Well its friday, glorious friday. This week is coming to a close.
Its game night. No drinking this week so we will probably make some progress in the plot, but you never know.
Saturday is going to be our first day to try out the pocket bikes and I'm rocking ready for that.
No other big plans for the weekend, but a friend of mine has been saying something about doing some sort of writing workshop, which would be a lot of fun and give me the shock to the nads I need to get my thoughts on paper again.

Its WEnsday, BZ has been gone for 2 whole days. I miss her and its been a bit lonly at the house, but I seem to have somehow attracted a stream of visitors. Here I was saying you know it might be nice to have some alone time, but I haven't had a free moment. I was going to use the peace and quiet to write and clean up some, but its just been visitor after visitor. Today is no exception. My sister came over last night to see the mini bike and chat for a while. My pal Camile is comming down tonight. I just want to finish clearing out the spare room, swiffer the halls, and get soem D&D stuff done up for game on friday. but instead it will be spent listening to her troubles, doing something birthday wise for her and who knows what else.
No not that.
The first bike race is schedualed for this saturday, so I am excited about that and still need to get some more gear.
Finances are in the crapper like always. I thought I was doing well, but going to ICON sucked me dry and then some. I still have to call the damn hotel about geting a reduced rate and I think the shitty online place super over charged me for the room.

In lab news all of my mutants should be in next week so I'm really psyched to stat work. I need to run upstairs now to check on some methods. May be back to report more later.

Its monday and I'm already draging. It seems like I'm back on the weekly posting deal, most days are eithor too busy or there is a lack of happening worth reporting. So here is the catch up from last week.

The mini motos came in. So far 3 of the 4 run and we're hoping to start our racing club in a few weeks when the weather gets a bit warmer. The bikes are about as big as I thought they would be. Its going to be darn funny to see us riding these. Mine is red with black lettering, a nice combo.

ICON was last weekend and it was a blast as always. I got a lot of good shots of people in costume and even did a day myself in some midevil garb. See my myspace page for a representation, same outfit but different facial hair and glasses. We got to see Marc Singer talk, the beastmaster and lead on V. He had a god rap about working with the animals and wacky things tigers and lions do on set. Plus some good stories from V. Ron Glass, the preacher on firefly/serenity was also there. His talk wasn't as good and he seemed a bit bitter about the show being cancled and some of the other actors getting new gigs a lot faster than him. The big headliner was KEvin sorbo, herculese and andromida, This pisses me off a lot. He seemed like he was a god speaker but the sound system they had him on was horrid. Everything he said came out like Peanuts speach, Mu wak en na wak wan wa. We left in the middle of his talk. They seemed to be having this sort of problem on and off the whole weekend. It was really rediculas.
Besides big name guests we also saw a bunch of star wars fan film. MAkes me want to do one. Some day.... There was also a talk on how to make mead and its role in history, which was way cool. I think I'm going to get some supplies and give it a go. I also might use some of the info in a viking campaign I'm slowly peicing together.
Sneak attack games had a both, which I worked for part of the con. Selling was slow for friday and saturday, only 1 board and 1 magnet pack were sold. Then sunday came. I was only around until about 2 and at that time we had made 4 sales in just that day. I'll have to check in with my partner to see what the final count was. We probably didn't make the table price back, but we did get a decent amount of product out.

BZ leaves tomorow for 2 weeks so it will be a lonly time at the old New London house. I'l have to find something to occupy my time as to not go crazy. Being alone is never good for me.

As usual the weekend seemed to fly by and here we are at monday again.
Friday night's game was a lot of fun. MY friend Tom brought 4 bottles of irish wiskey in lieu of St. Patty's day. Needless to say I don't know how I kept it together for the whole game. I haven't been that plastered in a long time.
Saturday was a welcome back to college hangover saturday. It began with greasy McSandwiches and donuts and followed through with many hours of sitting on the couch watching TV. Me and BZ finaly got off our buts and went out for a smidge of shopping. She is raming up with al of the "cruise wear" clothes for her trip to puerto rico. I on the other hand get no new duds as I can't take the time to lay around on a boat for a week, *sob*.
Sunday was more of the same. It was a nice and restful weekend except that I ended up staying up too late each night and getting up too early each morning so I'm all tuckered out today.

Saw a few films over the weekend.
The first being "My neighbor Totoro". Its an old anime film but very cute and with a decent story line. Its not as detailed or long as Princess Monoke, or Spirited away, but it was a good watch none the less.
Then it was "Playing God" with David Duchovney. This ended up being better than I thoguth it would. The action was decent and the deaths shocking.
I recomend both.

Finally we come to "History of Violence" with Vigo Morganson. This film had a lot of potential and the comercials played it up a lot. But in terms of delivery it was fairly weak. I thought we would spend a lot more time wondering who this man was and if the crime boss was telling the truth or not. Instead we learn who he is rather quickly. Its proven so even quicker. He goes off and kicks some ass and the film is over. So too short, not enoght suspence, not enough build up (not including the false buildup from the comercials). The acting was decent and the story ok, but the big let down was just too much to take.
Recomended if you're board and have low expectations.

What a week, What a week!
Its game night and I'm glad this week has come to an end. Monday's faux exam was not all that fun, but at least I can start my project now.
Yesterday was long and dull. We had our annual molecular microbio and biochem retreat, which means a day at UCONN stores campus and a lot of presentations given to people in uncomfortable chairs. For a day away fro work its a real hassle. Truthfully I'd rather be here doing lab stuff.

In good news we won auctions for pocket bikes which are on their way. I'm psyched to try this new hobbie out. It seems like it could be a lot of silly fun.

Not too much of excitement has happened this week. Mostly I've been beat physically and enotionally from the exam thingie and all the days that led up to it and followed it. I'm still waiting on mutants to come in from the mail so I can really start to work on my project. I am excited I will get to do NMR for it. Its a giant magnet machine, like an MRI device. To me stuff like that makes science cool. Its all of those mad scientist like machines.

Today began with dreams of wackiness. All very real mind you. So in this dream I'm taking to some girl not exactly sure who she was at first, but apparently we went to high school together. So she starts asking me if I still keep in touch with anyone from school. I start to rattle off the names of people I went to college with: Ian, Camile, Amy J, ect and she nods like she knows who they are. Then I tel her "oh and of cource, Bidney" who is a chick I went to HS with. Then she sort of morphs into Bidney and we start making out. I woke up a bit after that.
Weird but cool dream.

So I had to go down to the deep dark dungon of the library to find some wacky journal from the 60's. Journals from 69 and earlier are in the old bacement. So I search around and find the european journal of biochem and get my article. As I'm putting it back I scan down the shelf and what do I find? Eugenics quartly. For those of you who don't know Eugenics was a field of science, and I use that term loosly, that tried to corelatedifferent human characteristicts and stuff. Here are two examples I picked out thumbing through the 1955 book, Fertility and american women and Intelegance of people in the blue ridge mountains.
Its really interesting what passed for science at one time.

Well its over, I survived. The presentation lasted the full 2 hours I reserved the room for. Trying to get y body to stop shaking now.
So It went alright. I was asked many questions about the different stages of sporulation, which didn't really have much to do with my project. Then a lot of membrane questons which were somewhat, but not really relevant. Finally I learned I don't really know that much about lipids or lipid membranes and that sort of stuff which my project is on, so I have a number of books to take a serious look at.

Heading off to lunch now and going to try to settle down some. I got up at 3am today and was in by 5:30. Pitch black driving through bank after bank of fog is a lot of fun.

17 minutes until the talk. I have deffinatly hit the point of extreme nervousness. I have a decent idea of what I'm going to say, but not sure how I'll be able to answer any questions.
We'll see how it goes.
Ugh.

Ever fail an exam before you actually take it :)
Yeah, this has been one hell of a day.
I get an email form the dept head who asks me to come see him before monday, when I'm supposed to take my exam. So I go up there and we sit down.
He tells me that my paper exam wasn't that good. Mostly due to a lack of preliminary data. This I knew. Since we seemed to have a very tight frame of time of when the exam was supposed to be in and done and I just finished work on the paper we were doing I haven't had time to run any experiments on the new stuff. Not to mention its new work for the lab so we don't just have piles of old data sitting around some where.
Needless to say he continues to tell me that he has spoken with the members of my committee and they have agreed that monday won't be my exam. But get this, I still have to give the presentation and answer questions just like it was the exam. It now just has the big informal stamp placed on it. Apparently my advisory committee should have caught that I'm a moron way before this point in time and put the kabosh on the whole dealie, but they didn't. So now I'm here, giving my presentation or some faxcimility of it on monday, but just getting feed back from it as if I had taken the exam and totally blown it. What a grand life I live.

P.S. Saw "just friends" last night. It was very funny. I highly suggest it to all of you who were nerdy in high school but had a bit of a crush on some friend of your's who was much cooler than you.

Last night I saw the book turened tavesty film, Jarhead. To be fair the movie wasn't that bad, but it sure wasn't the book. The book wowed me. Its filled with tales of marine life and the psychological scarring they seem to leave on a person. It was all about an individual losing himself and becoming a replica in the group. It was about weapons, personalities, and problems in today's military.
The film was almost a typical war film. Parts of the book I really liked were skiped over, or they were changed so as to ruin them. The few really nerve wracking encounters from the book became 1 minuite gloss overs in the film. Bah thats all I really feel about saying on it.
Recomendation, if you're bored and haven't read the book it might not be so bad.

Things are moving along. My project is almost ready to be started. I know I know its just killing you all waiting for me to begin. I just have to order some stuff and its back to the lab. In other news Stomache still isn't doing all it should and there is some problem with the direction of traffic. Thats as descriptive as I feel like being.

Sucralose really pisses me off.
I can deal with all the other fake sugars. Granted they cause cancer and other health problems, but I can deal. Its simple just don't drink products labeled diet and you don't have to worry. Sucralose on the other hand is much sneakier. For a time it was just products labled 50% or 33% less sugar. When I first saw these I was excited. A lot of drinks are really too sweet and need to be cut with water or they taste like syrup so making them with less sugar is a good thing. But no then there was the suprise. We didn't just add less sugar we cramed it full of mutagenic chlorine bonded sugar. What the shit is this? Apparently the american people can't handle a drink if it dosen't have nearly as much sugar or sugar flavor in it as a glass of soda. Just check at your local supermarket, coke 27g, O.J. 23-28g, lemonaide 28g, other juices 25-30g, water based fruit drinks 27g, its just insane.

Ok so here we go again. Now I have to avoid anything labeled 33 or more% less sugar. So I find the V8 splash drinks. I check the back and low and behold only 18g of sugar. This is wonderful. They have a diet version and a 33% less sugar version so I don't bother to read the ingredients. A few weeks later after the moisture sucking flavor has ben annoying me some I do check and what do I find, you guessed it Sucralose. Hiding there among the other shlutz.
So I'm like fuck this I'll just drink HiC. The stuff is sugar and water with a splash of fruit syrup for color. I check the back 20-23g sugar. Not too bad. I check the ingredients, Fucking Sucralose. Apparently the FDA dosen't regulate this stuff for shit and you don't have to put in any sort of warning that chlorinated sugar is in your product.

This is total bull. I think I'm going to have to write a letter.

In good news, I saw Howl's moving castle last night. It was another masterpeice. Myazoki (spelled horribly wrong) is a genuis. His anime is fit for all ages and each one delves into a fantastical world. And unlike most anime they actually have fairly happy endings.
Highly sugested to see.

Yes, its been a week, a full week since I have last posted. In that time I have ceased being a man and have become a cow, a tubby cow. My excercise diet plan went the way of the birds as I spent days on the couch trying to finish my prelim, which was by the way finished and sent in friday. Then to celebrate I had a full weekend of gourging and gaming. Needless to say my pants don't fit today and I'm a lot rounder than I'd like to be.
This week we will be getting back on track. The susy-Q's purchased are going on the shelf. No more donuts. No more fatty burgers. No more jelly beans. Its time to get my rear into gear.