theevilbeaker

I think I've already repeated this story to everyone I know because I can't get over it's hilarity but now I would like to post it on the internet for EVERYONE.

Guy who got his PhD in molecular biology and then for funsies went to law school afterwards (whyyyyyyyy?) and is now at some hoity toity law firm trying to become a partner there: "Being on the partner track is like a pie eating contest...where the pies are filled with SHIT. And your prize for winning at the end is 100 more pies."

Keeping up with this regular posting business is HARD, y'all. Therefore I bring you the adventures of my Christmas vacation, long after any one has even thought the word vacation.

First of all, after having holiday travel suck my ass on numerous occasions, this particular trip to the midwest was a SMASHING. SUCCESS. I was only delayed in Minneapolis for like, 2.5 hours. This -- compared to last year, which involved two missed flights, a 7 hour delay, a cancelled flight and the subsequent 3 hour bus ride from Chicago -- definitely qualifies as the best trip home ever in recent memory.

ALSO different from the last few trips home was that it was actually winter. WINTER. With SNOW and freezing cold temperatures and not mud and stoked people walking their dogs in t-shirts. People, I love California, but you start to miss a thing or two that's associated with this time of year after awhile. So I was completely over the moon about the three or so feet of snow on the ground, while my parents rolled their eyes and seethed through clenched teeth, "You like the snow so much - YOU go out and shovel it." And I did, or at least, I would have if I hadn't been so preoccupied with sleeping. Something about vacation just makes my body snap into hibernation mode and I can't blame the two hour time difference because if I got up by 2 pm, that was an EARLY day. And I only had to stay up for 12-14 hours before I would get tired again.

So one morning/afternoon as I was sleeping away a few days before Christmas, my mom got too impatient to wait for her daughter/slave/avid snow lover to get up and go shovel so she went out to do it herself. And then she fell down. She sported an enormous purple bruise on her hand and claimed she simply couldn't do any more shoveling for 6 weeks (to which her friend responded, "How generous, I thought you were going to say the rest of the winter"). Mom was understandably paranoid about walking outside after that, especially when the curse of the Californians trying to enjoy their freaking snow already swept in and melted the three feet of snow. And then the curse of the Midwesterners sweupt right back and refroze all that melted snow.

(Un)fortunately, last year for Christmas my aunt had given my mom and dad Yak Tracks. http://www.scoutgear.com/as1505xx.html (I refuse to use their stupid spelling). They're basically snow chains for your feet: springs wrapped around cords which can be bungeed over your shoes. My mom promptly rediscovered and fell passionately in love with the Yak Tracks, and appropriated my dad's as her own since she couldn't find hers (which also tells you there's something suspect about the sizing of these things since two of my mom's feet equals one of my dad's feet). She wore them everywhere. She might have even slept in them, because you never know if you might wake up one morning and find your bedroom carpet has suddenly become SLIPPERY.

She wore them when we went out shopping the day after Christmas. She reluctantly parted with them once we were inside the mall. When we were finished shopping, she stopped to put the Yak Tracks back on before we headed back outside into the parking lot. She put them on while we were standing on the carpet, then she stepped onto the hard, tiled floor. Yak Tracks are apparently not made for the indoors, my friends, as she promptly wiped out rather spectacularly. Right there, in the middle of the mall, my mom laid on her back with those death traps winsomely strapped to her feet and all creepy assortment of people came up to ask her if she was okay. Did I say creepy? I meant nice. Nice if they would have stopped touching her.

So my present for the day after Christmas was one big box of guilt, wrapped up all nice and pretty with a bow.
Mom: "Oh it really hurts."
Me: Eyeroll.

Mom: "Maybe I should call the clinic. You have to drive me. It hurts too much to drive."
Me: Eyeroll, eyeroll.

In the emergency room:
Nurse: "On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst pain you've ever felt, how would you rate your pain right now?"
Mom: "I would say the pain is a 10."
Me: Silent snort, eyeroll (I mean, she gave birth and everything, right?)

Doctor: "Your mother has a fracture across her wrist bones."
Me: Eyero-What?! SOB.

And that is how I spent the day after Christmas in the emergency room and how my mom got her arm wrapped up like that kid in "Rookie of the Year." Happy holidays!

Stephanie learns to ride a unicycle!




This guy was knitting with these enormous knitting needles and playing the drums with the blunt end of the needles at the same time. I might have wanted to jump him.




And finally, my ultimate fantasy, meat pillows. Mmm...meeeeeeeat.

The Maker's Faire, from approximately a frillion years ago. There were giant cupcake carts and it was a little piece of heaven. Will post more if this works!

Before you start to wonder, let it be known that this story does not involve my poop. It involves other people's poop. Stranger's poop. Everywhere. And if you don't like reading about poop you should just stop now.

My apartment is on the ground floor, have I told you that? As an added bonus, last summer there was a rapist running around my neighborhood climbing in through women's ground floor windows. It sucked to sleep with the windows closed since it was so. freaking. hot. but it was also awesome because there was a local news cast! Done on the corner of my street! I tried to poke my head out the window to see the reporter, to see if I could be one of those assy people who wave at the camera to be on TV, but then I was afraid the rapist would come in and get me so I had to pull back inside and close it up. Don't tell my mom.

Another bonus of living on the ground floor, closest to the street? When the sewer line blocks up MINE is the first unit to know. Yup, I'm the poo canary in the sewer coal mine. Back in November I was watching the season finale of ANTM (a show I'm embarrassed to admit I watch so I have to refer to it by its initials). I had consumed a healthy amount of water and was going to pee (does anyone else have this problem? When they actually drink the 8-100 cups recommended they pee like crazy?) and when I flushed the bowl filled, but did not drain. And this was from pee, people. While I was scratching my head, water started pouring out of that hole at the top of tubs. You know that hole that's supposed to keep you from overfilling your tub? Water was coming OUT of it. And when I say water, I mean SEWAGE water. It could have just been brown dirty water, but the toilet paper bits convinced me otherwise. And it wasn't draining out of the tub. All I could do was stare in absolute horror. Somewhere in the back of my brain a thought flickered, maybe I should be calling someone. But stare I did, until the water (at least this was actually just water) in my toilet flowed out of the bowl and started trickling onto the floor. I called my landlord's after hours emergency maintenance line, left a message in what I can only assume was hysterical and unintelligible squeaking. I chucked my phone and started bailing water out of the toilet with my octopus trashcan. Goodbye octopus trashcan. By the I made it back inside the overflowing had stopped and the toilet and tub were draining. There was only a small amount of (poop free) water on the floor so I cleaned it up, called the landlord back and said it was no longer a hysterical squeak-worthy emergency, but requested that a plumber still be sent out to see what the problem was.

The next day, the plumber called me and I explained the situation and she said it SOUNDED like a clog, but there wasn't anything they could do unless it was happening again and to please call when it was actually happening again. Umm. Okay... I managed to sort of forget about it until this Saturday. I was sleeping and heard some gurgling noises emanating from the bathroom. My sleep brain wanted to protect me from the impending horror, so I managed to ignore it until later. Later being the unmistakable sound of water hitting the floor. I dragged myself out of bed and saw not (compared to the reality) inoffensive clear trickle of toilet water but BROWN CHUNKY SEWAGE WATER. GUSHING. ALL OVER. THE FLOOR. I leaned in to snatch my bathmat out of the way of the impending doom, only to have the gushing sewage exit the bathroom and start spilling over on the CARPET of my BEDROOM at which point the bathmat was immediately sacrificed to the great octopus trashcan in the sky. As were several towels. There was no question that this was sewage water this time. Apparently my neighbors use a LOT of toilet paper. And umm, have trouble digesting tomatoes. And you don't even want to know where I found turds lurking as I was trying to wipe up a teeny bit. I will spare you any more details than I already have, leaving it at I am thoroughly traumatized (as are you, I'm sure, if you're still reading this), I am staying with the boy, and I wrote my first stern/assertive letter to my landlord. Goooooo poop!

Another reason I couldn't bring myself to write about the woe-is-me break-up is that by the time I pulled myself together enough to not be WAAAAAH all the time, I had started seeing someone else. It was a little over two months after the break up, less than a week after Gareth had confirmed for sure, we were not getting back together. It was too soon and at the same time not soon enough. I had to move on because it was the only way I could get on with my life and begin to heal, but it still made me feel guilty. How could I be this broken person if I was already dating again? How could I claim that my relationship with Gareth was the one when I bounced back so quickly, with someone who I honestly entertained a little crush on even when Gareth and I were still together? So I tucked that guilt away along with the pain and slowly slunk away.

I also didn't know how to write about this new person, I was so shy and so afraid of going through it all again I didn't want to make it out to be this wonderful thing, even though it was. It's still wonderful, over a year and a half later, but for better or worse, the lesson I learned from Gareth was to not expect anything too grand about the future, to enjoy the present. I guess I'm still a little wary because I want to keep the relationship stuff to myself for now, but we all know how long that's going to last. That's it for boring relationship crap, I'll try to be back with regularly scheduled ridiculousness soon. As my beloved Dooce says, major life drama can be summed up in one sentence (not that I managed to be that succinct): I was dumped and it sucked but I'm better now.

Yikes. So umm...it's been awhile. A really long while. I guess I had sort of abandoned this livejournal but recent events have inspired me to come back.

Not long after I posted my last entry, things started to unravel with Gareth. I mean, really unravel, in the sob uncontrollably in his car/throw things at his head sense of unravel. We all know where that was going so I will skip over the pools of crying that commenced and say that Gareth and I broke up. Or, owing to the typical end of a serious relationship in which girl wants more and boy is afraid of further commitment, he dumped me and broke my heart. I know there have been longer, far more epic love stories that ended the way ours did ("we'd been together for a frillion years!", "I gave up everything and changed my life for him/her", even MARRIAGES and I truly ache for my friends that have gone through these things too), but after over two years together and truly believing Gareth was my future, I'd like to think I ended up equally shattered. And this journal was just so...blaaargh. It was so, oh I love him, oh everything is so perfect, oh this is totally it. I wanted to slap the girl that wrote those things, to toughen her up so she wouldn't be so broken when the end came. Also I was too proud and too ashamed to write about my pain and admit that I had been wrong. I didn't want to share that with anybody, not even in real life. So I walked away because I didn't know what to write.

The honesty and plainness with which Aubri has written about her story has given me the courage to write about what happened (although nearly two years of healing hasn't been bad either). In addition, the other day I revisited one of my old favorite blogs that I thought had been abandoned, Miss Doxie, and found that she too had abandoned hers for very similar reasons (and writes about it much more eloquently than I do, check it out: http://www.missdoxie.com/2008/07/redox_1.html). I know it sounds idiotic and cliche, but people all around me, both in real life and on the internets, are going through this every day. And it hurts, oh how it hurts, and in no way am I trying to undermine that very real pain, but somehow and in someway we emerge eventually on the other side, stepping into the sun again. I don't even know if I'm there yet, how much of that pain still lingers and clings to my insides somewhere, hibernating and waiting, but I do know that I am a lot better now. I need to continue getting better and writing is one of those things that will help.

Don't delete my livejournal!

So here are some short bits about me, being crazy, which I know y'all didn't think was possible. Also, a 1.5 year old baby crazy, because crazy needs company.

1) There's a bus line that goes directly from campus to in front of my apartment that I big puffy pink heart, but I hardly ever ride it because the leg that comes out to my apartment only runs once every 45 minutes. Today I got lucky when I was hauling major crap home for packing for going home tomorrow and caught this magical, magical line. After I deboarded and crossed the street I realized I was raving OUT LOUD about my love for this particular bus line while a cyclist was stopped at the intersection and openly. gawking. at. me. There's going to be a sign outside my building tomorrow, courtesy of this biking fellow, saying "Ye olde crazies live here" or something.

2) I was crossing this bridge between my building and another happenin' science nerd building on the way to our department's annual holiday party with a few labmates, and I was quite a bit excited about the prospect of raffles and holiday treats and free wine and beer so I started doing a little dance. Actually it was quite a big dance with river dance stomping and all. As the dust fell around my finale flourish, I looked up from concentrating so hard on my footwork to stare straight into the eyes of another professor on my floor and a former boss of mine. He was absolutely canning himself over my little crazy parade. He said, "You'd better be careful or you'll make this bridge fall down." It was an early Christmas present to my labmates.

3) On Saturday we were at a holiday party involving Gareth's work colleagues and their wee ones (where incidentally, I was the only American among 10 people). The youngest is a very cute little one who would just stare at me stonily until I would just cut her a damn piece of cheese already, although her mom assured me she knew the word for cheese and even crazy please and thank you words like that. But Brando jowls on someone who comes up to your knee can request cheese with the ol' glare anytime. As we were leaving she started bawling and we asked what was wrong, like, is she really missing her cheese cutter already? But her mom, who was holding her, said, "No, she's just worried that Mommy is leaving." Craaaaazy. The best though was when Gareth was talking on his cell phone and the tot pointed across the room at him and squealed, probably the only word I heard out of her all night, "Daddeeeee!" "No, Daddy is on the couch." I can sort of see a resemblence between Gareth and Daddy, so not that crazy until she pointed to a picture of Santa and said, "Daddeeeeee!" Just to assure you, I may be crazy, but my boyfriend does not look like Santa.

So I've actually been relatively lucky with flying around the holidays (not counting the horrible time my second year at Oberlin when my flight out of Cleveland was canceled, I was rerouted to Milwaukee and I barfed on the flight and the stewardess made fun of me but she had to throw away my barf so HA, and it appeared I would be stranded in Milwaukee along with their foot of snow until I was smuggled onto some business class champagne flight that was supposed to only be for those at least 21 years old but the customer service people were wooed by my desperate, desperate eyes and I was so relieved that I didn't even try to get some free champagne, only some peanut M&M's. Total travel time: 13 hours. Time it takes to drive from Oberlin to Madison: 8 hours at Mom speed).

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Gareth and I peeled ourselves out of bed at 3:30 for our 6:30 AM flights. We were actually on different flights, but we were supposed to arrive in Madison about 10 minutes apart. While we were dozing at my gate they announced that they are missing a co-pilot and had to fly in somebody from Los Angeles. That flight was actually only delayed by an hour and a half, which I guess is pretty impressive, but I missed by connection in Denver and the next one was EIGHT HOURS LATER. Bye, Sweetie, have a good time hanging out with MY PARENTS for EIGHT HOURS BY YOURSELF. He actually did remarkably well, other than taking lots of long naps, and much better than I would have done if the situation had been reversed.

Other than that, Thanksgiving was good. Saw: one newly married friend, the preparation of the turkey (which hasn't been seen since early high school when I could be bothered to get up that early), a completely different city which has changed a lot in the two years since I was last here (and the roads! why have I forgotten how to get ANYWHERE in such a short time?), my mom get all crazy with the black Friday shopping (she was too excited to sleep so she finally got up at 3:30 for the shopping action). Did not see: one ex-boyfriend. Which is actually okay. I don't know what made me think I could be the type of person who is friends with exes. That is just crazy.

Lauren has scolded me for not posting. I'm headed back home for Thanksgiving. Considering I'm taking the current boyfriend with me and meeting an ex-boyfriend for lunch, there should be some considerable fodder when I get back. Until then, allow me to summarize the past few months: work, work, work, Lauren hooray!, work, Hawaii!, work, work, cousin has cancer, work, work, parents aie!, work, new undergrad that I heart post on that later, work aaaaaand....work. And I say work as if in the productive sense, which HA. It's basically a lot of the same every day which is I guess what this whole "job" thing is about only I thought I was going to grad school to avoid a "real" job.

So hopefully soon I will write about one tidy event that isn't boring and until then I give you the dreaded link. Not that I have anything against links! I click on y'all's links! But I guess I myself am not a linky person. If you have seen Brokeback Mountain or enjoy molecular biology or both, then you should watch this movie. A few guys from my class made it for our annual "Let's be nerds and get together and make jokes about science" shindig and it is AWESOME.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CFjG3TdaGbE&mode=related&search=

Peace, yo.

An undergrad in my lab: "You know there's something wrong with you when you care more about DNA than you do about shopping." Yah. Grad school, it's a disease.

My mom, on buying too many peaches at once: "You just can't ripen them all at the same time. I usually get a few really good ones, most of the rest are okay, but then two of them just end up bad. Two really losey peaches." Losey? I heart my mom.

I had the most amazing, most wonderful visit ever with my little strip of seaweed. Sadly, I don't think that will really catch on. Lauren ate more Kraft Mac 'n' Cheese than should be safely allowed by the FDA, played Settlers until we were delirious, and during that nerve wracking time when you wonder if two of the most important people in your life are getting along, she called Gareth a rat bastard. How I love her.

Gareth offered to help me hang up all of my clothes yesterday. ("You hang your t-shirts up?!" Hello, if they made hangers small enough I'd hang up my underwear too). Apparently it was an education in women's clothing, although the clampy hanger for skirts ended up being a bit too much for him. He encountered a sleeveless t-shirt with a hood and held it up for a moment before saying, "OH, it's a SHIRT." He then unceremoniously stuffed a hanger into an ARMHOLE, held it up again and said, "I think I did something wrong."

Yesterday I walked around San Francisco BY MYSELF for the very first time, which is 1) amazing, because I'm terrified of forays into the unknown by myself 2) really pathetic that San Francisco is still "unknown" to me after living in the area for almost 2 years now. I've been to San Francisco tons of times since moving to Berkeley, but it was always with a protective heard of friends, or at least one very able bodyguard/friend. Since Gareth's acquiring of Bert, there is hardly even any more walking, just endless circling of many many blocks to find a parking spot that can barely accomodate a tricycle, let alone Gareth's shoebox-on-wheels (sorry Bert!). Let us not even speak of the time it took as an hour to find parking for Gareth's company's Christmas party, at which point we were so far away we had to catch a CAB IN THE RAIN IN OUR FORMAL CLOTHES (at least I wasn't wearing my boss's $1000 suit) back to the hotel. And Eddie Izzard is right, there are only 5 cabs in San Francisco, and every one of 'em has got somebody.

Parking trauma probably played a role in my immense enjoyment of walking around the city yesterday. Aimless wandering, thank you post-quals life, rules! It was the first time I've felt more at ease with the place, albe to negotiate it on my own terms. For the first time, I could picture myself living there. But that's a long way off, if at all. I've only walked around San Francisco that much twice before, once with Aaron and once with Michael. I absolutely loved walking around with Aaron; I think it was the first time we really bonded despite being in the same lab for 6 months. Ever the quintessential grad student, Aaron guided me to all the free stuff: free chocolate samples at the Ghiradelli store, free salt water taffy (which I actually find kind of barfy, but for FREE, I will eat it), and how to order stuff at In&Out (burgers so cheap that they're practically free!) that's not on the menu.

Walking around with Michael was different. Very rainy and crappy in general, and we had no clue what we were doing. I remember singing a lot of rounds while we were hiking up to Coit Tower or down Lombard Street, but I can't remember if he sang along or allowed me to be completely assy all by myself. Yesterday I walked past the cafe where we broke up. Well, not really, but anybody who knew what our relationship was like then knows that it was the equivalent of breaking up. It still makes me sad, a year and a half later. I know it was for the best and I'm as much to blame for the subsequent drifting apart and blah blah blah. But I miss him. He graduated this morning, my baby brother! all done with college! and instead of being there, like I promised to be two years ago, I'm here and sad.

So congratulations, Michael.

And now presenting a special edition of things that get on my nerves: things that get on my nerves so much (for absolutely no logical reason) I just want to pour foot juices on my head to end the pain.

1a) People who cut me off when getting on the escalator. At least have a nice ass so I can objectify you if you're going to do this.
1b) People who stand on the walk side of the escalator. It makes me hyperventilate. Clearly, I am not a calm person on the escalator.

2) People who, when waiting in line to board the BART train, stand about a million feet away from the edge of the platform. I'm not sure if they're even in the same station, let alone in line for the train. However, people more clever than I figure it out and queue up behind them, BEHIND the person standing so far back that the end of the line falls off the platform onto the opposite tracks. And then their bodies writhe in pain, not from the fall, but from the idiotic person who started such a dumb line.

3) People who take the elevator one floor. DOWN. I work in a building with crappy elevators that work rarely, and if they do, you can take the stairs faster. But if you are an able-bodied person and you're traveling ONE FLOOR take the goddamn STAIRS, it's GOOD for you. I am not an able-bodied person when it comes to stairs (see patellofemoral pain syndrome), my doctor told me to avoid stairs, but I STILL take the stairs. If I'm going a floor or two.

A few night ago, we went on a double date with an old housemate of ours and his disgustingly gorgeous new girlfriend (they've been together for approximately a minute! but they're moving in together this summer!) at a nice Italian restaurant. We had a monumentally slow waiter, who worked in geological epochs rather than, uhh, minutes, but other than that he was very charming. Especially because he had a very large, very colorful, Spiderman bandage under his left eye that for the love of god, we could not stop staring at it. Gareth was all excited because he thought our waiter was a REAL ITALIAN, until the other couple suggested that his accent sounded French, and I helpfully added, "My god! His band-aid! What happened to his FACE?!" at which point we concluded that culturally, we are idiots. I'm sure the waiter concluded this too after our giggle fits about taste testing the bottle of wine we only ordered because it was cheapest bottle they had. After an amount of time that felt equivalent to the Precambrian era, Spiderman Eye took time off his busy schedule to meander across the completely empty restaurant to take our orders. Andrew requested his entree and the waiter looked very grave and said, "I am out of it."

There was almost a physical lurch in shocked silence where Andrew and I had to scrape our jaws off the table, too stunned to giggle after making eye contact about the Spiderman band-aid on his face wearing waiter who was sharing his feelings with us. Until Andrew's girlfriend helpfully pointed out that the waiter meant they were out of the dish. Idiot giggles commenced, as we were about to helpfully add, "No problem, I'm out of it too, it's been a long week..."

We so got saliva in our ravioli.

The past three months have undoubtedly been the worst months of my life. When I allowed myself out of my studying cave, which was rare, and usually only to walk across campus to the library (Science! it happened before 1990! and is not archived online for lazy bones like myself!) to photocopy some articles, I would stare wistfully at the frillions of undergrads I passed along the way. I remember thinking, that was it, that was the time of my life, and I didn't know it then and these poor suckers have no clue now. I knew I was having a good time, but I didn't REALLY know it, didn't really appreciate it, and didn't anticipate what lay ahead. Sure there were sucky parts, unbelievably horrible parts, but NOTHING compared to this, nothing could have even come close to the feelings of worthlessness, despair, anxiety, exhaustion, frustration, and hopelessness that I experienced while studying for my preliminary exams. The worst part about thinking that I couldn't do it was that I didn't know what else to do, what other options I had, and I didn't feel good enough or worthy enough for anything. As I sank deeper and deeper into my pit of despair, all I could think was that this is what life is going to be like as an independent adult. And I longed for my days at Oberlin, when the only responsibility I had was to due a decent job in my classes. My parents were still supporting me financially, and I know not everyone is as fortunate to be in a similar situation, and for that I am very grateful and feel extremely lucky. I don't think Oberlin would have been the same experience if I had had to worry about money. Now I have to, although I haven't looked at my bank statements in three months, or opened any of my other mail, and have neglected all the relationships in my life that are important to me. Everything was put on the back burner, everything took second place to this massive vacuum of studying that was consuming my life. I thought about what an awful and cruel experience college is, to give you such a wonderful gift of the time of your life, only to shove you out into the world to fend for yourself when you have no idea what you're getting yourself into. I thought I would never feel as relatively carefree as I did at Oberlin ever again.

Yesterday I fucking passed my exam.

I am now a PhD candidate, can leave with a masters if that's the way the wind blows, and am beginning to think that life could once again be as good as it used to be.

It's bad enough that Gareth is buying books called "Start your own business in California." Now he turns on "The Apprentice" when I am meant to be studying for a very important exam. And that show! It's so bad it's good, and you get sucked in, important exam be damned. Then the other night he started talking in his sleep, normally a very adorable habit (except for the time when he mumbled that I make his life hard), and when I crawled into bed after some late studying (much delayed by stupid Apprentices) he called me Donald. Donald is officially fired from our TV.

When I sat in a coffeeshop in Berkeley, 90% of the tables glow with small white apples, and I am weirdly gleeful to situate myself next to another 12 inch PowerBook. When I studied in a coffeeshop in Hayward, a fellow leaned over to me and asked, "What kind of computer is that?"