jinian

Writing about inchoate woe is boring. Even I am bored with thinking about it. So here instead are new and interesting experiences I have had since last Friday.

- Throwing up in a garbage can in the microscope room, which upon sober reflection I decided was probably less awful than throwing up in the multiple-occupancy school bathroom would've been. (Atypical migraine? Stress? Disease? Unknown.)

- Playing fascinating products of the Pulse-Pounding Heart-Stopping Dating Sim Jam, including the one with the traumatized ukulele-playing T-rex and, my biology-laden favorite, Benthic Love.

- Playing Hatoful Boyfriend, which deserves like three listings here because it is at least three WTF experiences.
. First: you are a human going to a high school for pigeons and dating them. This was enough for me to want to play it!
. Second: Actually this game is pretty dark, whoa.
. Third: If you unlock enough endings it turns into an entirely different game: a much darker sci-fi visual novel.
. Fourth: I can't fail to mention the ending where ineffable pudding winds up in every soul in the universe or the one where you fight the magical final boss because the nutty kid from the anime club was right all along. Really, play this thing. It is not Pulse-Pounding or Heart-Stopping but is damned sure Jaw-Dropping.

- Getting a so-far-so-positive reply from a favored postdoc possibility!

Saturday: Kinda tired and grouchy. Foolishly volunteered to bring dessert to parents' place (since we were celebrating all of our birthdays), which led to shopping around for it in multiple places where there were humans.

Delicious roast beef by Mom, though, and the dense chocolate cake was tasty. We met their new dog!

Sunday: Very grouchy; hid away from the world for a while and felt a lot better. Dinner at Pam's Kitchen with Wim's dad and stepmom, resulting in stacks of gifts as usual. Great food as always; the nice owner/waiter who knows us has almost the same birthday as me, and got us free cake and singing, too.

Monday: Moody but okay until almost time to go out. Cried BUCKETS over new MLP episode; if there was any doubt in my mind that it's a show about grad school, that doubt is gone. Then broke a glass as I was getting ready to go out, cried again, scaled down the going out, and repudiated the chocolate cake as the cause of all my woes. (Probably true, this was all migraine prodrome territory, and aspirin and butterbur helped.)

Pub dinner with m-pig was good, even though someone was getting emergency medical care in there at the time. And then we got to see Whisper of the Heart and The Cat Returns, one of my favorites and the quasi-sequel I think I'd only seen once before. We got in on volunteer tickets, which was an awkward moment as I didn't quite know how much to cover for that fact. And I got my picture taken with Totoro!



(That's the amazing umbrella from Kanazawa that comes out in maple leaves when it gets wet. Best umbrella ever, even better than the clear one with goldfish on.)

The paper was submitted in a big hurry while I was out, since our competitor's paper came back from peer review with extreme speed. We are definitely stretching the boundaries of cosubmission here. Some trouble with the supplemental movies, which I solved Tuesday morning my time; they can be resubmitted. Luckily I have many other things to feel freaked out about!

This is all very well organized and deeply weird to me. I got picked up this morning by someone I knew from the lab, and sent off with someone I'd just met to check into the dorm and get things. All of which we did. I filled out many forms and went to the dollar store, where there were no strawberry glasses, and the department store. We visited the lab briefly (I got a hug from the PI's wife, who is very sweetly motherly with everyone) and got lunch at a cafeteria, then I went back to my room and was torpid, reading Emma off and on, unpacking gradually, and eventually napping properly for almost three hours. I felt gross on waking but eventually stirred myself to go to the convenience store for food and mostly juice. Then more sleep.

Still a little headachey this morning, and feeling the distance and newness quite a bit. It's lovely weather, though, and I am overcoming my anxiety even if I'm shaky. I'm getting picked up again this morning and taken to the lab with another new student, a Russian woman, who's also staying in this dorm though I haven't met her yet. I already saw that I have a desk in the lab's office, so hopefully getting settled in there will help me feel better. Walking around outdoors definitely does. I'm farther from the shinkansen station than I usually got on my last trip, and the decline in people speaking English to me is noticeable, but having a sense of the place helps me feel at home. And my katakana's coming back quickly.

Off to Boston, whee! This meant lots and LOTS of work for the last week or three, and I'll have to work on my science stuff some while I'm away since we're trying to submit a paper on September 1, but VACATION YAY.

Also I appear to be able to digest things right now, which is a major win. Still being very very careful.

The girl ahead of me in line was playing Phoenix Wright. I have Professor Layton on my 3DS for later. I felt like we should smash our handheld games together in an advertisement for the crossover.

1. Sinuses.

1a. Sore throat.

1b. Headache ow goddammit.

1c. Fever? Or at least sleepy-exhaustion. Just out of it.

2. Library not open in the morning; I have a thing waiting on the hold shelf, and I always think it opens at ten Wed/Thurs, and it does NOT.

3. Exactly the wrong temperature all day, so I keep taking my pants on and off. (Yes, I'm at work. I am wearing a dress with jeans. I have just proven how that's adaptive, so there.)

4. When reading old things on the web, the links don't work any more.

5. I got a different result for my qPCR compared to the last time, which is what I wanted. It makes no sense either, though, which is suboptimal.

I actually reduced the Petadolex to 100mg about three days ago, because I was having a nasty, broken-bone-feeling headache all the time with bonus nausea. Strangely, I also got very strong hunger responses. Things aren't perfect now, but they got better immediately, and the current state feels like it might settle into being okay.

I started feeling very relaxed and sleepy on Wiscon Monday, which I naturally attributed to exhaustion, but when I continued feeling that way late last week, at times not correlated with alcohol or activity, it seemed like more than just the trip and monthly loginess. I reduced the nortriptyline from 20mg to 10mg about four days ago. I quit feeling sleepy all the time, and this morning I had the annoying withdrawal symptom where I wake up too early, think about stuff, and get a little adrenaline rush so can't go back to sleep. (Possibly exacerbated by the season, but it was quite rainy all day so likely not.)

What I haven't had? Headaches. This despite having my period and eating approximately 92% of a chocolate bar yesterday. Every other time I've reduced the nortriptyline I've had headaches by now, even when they evened out quickly because the dose was high. Not sure yet if my dizziness has decreased, though I hadn't thought about that in days so maybe. Cautious yay!

Last Friday was Bike to Work Day, and I biked to AND from work. It was a beautiful day, and I felt so great from the activity that I kept biking and got groceries. That part may not have been the best idea; carrying a 15-lb bag without a way to tie it to the bike was hard and I broke a fingernail somehow due to keeping the bag on my shoulder while riding awkwardly along. However: I was awesome and virtuous.

I owe a proper med update, since this one is interesting logistically. (No effect so far, unless it's giving me this tension headache.) Working on a paper letter to the neurologist, since all my doctors are stubbornly stuck in the Paper Age.

Went to lunch and plant shopping with Mom on Saturday, which was lovely. We got her clover for her crummy soil, and wallflowers, and Corsican mint, perhaps a few other cute things. I got a redwood-sorrel for under the damn holly tree, and a couple of red flowers (salvia with contrasting dark stems, and a true-red millionbells) for my warm-colors garden, and something else I can't remember right now.

Sunday I cleared a bunch of Himalayan blackberry and planted the previous plant purchases: broccoli, peas, Bibb lettuces. Wim's potatoes from last year are coming up back there, and some have seeded new ones, which I didn't think they were supposed to do -- it's definitely from seed, they're a foot from the existing ones and when I dug some up accidentally they had only teeny tubers so far. Also played with a pretty neighbor cat called Blaise; no idea where it lives, soft medium-length gray tabby coat with that striking light-eyeliner effect, very sweet, probably about a year old. I think the poor thing's declawed in the front, which makes me a little worried about it being out alone, but it was jumping and balancing quite well for now, just didn't shred the weeds we were playing with like I expected.

Work's going okay. A lot of what I'm trying to do right now relies on a multi-day process that requires attention every hour or two and can fail for reasons I don't understand, which is not the best situation. If this round doesn't work out, I should have more info on how to do it right and I have a (labor-intensive) fallback plan. My manuscript for the video journal got great reviews and we're sending our response back today, so look for me as a molecular biology celebrity at some point after the video crew comes. (I reserve the right to wibble about my haircut/outfit before they come, so you may hear about this again.) Lots of editing for PI right now, which is nice.