Spent a long time at the lab today; running experiments that turned out more or less okay. We had a meeting with a statistician, not that I really had anything to do with the meeting. But he told us stuff about t-tests and ANOVA (one way and two way!) and relative risks versus odds ratios versus risk difference. Although I took stats last year none of it really made sense. I mean, I got the general gist of what he was talking about but at the same time I was pretty lost and tired. Bonus: the statistician had a British accent. Good call on my part not to wear my I ♥ British Accents tee today. I'm not sure how much he would have appreciated it.

After the meeting we discovered there was a giant box that came for us while we were gone. It was a massive box, 1 metre in all dimensions. We opened it up, and in it were many, many packets of ice, some packing tissue, and two boxes of reagents. They basically packaged 180mL of reagent in 1,000,000mL of box. It was pretty funny.

As I was making the last run of the day, I decided I wanted to go on a solo nature walk. Maybe revisit Chegwin trail behind Les Prince, or maybe see how far Spencer Creek was. Basically avoid going to the gym today, since the weather felt really nice in the morning. Too bad it wasn't as nice once I actually left the lab; it was actually chilly and I was really tired. So I decided against the walk after all. 

I made it home pretty late (compared to usual days, anyway) and ordered take-out from Mr. Gao. Last time I had their food I wasn't overly impressed, and today was the same. I guess I should just take the extra 20 minutes to Dundas and order from Empress Wok instead.

On my way back I spotted a clump of mushrooms on someone's lawn. Since I resolved to actually use Instagram, I took a photo of it, slapped a filter over it and uploaded it to Instagram.

My anthology also came in today - 7 copies of it. Rosie got to read through the whole thing once her class was done, and she discovered a bunch of typos in it (alas, it was inevitable). But she liked it, so that was good. Maybe I'll release a poem or two on occasion, or just post the entire PDF (typos and all) on a separate page. We'll see what happens.

I definitely want to publish another one though, maybe of actual pieces that weren't made up while sleep-deprived and cramming for finals. And less typos. There are also stories that feel unfinished that I'd like to add more to, or just publish an entire anthology of short stories because I'm not much of a poetry person. Although there are several poems I liked in my anthology.

It's Thursday, so as always, I have an early-morning lab meeting tomorrow.

Until the next blog post,

Alice out ~

Shoulder updates & the anthology

My shoulder's been feeling a lot better Friday. I attributed it to not having to do any pipetting, but when I carried about $20 worth of juice home from Fortinos today, I've realized that the pain was completely gone. I highly doubt the anti-inflammatories had much to do with it; it's been almost 3 weeks--half the time it would take to heal broken bone, and plenty of time for strains to die down.

Yet, clumsy me managed to smash my elbow into the headboard as I was trying to prop myself higher in bed while simultaneously balancing a laptop on my knees. It hit my funny bone, sending a numbing jolt down to my ring and pinky fingers, and I realized that the funny bone was actually the ulnar nerve. I might have learned it at some point in anatomy, but I can't recall if I actually have.

Well, now I know.

I hit my funny bone as I was editing my anthology (after 3 hours, it's still tingling). Sometimes I can really surprise myself with how well I can write/BS. One of my favourite poems in the anthology was literally the result of not having enough pages 72 hours before the deadline, and contains some pretty cool metaphors that only sleep-deprived me could come up with.

And then there's the matter of the acknowledgements section. It's about three pages long in the anthology (a small book format), and starts off with this gem:

I mean, I wrote it a month ago and I thought it was pretty brilliant at the time. I still think it is. 

I've just put the order for my anthology in through LuLu; I plan on ordering 7 copies. 7 is a good number. One for Bob, one for myself, and one for whoever else wants one.

 ~~Spread the love~~, right?