Science Monkey

I don’t know what I did on Saturday to cause it, but my sleep schedule was completely screwed up yesterday. I played WoW Saturday night (naturally) with a friend until about 10:30, then logged off and watched a little TV. I saw the opening to SNL (a repeat, Dick and Lynn Cheney reading Valentine’s Day cards…quite funny) then went to bed. I woke up for about an hour at 3:30, then slept until 10:30! I never sleep that late. I had fully intended to go to yoga, but clearly it didn’t happen. Emma came home about 11:30 and I took a nap with her until about 2, had lunch, then essentially went back to sleep until almost 6. Consequently I was up until about 1 last night and woke up about 5:30 this morning. We’ll see how today goes, but I’m moderately pleased with myself that I came in to work rather than going back to bed.

Emma and I are going to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary in four days. And by “celebrate” I mean wish each other a happy anniversary and then go about our regular Thursdays. We’ve decided that the new car is our anniversary present to each other. If I were a good husband, I’d probably buy her some flowers and a card though, eh? I should do that. So, Emma, if you’re reading this, forget that last sentence and at least act surprised on Thursday.

My parents are leaving on a week-long road trip this Friday and I’ll be slightly surprised if they both come back. Or at least come back together. I wouldn’t be too surprised if mom flew home early. Heh. They’re driving up to Stoughton for some closure for dad, I think, then coming home via the upper peninsula of Michigan. Yeah, not really on the way, but the weather should be nice and it should be a good drive. They’re also planning on stopping in Lansing, MI, so I guess it’s either north through the UP or south through Chicago and Detroit. UP sounds better to me, too. Dad went to grad school at Michigan State and mom hasn’t been back since he graduated. It sounds like a nice trip to me but doesn’t really sound like their type of vacation. They’re more the two-week-cruise-across-the-Atlantic vacationers. We’ll see.

Time to work. Well, time to do some more work. I’ve spent about an hour writing this, interspersing writing with work, but now it’s time to really get into the grind. Have a good Monday, everybody, and I’ll type to you later. Before I leave you for this morning, here are two screenshots of my main characters. As of this morning, Waradwen is at level 27 (I’ve almost leveled my age) and Warmi is at level 12. She got a pet raptor yesterday which is pretty sweet.

Waradwen:

Warmi (and pet, Slash):

Although my friend Amy betrayed me and didn’t show, I went to yoga last night after work. It just about killed me. Not really, but I was hurting something bad. I got through the first 45 minutes just fine when whammo! I hit a wall and was running on fumes for the remainder of the class (another hour). I would sit down for a minute or so and get my heartrate back under control, but as soon as I stood up I’d get lightheaded, especially if the next pose involved bending over. Not like curtain-over-your-eyes-gonna-pass-out lightheaded, but I was a little dizzy. I’ve learned two things from last night’s experience:
1. Don’t wait another three-plus months for the next class.
2. Perhaps hot yoga at night isn’t the best thing for me, especially after riding my bike home from work on a hot afternoon.

When I weighed myself this morning I was down about five pounds from when I weighed myself yesterday morning. I’m thinking that it’s not *all* actual weight loss. At least half a pound has to be water weight, right? Heh…maybe a little more than that.

I’m planning to go tomorrow (Sunday) morning to the 10 o’clock class. Despite all my griping and anecdotes about nearly dying, it’s really a lot of fun and you’ll feel pretty great afterwards. I’ll even pop for your first class if you want to come join me. Don’t worry about looking foolish…there’s no way you’ll be worse at it than I am.

Happy Saturday. I’m off to do some errands and take a nap, then I fear I’ll be on WoW much of the night. Yay!

It’s so odd, having a Wednesday off. I mean, I worked a little, but certainly not as much as a regular Wednesday. Consequently, today feels like another Monday. I crashed the Cain Lab’s birthday party for Mollie on Tuesday (happy birthday! yay cake!) and Dr. Cain pointed out that this week was like having two Mondays, a Tuesday and a Friday. That’s probably about right.

Played a little more WoW last night, naturally, and continue to be amazed by this game. There were fireworks in the sky all night last night as well as “festival celebrant” NPCs in all of the major cities who would watch the fireworks and ooo and ahh. There were giant casks of festival ale which you could drink (and it would make your character lightheaded) and toasting goblets (”to your health!”) which would increase your stamina for a half hour or so. Lots of fun.

We spent the late afternoon and early evening at Emma’s folks’ house for their Fourth at Four party. I made deviled eggs for the first time in my life and they seemed to go over well. Emma’s tip of adding a little relish really helped, I think. Plus, we got rid of a dozen eggs from the fridge. That’s like almost a week’s worth!

Work is decent right now. I have nothing much exciting to say about it. Nothing terribly bad, either, which is a nice change. I’ve got a ton and a half of stuff to do but have a plan I’m reasonably happy with and think is feasible. Perhaps not all of it before March, but a significant portion of it can be done by then. I need to get my mouse brain treatments working correctly, but once I do I’m going to be able to fly, I think. The last two have looked pretty good, so I’m feeling encouraged. It’s early in the morning, though, and there’s still plenty of time to have my hopes dashed before I head home this evening. Heh.

My timer’s about to go off, so I should get back to work. Happy second Monday.

PS: If anybody wants to get together this weekend, give me a call or send me an email. Emma’s working essentially all weekend and I don’t necessarily want to spend the entire time playing WoW. I mean, I will, and I’ll enjoy it, but that might not be the healthiest thing for me, eh?

Played a little WoW last night but didn’t actually do any questing…instead, I spent like an hour chatting with a friend who normally plays on another server, but rolled an alt on “my” server because she’s awesome like that. Stupid fun, man. The game just continues to amaze me. We spent about an hour or so playing with the emote commands, basically laughing my ass off the whole time. (Btw, Julie, you’re in trouble now that I’ve found that full list. KEE.)

This game is so totally designed and programmed by boys, though. Not that I’m complaining, of course, but have you seen the blood elves? Wowzer. I wish I had taken a screenshot or two. Heh. And some of the commands? Good grief. It seems like half of them are gameplay-related and the other half are sexual. Again, not that I’m complaining. /jk

Work went okay yesterday. Actually, my meeting with Tom went much better than I feared. It was almost like a good, mentoring moment. Crazy, right? Where have these been the rest of the last four years? However, credit where credit’s due, it was actually helpful and I learned something. In short, the problem with our manuscript was more political than experimental, so we discussed how to address that. The short answer is that we avoid it. That is, we rewrite the paper to focus more on the solid data that we have and move the more speculative stuff into the discussion, where we clearly label it as speculation and hypothesizing. And aim for a slightly lower (but still very solid) journal.

Back to work. Type to you later; tonight, perhaps.

PS: I did okay following my deals with myself last night. Emma and I played frisbee for about half an hour before dinner and she agreed that that could count as my exercise. I did not, however, do much of anything towards cleaning the office, so I owe myself about 15 minutes of cleaning before I start playing tonight.

Well, perhaps not my soul, but certainly the vast majority of my free time the past few weeks. Damn you, World of Warcraft, how I love you so. I’m hoping that my insatiable (note: I mistyped that as unstable twice which amuses me) desire to play will calm down over the next few weeks, ’cause it’s a little ridiculous. However, I’m still having a hell of a lot of fun playing, with the exception of yesterday morning. I was in a pick-up group playing healer for a run through Blackfathom Deeps. Frustrating as hell. BFD is the last of the lower-level instances from what I can tell, and rather than pull one mob at a time, these guys would aggro an entire room and whine for healing. We’d survive for a while, then I’d get attacked (as I was healing so often) and call for help which would arrive only about half of the time. I’d then have to spend my manna healing myself…they’d die, I’d die (or vice versa) and we’d get rezed by the one guy who’d survive. Frustrating. I managed to make enough money off of the little loot I got to pay for my repairs, but that was about it. Nothing fancy. Saturday I ran through Shadowfang Keep with a guildie and his friend and it went much better. They did a much cleaner job of pulling one (or at most two) mobs at a time, so I had an easier time keeping them alive, and we all had a really fun morning. No true phat lootz, I don’t think, but I got some decent junk. And had a fun time, which is why I’m playing.

Sorry about that. I got a little tangential there. For those of you who skimmed that last paragraph, let me summarize: “Nerd nerd nerd, nerdnerd, nerd nerd nerdnerd.” Heh.

To help tame the WoW beast a little, I’ve decided to make two deals with myself (and we’ll see how long I stick to them) and how much time I spend in game. First, for every half hour I play I’m going to spend five minutes cleaning my office until it’s done. Second, for every evening I play I’m going to spend a minimum of 20 minutes on the exercise bike. Those shouldn’t be too tough to follow and I’ll end up much happier at the end.

So what else has been going on? Work, I suppose. Work has been hella-frustrating, which is part of why I’ve just been playing WoW when I get home at night. We had a manuscript rejected last week which was annoying. It wasn’t my manuscript but the job of getting it resubmitted and published is going to fall on me. Why? Because I’m the only person left in the lab listed on the paper. Well, other than Tom, and I’m having a hard time seeing him do benchwork anytime soon.

I’m not really okay with this. Our deal was that I would repeat some of the data analysis, as we had some beautiful footprints but had only done the footprinting one time. They were clear and reproducible within that one time, but we still wanted confirmation, just to be sure. For doing this (and it ended up being a couple months’ of work) I’d learn how to do footprinting and would get my name on the manuscript, somewhere in the middle. Done and done. However…Now that the manuscript is back, Tom wants me to plan what to do next to address the reviewers’ concerns and I don’t see what I’m going to get out of it. I’ll work on the plan as an intellectual exercise and as practice for my future manuscripts, that makes some sense, but as for doing the experiments we’ll need to do? Not so much. I’m not going to become first author on this paper, and who cares if my name is third instead of fifth? You know what that’s not going to do? Get me graduated. We’ll see.

Okay. Time to stop whining for a bit and go do some work. Type to you guys later. Sooner than a week, I promise.

Um, hi guys. I know it’s been a while since I’ve written. I found this little box that seems to have ensnared my soul. Maybe you’ve heard of it? World of Warcraft?

I’ve resisted WoW’s siren call for years now, but finally gave in this past week. There was just a perfect storm of events conspiring against me…what was a poor boy to do? First, Emma’s been on night float since last Sunday (not this immediate past Sunday, the one before), so I’ve had the house to myself at nights. Second, my best friend was in town from Texas and he plays a bit and has been encouraging me to sign up for a while now. Third — and this is the one that really killed me — there’s a ten-day free trial. Game, set, and match, Blizzard. How can you turn down a free trial like that? And once you start playing, how can you turn it off? Sigh.

It has been everything I hoped (and feared). I’m having hella-fun playing, and I haven’t even gotten all that far in yet. Yet. I’m playing a Tauren druid (moo!) and am having a ball running around killing stuff, exploring, and completing quests. I’m like a lab rat, hitting that button for the random pellet of food. Gimmeh! I’ve finished all of the Mulgore quests except for Arra’chea and I’m hoping to find her tonight. I’ll post a screenshot of my character (Waradwen on Arathor if you want to come find me) later tonight or tomorrow…the US servers are down during the day today for a new patch, I think, so I’ll try to grab one after dinner.

In good news, I haven’t missed any work due to WoW (”Yet,” says Emma), so I’ve got it under control. Famous last words, eh? Worst case I’ll set up the parental controls and have Emma change the password.

I’d better go get some work done. It’s almost 10, after all, and I probably should get a little work done this morning, while I have the lab to myself. Technically I’m waiting on a water bath to warm up, but I’m sure there’s other stuff I could find to do if I looked. Happy Tuesday. Type to you soon!