The past week can pretty much be summarized in 8 Ms: Moving, Mom, Mmm-mm, Marvel, Moleskines, Musical, MCAT, and Mistakes. Most of it happened on Tuesday and Wednesday; I got so caught up in my lab and MCAT work I never got a chance to sit down and write about it -- not that I usually sit down and write about my day in the first place.
So I guess the first big thing is I've decided now is as good a time as any to begin blogging properly (instead of hanging around on Tumblr all the time). It's summer (or so they say; I wouldn't know because I'm still so busy), I've moved to a new house, and I've finally started running experiments in the lab. It's pretty much the freshest start I can hope for right now, and I'm definitely not complaining.
MOVING
MOVING
I moved from my former student house to this student house last week - Mom and Dad came down to help and man, it took pretty much an entire morning and afternoon and a lot of trips back and forth. Thankfully I'm only moving around the corner (literally 160 meters -- I double checked on Google Maps). I've yet to fully move in; everything's more or less in a pile in the sun room at this moment and I just go in and grab what I need.
I managed to injure myself the day before moving - I had barely started packing when I felt a weird pinching sensation on the back of my right shoulder, like how fabric can pinch at you when your skin's too dry or something. I ignored it, but it wouldn't go away, until a couple hours later, when the radiating pain started. Now, I took anatomy last year and we learned all about pinched ulnar nerves, and the profs, textbooks and notes all described it as radiating pain to the ring and little fingers, and I had no idea what it meant. But it's actually really cool, in a weird way, to feel exactly what they all described, and now that I've suffered it myself it is quite literally radiating pain to the ring and little fingers and there's no other way to describe it.
The radiating pain is mostly gone now, but the pinching is still in my shoulder. I'm going to book an appointment for Monday to see if there's anything they can do about it, because at this rate I'll never get unpacked (packing and moving were super painful, and I couldn't let Mom and Dad see because then they'll just worry), pipetting things in the lab will be difficult, and if it persists, I definitely won't be able to fence.
MOM
Mother's Day is Sunday, and I feel extremely guilty for not going home this weekend. I didn't realize it was so soon! Usually it's like ... at least a week later, isn't it? I woke up Tuesday morning feeling pretty bad about skipping Mother's Day, because I already stayed at school for the Easter long weekend (music exam and all), and that was the first time I spent a long weekend away from home.
I swung by the dollar store on my way home from the lab and picked up some crafting supplies (scrapbooking paper, cardstock, stickers - the usual), and when I got home, I could not, for the life of me, find that booklet of scrapbooking paper I had from 2 years ago. It was also from the dollar store, but it also had embossed foil in it and the other one had cute pastel wallpaper-like patterns, which would have been perfect for a Mother's Day card. I pretty much tore the sunroom apart but couldn't find it. Not that it mattered too much in the end, because I liked the card I did end up making:
It was also the first card I made since last April. School was just so hectic this year I had absolutely zero time and motivation to make any cards.
MMM-MM
Shortly after finishing the card I met up with Linda at the Phoenix for some wings and beer and a chat. Tuesdays were $5/6 wings and dayum they make good wings. We also ended up ordering a basket of sweet potato fries that went uneaten because the wings were so filling.
MARVEL
Tuesday nights are also when Agents of SHIELD airs. This week was the penultimate episode to season 1 and OhMyGodWhatAreTheyDoing. Rosie's pretty much moved into my room (she's asleep behind me as I type). It's weird how we're both more productive with each other around than without. I also got these grab pack figurines from the dollar store - I got Hawkeye and Black Widow in my packs, and let's just say that was totally meant to happen. It was fate.
MOLESKINES
Hi, I'm Alice and I hoard journals.
I got 3 more notebooks on Wednesday: one was from the dollar store and the other two were Hobbit Moleskines from Cole's. I used to dislike Moleskines for the same reason I disliked Apple products: they were far more expensive than necessary. But I started using Moleskines in September and now I've been completely converted. Not because of the quality or anything, but the line spacing and the back pocket. They're so useful, and no other journal company makes the lines as narrow as Moleskine, so I guess they win by monopoly or something.
The two new Hobbit journals (one large and one small) join the ranks of my two old Hobbit Moleskines. One was from when An Unexpected Journey came out - it has a maroon cover and foil-embossed partial map from The Hobbit. The other one was from The Desolation of Smaug - black with a red foil Smaug atop the Misty Mountains. I actually now have two copies of that one, because the new is the exact same. I just got it because it was 50% off the original price and limited edition. The small one isn't ruled, but it has a red foil Smaug hoarding gold foil ... gold. Kind of like how I hoard journals and then never write in them, because they're too good to ruin. Perfectionism speaking right here!
I was going to use one of the duplicate journals as the new notebook for HSM 2015, but there's not much to write right now because everything is 100% electronic at this point.
MUSICAL
HSM 2015 has officially kicked off! We held our first Prod Team meeting Wednesday right before our first Writers' Meeting. We're planning on going even bigger with promotion and on/off campus presence this year. I'm in the middle of designing a website featuring EVERYTHING from archives to sponsorship info to a mini-news blog. Hopefully we can get it up and running shorty after my MCAT...
MCAT
... which is in a month. I didn't realize I booked it for a Friday the 13th until someone pointed it out last week. Either way, I'm studying hard, doing practice questions and the like. I'm super nervous about it because I have such a short timeline to work with. Hopefully I can get my act together enough to pull off better marks than the last MCAT... I kind of need to do well this year because I don't want to take gap year. Eugh.
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MISTAKES
I finally started running my own experiments this week, after a year of stalling and lit reviews that went nowhere and a lot of project direction changes. I've yet to get paid because I never received an official "offer of employment" from Mac, which I'm supposed to fill out... but I never received it. So I'm not sure what's going on with that.
Anyway, I watched how to run the experiment on Monday, and the results came out really wonky. We later realized it was because one of the reagents wasn't diluted a second time, meaning the concentration was 10x what it's supposed to be. We fixed it for Tuesday, I ran two trials after the grad student ran the first trial,
and the results came back beautifully. I spent Wednesday pipetting 500mL of reagent into 1.2mL tubes to store (my biceps, ow). Today I ran my own experiment from top to bottom by myself. It was an adventure, and it was HOT because I spent a good 30 minutes in the 37°C room wearing a jean jacket and lab coat. And then the results came out really wonky again, which kind of deflated my confidence after Tuesday's success. I was super uncertain about whether I mucked up mixing some of the reagents (because I totally caught myself doing stuff wrong today, but I went back to fix those), or because my pipetting techniques just sucked, but the results weren't encouraging at all. But when I got home to write the report I realized we made the same mistake as we did Monday. So hopefully tomorrow's runs are a lot more successful!
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It's been an eventful week. I'm looking forward to the weekend, when I can finally unpack all my stuff and put them away properly. Also just resting from the lab, because that stuff is pretty darn tiring. I don't get to sit while running experiments unless I'm waiting for stuff to incubate. And usually then I'm running around prepping the next step. But it's fun, so there's that!
