I love spores.
So I set this experiment 2 weeks or so ago to make spores at different temperatures. One set of plates go at room temp the other set went in to 45C incubator. I go to check on them today and what do I find? I forgot to put the 45 plates in a bag so all of the agar has dried up and it looks like a potato chip. So I scrape some of the culture off the plate and low and behold the spores look just fine. So now instead of throwing it all out and startnig over I'm rehydrating the plates and seeing if I can salvage my experiment. Anything else would have been toast.

Whew.

Got into a lovely nonverbal fight yesterday (nonphysical too for those currious). I'm not dealing well with a severe lack of privacy which seems to be all the rage. As much as I like compagny and being around other people there are times where you just want some alone time, and no not just for that (pervs). Knowing that people actually read this means I'm not going to get into all the specifics, but needless to say it wasn't the first time I serriously concidered seeking a night of refuge by sleeping on the couch. In any event I woke up arround 3:30 this AM and couldn't fall back asleep.

In a seperate but conjoined event I'm having serrious money worries. We live at the edge of our means. Yeah it would help some if I had a real job instead of going to school and making pocket change, but I don't see me dropping out just yet. The problem comes down to credit, society's willing ness to sell you stuff based on credit and our lack of restraint in the purchasing.

We were in serious debt, to the tune of 40Kish. Thanks to a quickly rising home market, I find myself in a place of equitity oppertunity, serriously needed oppertunity as we were bust, not making enough money to pay all the bills. So I took a chance. I don't have much in this world of value, a house, this computer(2 years old so valued somewhere around a nice paper weight), a comic book collection (which isn't as good of an investment as you might think), and thats about it. We rolled all of the outstanding debt into the house, thinking that with some persurverence and restraint we could be totally out of debt in 4-5 years. So we now had bills we could afford to pay and a chance to dig ourselves out. So what do we do?

Well I buy a new car. This was somewhat of a nesicity as mustangs don't drive in the winter, but I could have gone used or gotten something striped down instead of the delux model. So any money I was saving by not having an apartment was gone.
Then we buy a 2500$ entertainment system. Best buy is great, no interest for 24 months. So now one of the big checks we were to receive and use for the loan is eaten up, so we're looking at a 5-6 year plan now.
Now its proposed that instead of paying off this debt with the check we buy something new, which will eat up the check and then some.

So where are we at the end of the day, well I've got an extra 40K on my house and we are crediting ourselves back into debt with no forseeable escape in sight.

Ugh.
This was one heck of a bitch scession and I don't feel any better.
Going to get some coffee to try to stay awake, that is if I can scrounge up a dollar.

Spent the weekend on the edge of sickness. Sat on the couch for the most part and watched smallville DVDs. I'm still not doing super great, but at least I'm up and being somewhat active.

I had two dreams over the weekend that I remember.
In one I was Clark Kent, kicking it in smallville. Yeah big suprise, I fill my waking hours with TV show then dream I'm a part of it. I don't remember much of it but it was pretty cool.

The other dream was just odd. I was on some sort of farm, and one of the cows was pregnant and about to give birth. I was there with BZ, C, and a bunch of other friends. I've seen goats give birth so for some reason I end up being the resident expert and have to calm down the cow, using horse whisperer type skills, no I never saw the film. things you should know, the cow was normal cow length, but it was only about as tall as a goat. So she goes into labor and the kids start comming out and the way you do it is to let them come part way out, then when you can grab their feet, you pull them the rest of the way.
The first one comes out and it loks like a normal cow, but its a still birth. Then as I'm looking at that one, three more come out. These babies have cow bodes, but fuzzy curly sheep like fur and they have heads like persian cats. So they are really weird. After they all come out, the sheep cat things go running off down a hill and we have to chase after them. Thats where I woke up.
Odd huh.

There were a lot of other dreams/nightmares over the weekend. Mostly from waking up burning up and being stuck in that realm just between awake and sleep. Unfortunatly I don't remember any other dreams, but they were pretty unnerving.

Not much else to report, got figures painted, didn't get any school work done. Thats about it.

I had another dream this morning but it wasn't all that interesting, which is probably why I don't remember much of it. I think it had to do with hiring people or being an accountant or something. Like I said boresville.

I finished painting my shadow (possibly fiendish) Chimera. Its not my best work, but looks good and it will be a bitch to fight. Up next is the Cathulu looking horror beast will have to work up something good for him.

Its going to be kind of a slow day. I don't have any lab work to do which means it wil be a read paper work on prelim proposal sort of day. I really hate these days they go on forever.

I have 2 ideas for a "ghost" story for a contest but neithor one is comming together at the mement. This is why I'm not a pro writer. I eithor have an idea and can blast through it, or I have half an idea and it never gets off the ground.

I had lunch with the morman gal yesterday, but didn't ask her anything about mormans. Of all wacky religious theirs is really one that throws me. It seems like something only the truly foolish/guilable or celebrities would be part of. I mean it has it all, all the fun of christianity, throw in some space aliens and magic and wacky geologic history and you've got it. Seriously for people who beleive something which it seems like you would need to be high or drunk to buy, its odd for them to have the ban on any sort of mind altering substances. Well maybe thats why they have it so when someone asks what do you beleive and they say...
"well the 13th tribe of jews crossed over the artic bridge and wrote down further teachings of Jesus on these stone tablets, which our founder, used horse sales man Joseph Smith, was able to read using magic glasses given to him by space aliens."

And you say back, "What are you drunk?"

They can honestly say, "No its forbidden."

Well this morning I had a sort of prequal dream to my last one, no not the giant snakes part.
So in the dream I'm at school or something like that and I leave for my appartment, aparently I still have one, but now its in a house or I'm sharing a house with a bunch of asian students.
My college friend stoped by for a visit of some sort, except she is only wearing boots and is carrying an umbrella.
We lay down on the bed spoon wise and are watching TV or something, but the door is still open. I don't remember what we were chatting about, but there was some light petting sort of stuff taking place and then she says "You know what I'd like?"
I already know the answer but ask anyway, "What?"
"To have sex with you and BZ." So we get up and pack some stuff up to head back to the house and thats where the dream ended.

Very odd over all. There was some earlier part to it all but I can't remember it now.

Feeling somewhat beter or at least more awake today.
Got a bunch of new minis over the weekend for the campaign, but of cource I'm going to have to do a lot of mods to them so that are actually a challenge. Its kind of exciting making up new critters.

Monday, in all its speldor.
This was deffinatly one of those just can't make it out of bed mornings. I almost concidered calling sick. As is I'm only half awake at best. The lab work I'm doing seems more like a dream than anyhting substantial.

The weekend overall was nice. Friday's game went pretty well. Its going to take me a while to get used to these evil characters and even longer to the world I'm creating. You get so used to just playing the same old standard game and making up stuff on the fly all for the same old standard world. Now I have something fairly new and its mostly hashed out, but you never know when things are going to go crazy.

Saw Lord of war, or was it god of war. Eithor way it was a good film but I don't think I could see it again for a while. It was very intense and not at all the fun shoot em up film I thought it was going to be. Comercials are so deceptive. I wish they would put the basied on a true story or based on actual events more prominantly on stuff so I would know not to get it. I'm not a big fan of real events.

Not much else went on over the weekend. For the most part just sat around and watched TV, which should have made it a very relaxing weekend and nice and restfull, but here I am monday having trouble keeping my eyes open. Its just nuts.

Its a been a few days since I've had anything major to post. Most of my time has eithor gone into working up stuff for a new D&D campaign or writing my prelim exam.

This morning I had one heck of a dream. I can only remember a few detains, but I was fighting giant snakes, big poisonous fanged things. And when I say big I mean like scifi channel giant snake big, not real life big. I was running through a house of some sort and they kept poping out of air ducts and dropping down out of the ceiling and stuff. Wish I had more details about it but I was kicking some major ass...well if snakes had real asses, the kind you can kick.
Then after the snakes were finished off the dream shifted to a wild three some with BZ and one of my college gal pals. Let me take a moment to wipe the steam from my glasses it was that sort of realistic and good.

Its nice to be back to having my sort of dreams, kicking scifi style butt and macking babes.
Not too much else new. There was one other dream after that one, but I don't remember anything about it right now.

Last night we finished the Neogenesis Evangellion DVD box set and I am pissed. I think they left out the last eppisode or something maybe two eppisodes. WTF, I buy a box set to get all the DVDs, not most of them All. As it stands the film has a nice happy american ending. Shinji mentally pulles it together and everyone is happy.
On top of that I couldn't even get my VHS player to work so I could watch the last eppisodes.
Grrr.

Wow, it is totally freezing today. The weather in Ct is really wacky. Last week it was in the 40's and 50's. I was outside in a T-shirt and doing just fine. Sunday we have a total temp drop and I don't know exactly how cold it is today, but the wind just seems to bite through me and ice my bones.

To make matters worse my energy seems to be all conjumbled and I feel all weird. Its like I slept in my clothes and I'm covered in a layer of skum or something. Ugh.

Did find out one interesting yet sad peice of info today. One of the guys in the labs I rotated in just decided to throw in the towel. He took his masters and bailed. Its kind of crappy because he is a smart guy and seemed to understand things well. I guess he just couldn't deal with that lab any more. It makes me feel better about not choosing to stay in that lab.

Not too much else going on. No great films seen this weekend.
I ate best buy, they are so far scaming me out of about 100$ in coupons for my best buy card. Aparenly the idiot sales guy didn't scan it when we bought the tv so now I have to call in and bitch. I really hate doing that.

Me and BZ have been talking about getting another dog. We found a good one but she is maryland and would be one heck of a haul to check her out. Not to mention that we don't have a lot of space and the yard still isn't fenced and there are a lot of bills to pay. Oh well, we'll see what happens.

This morning I woke up to one hech of a dream.
I was out with BZ in my former mustang. We had pulled into a gas station which looked like a lot that are close to our house. for some reason she was driving.
She gets out and goes inside to pay for the gas. I stay in the car. My seat is reclined. I look around. There are a number of teenagers around. A group of four or five black and white teens head toward the convience store part of the station. Another group of four pulls up in some sort of Jeep. I'm watching them and a few of them are looking back at me. They get out of the Jeep and head towards the store. As they pass I notice one of the black guys has a silver gun in his hand. He walks up to the first group and shoots one of them, the fat guy in the back.

I lay back down further in my seat hoping they don't come my way, but it dosen't help. There are a few more shots at the first group of kids. Then the guy with the gun walks over to the car and fires three rounds, but he is a lousy shot and they hit the top of the door, the window is rolled down. He then proceeds to walk right up to the car and shoots me point blank. At least he was about to when I woke up.

I realized when he was walking over that I don't have any real protective measures against someone with a gun. The armament in the car is for hand to hand type stuff. If I'm a passanger I can't even start the car and drive away. Its days like this where I do kind of wish I had a gun.

Wow.....
Yesterday my sister is driving to work and she sees flames and smoke comming out from under her hood. She pulls over and gets out of the car and runs. The car catches fire and proceeds to burn to a chared cinder. Apparently the firemen had to smash in the rear winshield to get it all out. Life is just crazy like that. At least she is ok.
She had taken the car in for repairs to the carberator a few days ago and apparently it started backfiring after that. We think that the carberator may have leaked fuel onto the air filter or something which then went up. I'm still a bit taken back by the whole thing. I'm just glad she is ok.

The stupid repair shop better refund her 1800$ that she spent to get it fixed.

I woke up to night mares this morning of a future combination of past and persent and all horror.
Nothing left to say nothing left to do.
I shall forever be haunted by a reflection of you.
The only one who understands is me.
Everyone else just gives sympathy.

You can see why I never gave much though to becomming a poet.
Its another exciting day in the lab. Work is slowly progressing, but a lack of reagents and correctly made buffers and stuff is slowing me down.
Its days like this where I just want to stay home and write, unfortunatly after a few days of doing that I'm out of good ideas and spewing crap. Living is what allows me to write, not the other way around.

It seems like there are a million things to do but I can't push myself in any direction to begin them. I kind of wish I just had about a week of "more of the same" to do so I could settle into routine and get back in the swing of things before trying to push forward.

Doing better today, got some decent rest. That always seems to make a difference. I saw wedding crashers last night. It was very good. Humorous, fun, with a bit of romance thrown in and since it starts that twit from the notebook and I still liked it then it must be good.

Not too much else going on right now. Spare time is being used to work on the new campaign world or to write up part of my prelim proposal.

Exhausted today, think the sickness is finally starting to take hold, but as per norm I'll probably coe back with sme stellar move for tomorow and beat it back, just enough.

The weekend was good but long and short at the same time. Friday's game went well I think. This camapign finally wraped itself up. The big bad guy was over thrown. Freedom of religion was restored to the land. And the players became some of the new gods...except for Kyle who didn't show up and died in the final battle. I had a good time running it and could have easily draged it out for another few months to get the PCs up to a place where they may have been able to take in non-weakened gods, but there has been a lot of excitement for the next campaign, where they will be running evil characters. It should be a lot of fun and I really kind of wish I'd get a chance to pay in it.

for the rest of the weekend BZ's sister and her husband came down. Its always good to see them, they are fun people, but it ended up being another night up past midnight and I was truly beat on suday.

Saw the film "The Cave", which I think I would rename the "booring cave of bad science". Seriously the Scifi channel's film "Caved in" was a better scarrier flick and even made more sence scientifically. Seriously, the monsters in the cave weren't that scarry and probably could have been defeated if the people going in had been better prepared. It was another " thrill ride" of crappy perdictable deaths, people doing stupid things, which got them killed, and we didn't even get to see any boobs. Trash if I ever did see it.

I had a weird dream this morning. I dreamed that two of the stories I had previously submitted to anotherealm.com won awards, but the awards were just sent out late. I went online to see if this was true as I recieved notification by email. There were some sort of award marks on the story names, but the names of the stories didn't corespond with what they should have been, one was "Come" but should have been "committment" and I can't remember what the name of the other was nor what story it was supposed to be.
Then I was on some sort of hillside over looking an ocean and my friend Tempest was there with me, but she was really skinny. She was telling me that the story award thing often happens that way and one of her stories got an award months after it was put up.
Thats where it ended.
The worst part though is I awoke feeling happy and excited and that I had something to tell BZ. It was only after I got out of bed that I realized I didn't actually win anything and had nothing to say :(

Stupid dream world. Why am I so much cooler there.

In continuation of yesterday's post,
I suggest you all do your selves a favor and be thankful for the hoard of simpeltons who have bought up just about every available copy of "the notebook". I was forced to sit through it last night and I mean it was a:
"Put the D&D stuff away, you can't watch this unless you are going to pay attention" sort of a standoff....
So if any readers have any complaints about this week's adventure you can also blame "The Notebook".

This film is the essence of Hollywood drivel.
Typical overly predictable plotline, boy meets girl, boy falls in love, boy loses girl, she finds someone new at the drop of a hat, boy makes giant gesture (rebuilds a house in this case), gesture works, girl comes back and they live happily ever after.
Well there is some nonsence about reading the film as a story and adult onset dimensia as filler to try to give this beat plot a new twist, but it just dosen't work.

To add to this I hated the characters. The girl was an annoying, high pitched shreiking bitch. The boy was a go no where townie, so they could add in the plot device which is so overused it could only be described as a vibrator which only comes on intermittantly. So rich girl poor boy, her parents hate it, but of cource love conquors all.
If this was any more factory built they might as wel have had an "Approved by New Line Cinemas" stamp in the bottom corner of the screen the whole time it was running.

To continue, the acting was fairly sub standard. Ryan Gosling has one expression on his face the entire film and that expression is "Duhhhh". Seriously Pam Anderson has played more convincing parts.

There is only one more thing I can say about this film.
Chicks love it. They eat this shit up like it was chocolate pudding.
The only reason to get this film is that you'll probably get laid afterward, but try to wait at least 15 minutes so she can finish blowing her nose and get the red out of her eyes.

Movies, so many movies. I think I need to stop watching movies for a while.
Last night I had a dream, which was a combination of "Sahara" and "Love Actually". I don't remember most of the details but we were on a battle ship, which was like half cruise ship and there were four love stories going on at the same time. I'm not sure but I think it had a happy ending.....
No I was wrong it ended when a big nasty witch looking like the one in the "Brothers Grim" Flew down at me and tried to eat my feet. That woke me up and made no sence dream wise.

So as you may have guessed I saw a lot of films over the last week, some of which being "Sahara", "Love actually", "The brothers Grimm". To give a detailed review on each one would take a lot of time and space so I'll just give the just of each.

Sahara: fun, action packed, your typical comedic action film. Nothing really orgional, no note worthy lines, worth the 7$ I paid for it used at blockbuster.

Love actually: well written. Excelent proformances by all actors and actresses. The best story lines are those of Hugh Grant and Liam Neeson. Colin Firth's story seemed a bit contrived for me. Alan Rickman really got the screw job in the whole thing. I really liked the Anderw Lincolin story line as well, it was one of those rang true to me sort of things. Also the John and Just Judy story line was cute and orgional in my mind. So over all an excelent romantic conedy. I don't recomend watching it alone.

The Brothers Grimm, interesting plott and a fairly orgional twist on a mix of old fary tales. Both Matt and Heath were excelent in it. Entertaining and even scarry at times and worth a watch.

King Kong, suprise I actually went to the theatre! I had read some bad reviews of this before going so my expectations weren't all that high, but I just kept saying, "Its a Peter Jackson film, it couldn't be bad". Well I was totally right. It does start off a little slow building the love story between the male and female leads and giving background on them and why they are off to skull island. Jack Black does an excelent job through out the film. As soon as they get to the island the film takes off. Nonstop action and suspence and some of the best CGI and direction of CGI I have ever seen. I can't wait for it to come out on DVD so I can slow down some of the scenes and they fly by so quick sometimes its hard to keep up. The story of Kong and the Girl was really written and directed. None of the simple gorilla grabs girl and instantly falls in love of the orgional. This one their friendship I would call it really makes sence to me. I'll say no more as not to ruin it, but this is a theatrical must see, even a 50in TV is too small for this Ape.

So we come to the end of this post with one last story from this week.
A while ago I get this call from my brother. After the usual chit chat I get one of these"Yo, do yourself a favor and go see the Notebook." He actually said that. So after a lot of heaving and hawing I decide...well truthfully BZ wanted to see it and I went along with it. So we go to pick up the film. I remember seeing a stack of them at BJs, but when we arrive they are all gone. Off to bestbuy, apparently they were having a sale and are out. Target, not a single copy. Walmart, none to be found. Out of despiration we go to blockbuster, none in the used but cheap pile, the computer says there is one copy left on the new shelf, but I'll be damned if anyone can find it (figure of speach as anyone who knows me knows I'm probably already damned). Apparently this filmwas the sleaper film of DVD sales and no one has any left.
So the moral of the story is, if you decide to do yourself a favor, do youself a second favor and don't try to aquire "the notebook".

P.S. we finally did find a copy at best buy semi lost in their storage room.

Hey all, Its been a while since I've been able to post so we'll go thoguht the check list:

First off I'm alive or at least undead, stories of my dramatic tradgic demise were greatly exadurated, unlike the stories of me being the king at the four to one f/m orgie. Those were all true and yes 7 times is normal.

Second I had some good hollidays. The winter festival of giving went well. It was great to see the fam. Me and Bz gave some wicked gifts: action figures for one brother, some funny but bad DVDs for the other and a bonzai potato kit, a number of items for my sister, including a Proda bag pruchased off of 5th avenue. C ool stuff went to their sig others as well.

The whole week was full of gaming, board games included Star munchkin, Strange synergy, axis and allies, a massive battle of star wars miniatures, and because I was forced to play, cranium and the worst case senerio game, which was kind of a let down.
We also broke out my brother's game cube and had some wicked runs on the LotR Return of the king game, its a 2 player RPG, like balder's gate dark alliance. The lego star wars game was also very popular and very fun.

New Years was spent gaming as well. Some drinking occured. Me and Bz ended up doing most of the cooking for the night. Hot dish was served as the main meal, appetisors included cheeze and crackers, spiniach and artichoke dip, mini weiners in special sauce (hey heads out of the gutter), and for desert I made bread bowls out of a spiced pear bread and filled them with a sort of cooked apple apple pie like filling and toped them with vanilla ice cream. They came out really well.

Last night we said good by to my brothers and they were off to head back to LA and Atlanta. I miss having them around already.

Today I'm back at school. The break was nice, but its good to be back to work. It is kind of lonly here though as the lab is almost empty.