Last night, after listening to the Aeros game for most of my workout (DAMN YOU, JUSTIN FAULK, AND YOUR GAME-TYING GOAL. DAMN YOU!), I decided to plug my iPod into the treadmill I was using for the cardio portion of the evening's activities.

As I told [personal profile] shutyourface, I may never run outside again. Seriously. Any movie or video on my iPod, playing on the display while I run, bike, or whatever the motion is for the elliptical?

Yeah.

It was all well and good until the Discos' set at Hove Festival was over and my iPod shuffled over to the video of MCR's I Don't Love You.

BOB BRYAR, I MISS YOU.
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+ In news that should surprise no one, after listening to Tre on repeat for a day (I like it much more than Dos, but not as much as Uno), I am back to listening to a playlist that is basically nothing but Rise Against and Gaslight Anthem. (Yes, it is called "Tim McIlrath is always the answer. Unless it's Brian Fallon". WHAT?)

+ How smiley is PK Subban that Malcolm Subban made the WJC team? As excited as he is that the charity game he and Stamkos are hosting is almost sold out? I'd guess.

+ Started reading James Duthie's The Day I (Almost) Killed Two Gretzkys. I don't read his column regularly, so it's entertaining even if it's a retread.

this weekend's to-do list )

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