Woes

I have woes. Big woes. Science woes. Grad school woes.

In a nutshell: my lab has no money (seriously - we're at "how are we going to buy rats?" at the moment) so my advisor can't pay me and I've run out of training grant eligibility. But I'm not done. My committee hates me and everything I do. They "offered" that I could leave with a master's (ha!). Hell, no - not after 5 years! I'm finishing if I have to beg, borrow, or steal to do it.

So the deal is: I do a different project than the one I was planning that meshes better with my almost-done project. I add more stuff to the almost-done project (so it isn't very almost-done anymore). I write a review (this I'm great with). I do all this by...June.

Funny, at my committee meeting last year they said December of 08 was a great time to graduate. Now they've decided to move it up 6 months and be asses about it. Because they're paying for me? Because I don't want to stay in science? Because they like making me cry?

So I'm basically going to have to go nuts for the next 8 months and hope I make them happy and that they don't randomly decide it would be fun to have me leave sans doctorate anyway. Because "we don't give degrees just because you tried a bunch of experiments, they have to be successful."

I hate them. I hate this school. I hate science. I hate my life. But I'm going to finish, if only out of spite.



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Now playing: The Weakerthans - Plea From A Cat Named Virtue
via FoxyTunes

Word of the Day

Procrasterbation.

Gosh, I really don't feel like working on the talk for my committee meeting. Maybe I'll engage in a little procrasterbation. Surely then I'll be able to concentrate.

Procrasterbation.


Pass it on!

The NY Mets Are My Favorite Squadron

So last week I did the unthinkable and went to a baseball game, something that the JC has been trying to get me to do for months now. We tailgated (it was a friend's birthday), sat in the cheap seats, and saw the Phillies beat the Mets. And a few fights, which just made me miss hockey.


This is a very tiny cameraphone pic of the field:

But I did not go unprepared. No, I brought knitting! The JC was quite upset by this and was rooting for the security guys to tell me I had to leave it outside but ha! They didn't even see it! According to the JC, "if you knit during baseball the terrorists win!" But he's Canadian, so he doesn't get to talk about terrorists. Only the awesomeness of socialized medicine.

Anyway, here are the socks I brought to work on:

I realized that I've never done a gusset heel and I decided it was time to figure it out, so I'm just making really plain socks and I'm going to go for the gusset. I hate picking up stitches, so I suck at it, so I avoid gusset heels, so I skip nifty patterns that have them. But no more! I am going to do this! Oh, and the paperclips tell me which part of which sock it is, which I sometimes find confusing with the magic loop thing. Big paper clip = instep of first sock, little paper clip = instep of second sock. Because I like to think as little as possible.