hey love, I'm an inconstant satellite

Friday grump:

1. Really, body? Yeah, three hours of sleep is AWESOME. Thanks.

2. These are some offensively preppy undergrads.

3. Eek, barky dogs in a lab setting! They were sweet but startling.

Friday happiness:

1. Hilarious playtime with Lucien cat. Is it possible that no one has ever played bed mice with this deprived creature? He absolutely lost it. (I lost it for values of "it" equal to "control over my laughter" and "small amounts of blood.")

2. Oh man, the building I met a prof in today is the one with the brick-carved megafauna all over the top edge. You remember this, Wim? It's so great! Wish I'd brought my camera charger.

3. That was such the best meeting. Lots to consider, she is actually against my doing the thing I want to do, but she is GREAT.

4. Also I totally nailed the fashion aspect of this meeting -- makeup yes, and my cardigan, t-shirt, faded blue jeans ensemble was almost exactly the downmarket twin of her button-down shirt, t-shirt, black jeans ensemble. Not sure about my sandals, but oh well. :)

5. RAIN STORM under an outdoor umbrella on Harvard campus. With wi-fi.

1. Got a decent result in one experiment! Reassuring, since I've been putting in a ton of time helping out with this paper but hadn't gotten anything publishable until today...

2. The little Caryopteris that has been so reluctant to grow and bloom for the past two years is looking great this season, deep-blue puffs all over.

3. Good stories.

4. Falling asleep watching Kiki's Delivery Service on the couch with cats.

1. Talked to my dad on the phone. He says my great-grandma was a secretary to the poet Robert Service for a while, back when they lived in Vancouver, B.C.

2. Mica Angela Hendricks and her daughter made really fantastic portmanteau art together. http://www.themarysue.com/drawing-with-daughter/

3. Furminator Day has yielded the usual mind-boggling results resembling an entire fourth cat.

4. Accomplished all my chores (including the optional playing of Rock Band).

5. Hachiko appears fungus-free! That was easy.

6. Tomorrow is another weekend day!

1. Actually saw this great comic from a gay guy about sex with trans guys yesterday but forgot to link it: http://comics.billroundy.com/?p=1116

2. Today I won a copy of the Heiresses of Russ 2013 anthology from Tor.com! Free lesbian SF for me!

3. Dinner involved Chinese-style BBQ pork, taiyaki, and mangosteen. (I went to Uwajimaya. Lots more things I want to eat are here now, but only so much room in tummy.)

4. Okay, everyone else, you win. The Summer Prince is really good. I forced my way 2/3 through it before stalling out for weeks and making grumpy comments to everyone who liked it, also known as "everyone". I determined to finish it a couple days ago, and it finally clicked. Then I started over again from the beginning. Shut up.

5. NINJA LOTL rests with impossible lightness on top of buildings!

++ found badass knee socks!!!

- still too hot to wear them

- way too hot for a lot of things in recent days, but not so bad today

+++ fans on axolotl tank surfaces are actually very effective coolers, down to 72 yesterday (from clearly too hot and Hex had fungus on his foot) and 66 this morning

(+ realized I could measure tank temp with temp gun!)

? Zooniverse wants me to stalk nematodes and report their egg-laying now. what.

++ raspberry bearing continues apace

+ made banana bread

+ using vacation time to slowly fix up the house

- still not sure when vacation will end exactly

Turns out it doesn't help that much to barely catch the train if I then miss the bus from downtown to my house by ten minutes AND the second-chance bus from Fremont to my house by ten minutes. Walking home was not what I had in mind. I waved at a cab partway through, but he didn't stop.

Also, I read all four of the books I got at Room today, plus two ebooks. I was down to Crazy Beautiful by the end.

But now I am home with cats.

This morning I went to the Reptile Expo with Wim! Lots of great herps, including beautiful snakes with intriguing recessive genes. I loved that so many of them were sold with zygosity information, too. Aaaaand, ultimate cuteness again resides in my home: I got another baby axolotl. Hachiko! Number word beginning with H (Japanese 8 is hachi), to go with Hex, and the Shibuya Station Hachiko was a dog while axolotls are called "water dogs" sometimes. She has wild-type coloration and also GFP, green fluorescent protein; it's hard to see in her body without applying black or 405-nm light, but her pupils shine green instead of black. Pics soon. She's only about three inches long and has beautiful fluffy gills. Still too small to sex really, so her gender is merely grammatical.

Then we met up with rysmiel (and very briefly elynne), and got lunch at Hana then dessert at Dilettante. A wild m-pig appeared, and we all went to the lab real quick, then the Taiwanese Student Association's yearly Night Market. This year's available grass jelly was neither a hot drink nor a cold drink, but just the jelly itself in a cup. We also had tasty popcorn chicken, beautiful tea eggs, delicious watermelon juice, and some pork-mushroom rice in a leaf that I didn't try, but we were too full from before to do justice to the early short lines. Then there was sitting on the grass talking, which on my part involved being really tired, and I took people home.

Now: Hachi into her tank, cats on me, gin + Limonata, maybe Azumanga Daioh.

Finished my to-do list at work despite difficulty, dire hold music, and disappointment.

Burrito day and curry udon.

Smelled a just-opening lilac in the rain.

Saw Wim's awesome new place.

Wrote back to possible postdoc person and asked people to send recommendation letters to her.

Made Spoonflower fabric for committee gifts, because TWO WEEKS TO DEFENSE DAY.

Axolotls are cute.
( picture )

o Mom started dinner without us on Easter, when I had texted ahead all responsibly to say we were ten minutes late. But that is the worst thing that happened so I guess whatever.

--- Argh I need a title for my thesis asjkgsusfgd.

-- Very moody.

o No email back yet from the latest appealing postdoc position.

+++ Wiscon program assignments! My panel made it to the list! And I hope the other panelists say yes, because AWESOME. Also I get to be on the ponies panel! I may require a plush Rainbow Dash for the occasion. (I'm up against a few things I'd like to attend; on the other hand there appear to be TWO dance parties on different nights, so yay Wiscon.)

- Effing experiments.

++ Set up Hex's new tank on new tank stand and made other significant improvements in living-room organization. Once the tank and stand prove themselves non-leaky I can move things into the shelving and reduce the room's clutter to previous unmanageable levels.

++ Cleaned the fucking WINDOWS like an ADULT. Also washed the curtains that had cat hair on them.

- Anti-abortion posters appearing along my walk to school.

+ They're coming down as fast as they're going up, and I have some ideas for satirical counterattacks.

+ Talked to E! She's a former department employee who's retired except for six hours a month, and I was lucky to run into her.

+ Dinner at the awesome Katsu Burger last night with my sweetie. 12-spice fries are a little too sweet but tasty, teriyaki chicken sandwich good. The deep-fried meats are, appropriately, their strength.

- Uwajimaya continues not to really be a Japanese supermarket, and this upsets me.