The Rabbit Hole

I have never bought a lottery ticket in my life. I have gotten (but never purchased myself) scratch-off cards, which are a hoot, especially the crossword-style ones. Someone just came around to collect $1 for people to buy into what promises to be a disgusting payout in some lottery game. I pitched in. Why not? Solidarity. Plus, as I told the woman collecting, I've already spent about $6 on sodas I can't drink for class. When I told that my project was swabbing cans of soda from various vendors to check what microbes are growing on them, she made the same face that, well, just about everyone has since I started telling people about this project.

I also learned there's a west coast-east coast difference in drinking soda, whereby east coasters all use straws and west coasters don't. Anyone want to verify that? I know I drink with straws, but that's for a variety of practical and stupid reasons (I can get at every last drop of soda that way; it doesn't stain my teeth as badly; I don't have to put my mouth on the dirty fucking can; I just like straws, etc. etc.) I didn't used to growing up, from what I can remember. Although, there was that time a family friend's daughter scared the crap out of me and told me to never drink dark sodas or to look in the can before drinking first because one time this friend she knew drank a soda and there was a bee in it and she got stung in the mouth and and and...

I was a very gullible kid. Of course, I believed every word of this. To this day, I don't eat hamburgers at any fast food joints because my brother scared me off of them as a kid by saying that they spat on their hands when they made the patties at McDonald's and that old rats were ground into the meat. I always ate chicken after that. (He tried to scare me off that, too, by saying chicken nuggets were rat heads, but at that point my hunger overtook my caution, and I had to eat something.) I realize now that a) McDonald's doesn't make its own patties and b) there are probably worse things in them than rats, but it's something that's stuck.

Wow, that was a whole post about nothing. Have a good weekend everybody!

So I ordered three things--two things, really, one of which I ordered two of--from one of our vendors, all of which could fit comfortably inside a small index card box. One item had to be frozen, so it arrived on dry ice separately from the other item (of which there was a quantity of two). The non-frozen items arrived in a box with slots that can accommodate twelve of those items, which is pretty wasteful, in terms of space.

The frozen item, however, wins the "You really needed a box that big?" prize as the frozen item is the size of a box of paper clips, and it arrived in a box of dry ice--filled with dry ice, mind--that was 1'x1.5'x2'. You could have comfortably fit a frozen head in the same box. (Not that I ship frozen heads. Much.)

Our charge for this shipping: $23. Their charge for materials: God only knows. Wow.

( Just some stuff I've been doing. )
And that's it, really. No, I take it back, I did do one thing recently: I accomplished my new year's resolution! As of last week, I'd seen 52 movies in the theaters this year, and I still have three weeks of year left to go!

I was looking to see where I declared my resolution on my LJ, and I can't find it. I did, however, find this list of movies I thought I would see this year. AND I SAW MOST OF THEM. In fact, the only one I didn't see--and I am still kicking myself for it after having seen how glorious it was on DVD--was Drive Angry. Depending on reviews for Ghost Rider 2: Ghost Riderer, I will go see that next year. There needs to be a balls-to-the-wall insane Nicholas Cage movie released every year. I will be there on opening night, I tells you.

But yes, I saw every single other movie on that list. I'll do a year-end review, let you know what's worth checking out or not. Not all of those movies were great. Or even all that good. It was still a fun experiment. I'm a little exhausted by it, but at the same time? It's nice to break the cycle of making movie outings "a thing." I do THE MAY MOVIE and that's something of a production. (My own fault, really.) It's nice to turn to a few people and say, "Hey, wanna go see a movie?" and just do it. It's a little bit of recaptured youth. Going to the movies, despite the soaring ticket prices, really isn't all that expensive. It's easy and fun and it's a frequent generator of fantastic outings. (Oh God, Priest. OH GOD THE THREE MUSKETEERS.)

I actually debated not writing anything about the interview for the RVC because I thought that it was too early to count chickens. But I was excited and swept up in a bunch of things. It's still premature, and it's too soon to crow about anything.

...as I found out when I got an e-mail from the University of Georgia telling me they've outright rejected me. My application was "incomplete" as the hours spent under direct supervision of a veterinarian failed to reach their threshold. My fault, I suppose, for not being more careful in checking which hours I met or did not meet as far as they were concerned. Still, I'm disappointed and now a little paranoid about what else I'm going to hear today. I only applied to twelve places, and I've just lost one for good. It really puts a damper on the celebration from earlier today. One down, eleven to go....

In the weirdest laterally-related-to-vet-school news, I was eating lunch by myself in the kitchen when the mouse technician from another lab comes over and sits across from me and asks me when I'm leaving next year. She may have meant "if" I was leaving, since she phrased, "You're leaving next year" almost as a question with intonation. Point was, there was a volunteer in her lab who would be a great replacement and she wanted me to recommend her to my boss if my boss was replacing me. I don't know this person, so I can't really recommend her, but I agreed to take her CV. It was a weird and kind of aggressive exchange, with her really determined to have me get this person's details in front of my boss. Next time the volunteer's here, she wanted to send her over to meet with my boss. ( have a feeling I know how that will go.) I'm right that this is weird, right? In pitching replacements to the person leaving? Who may not be leaving? (Because, let's face it, if I can't get into UGA, I'm probably not going to get great news from a lot of schools in the coming months.)

( In Time, slight spoilers, nothing you wouldn't know from ads. )
In other news, I got up early to go to the dentist. It must be a reaction to going to the doctor, but I booked an appointment at 8 am, fully anticipating that it would still find some way to threaten making me late for work. (Seriously, I've booked doctor's appointments at the same time and not been seen for 45 minutes which, on top of the appointment itself, has made me late for work.) Dentists, apparently, work much more efficiently than doctors. (Are their issues with insurance forcing them to see more patients not as onerous?) I was done with an hour and change left to go before I had to be at work. I hope I make it through the day. I've already proved I'm not paying as much attention as I should with a completely stupid LJ comment I made. I'm probably going to have to ruin the nice hurty-but-clean feeling in my mouth to get some caffeine, aren't I?

Speaking of hurt, that was The. Most. Gory. visit to the dentist EVER. I swear to God, I rinsed and spit and it looked like I had been eating bits of grapefruit or something because there was a ton of fleshy bits in the sink after. I was told, however, that I have been excellently maintaining my teeth (very little plaque, all of it in the front where my overlapping teeth make it hard to get them brushed well enough--must floss more!), so I hope that that crime scene isn't indicative of massive gum failure or something. I did, however, get a warning about issues I may have when I'm 50. I think this is a lopsided priority scale--mouth falling apart in chunks now versus bone receding when I'm another two decades older--but hey, at least I've got that plaque situation licked.

I feel like a cat chasing a laser toy, mentally, today. My head is all over the place. To whit, this list of things that have come up in my head today, either as a result of life, the internet, or just my brain really being that spacey.

-I hate when people say, "I don't want to spoil it for you, so I won't say anything more," and then they go ahead and keep telling you spoilers. This morning, I talked to the new guy at work about his trip to see The Book of Mormon, which I am anticipating seeing at some point, and he just would not stop. Mind you, I didn't even ask about this, he volunteered this information and I, politely, heard him out and suggested he see Avenue Q if The Book of Mormon is his kind of bag. How did I recommend this? By saying it's funny and has good music. End of story. No spoilers. Jesus, was that so hard?

-You know what was a good game? Bioshock. I really loved that game for the gameplay. Yeah, they smoothed things out in the sequel, but honestly, the swapping back and forth between plasmids and weapons became second nature after a while. And there was a photography mini-game! More games need to have photography elements to them. I kind of love that that mechanic is back in the less-than-original "reboot" sequel Dead Rising: Off the Record. But man, Bioshock was goddamned fun, challenging without being impossible, and fucking gorgeous. I should go replay the sequel, get some more achievements or something. I should also buy this shirt, y/y?

-I had a dream where I met Jennifer Hale (if you don't know who she is, shame on you) at a convention (it might have been PAX) and I was so excited to see her and have her sign my female-Shepard-variant cover for the collector's edition of Mass Effect 3. I told her that I've been a fan of hers since Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? when she was the female detective's voice. I don't know why that detail was so specific in my mind, but yeah. I woke up knowing it was a dream because I'm absolutely too squeamish about meeting celebrities to ever want tot talk to them. This is a nice change of pace from dreaming I've been called out as a failure by my boss and wake up in a panic about how to prove otherwise.

-Assassin's Creed movie!?! On the one hand, Ubisoft, with probably 1/100th of the budget of even a mediocre Hollywood movie, made a pretty goddamned awesome prequel short film about the father of the player character in the second and third Assassin's Creed games. It's beautiful, the costumes ARE porn, and I think they must have gotten the voice actors from the game surgically altered to resemble the characters they play because WHOA. On the other hand, if that's what they can do with 30 minutes and a lot of love and those people were involved in the movie, like at all, SIGN ME UP.

In all seriousness, yesterday, one of our post-docs, S, said I was a hipster. He said that I had told him as much. Buh-whaaaaat? Obviously, there is no way I would ever, ever say that, even as a joke. Today, in talking about it again, two other people gave him the O.o face as well, including A, whose response was pretty goddamned vehement. S maintains that he used to hang out with hipsters in Cincinnati, so he knows from hipsters. I came up with many defenses against my supposed inclusion into hipster-dom, but probably the best was this exchange.

S: "So what are hipsters like, if not like you?"
Me: "Let me put it in terms of movies: hipsters like movies in languages nobody speaks. I liked Thor."

This caused another post-doc to splutter loudly at his desk and set off a round of discussion about why or why not Thor was a good movie. At least I'm not defending myself against being a hipster any more!!!

Also, this reminded me that I needed to pre-order Captain America. Which I have. Come to me, sweet, sweet Blu Ray!!

I think I'm getting sick again. This is ridiculous. I've been sick easily twice as much in the last half year as I was for the two years previous. ( Bitching about symptoms. )

In other news, the women at my work are fun, but they're not geeks. Sometimes we talk about movies, and I'm right at home in the conversation. Otherwise, they're all totally into fashion and talk about using the internet to help them plan outfits. As someone whose outfit "planning" consists of picking out the least dirty geeky t-shirt to pair with the same jeans I've been wearing for a week, this interest of theirs is a little baffling. I like Project Runway and I appreciate fashion as an art form much more than I do as something relevant to my life. Perhaps I could learn something from these discussions, but I doubt it. I'm more likely to feeling amazing in my N7 hoodie than in something tangentially inspired by Versace.

Three things make a post: Overstock.com has superb customer service. I called about some face cream I ordered from them arriving with the cap cracked. The product isn't leaking out, but once I remove the seal on the cream, or try to take on/off the top at all, it will quickly cease to keep the cream from drying out. They don't accept returns, so they're sending me another bottle, free of charge, to replace the cracked one, and I don't have to send back the old one. That means that if it doesn't dry out entirely (alas, not a likely situation, though it is a possibility), I'll be getting two for the price of one, no questions asked. I feel like it's worth mentioning when I get good customer service. It seems I'll never run out bad CS stories, but it's worth it to make a note of the good ones.

You know you're working too hard in science when you design a primer and name it "ChR2_WT_F" and it's not until after it arrives and you're making aliquots that you even notice what you did there.

I am not someone who minds going to the dentist. ( Yes, most people think I'm a freak. )

So, yeah, I'm good for six months, my mouth feels well and truly abused, and I'm going to the Met to see the Alexander McQueen exhibit today. I'm a little miffed that people in my lab actually dressed up a bit for this outing. So what if it's not the Superheroes and Fashion exhibit of yesteryear? I believe in being comfortable at a museum, and fancy shoes and skirts do not equal me being comfortable. That, and because I have no sense of how to dress myself, I have nothing that stretches the divide between my every-day clothes (jeans, zip-up hoodie/fleece, a nerdy t-shirt--today it's Dr. Horrible, and two people have already inquired as to who is on my shirt this morning) and fancy stuff. Fuck it. I'll be the schlub at the high-fashion whatsis. At least I'll be comfortable.