an ode to sober mosh pits and eight flamingoes

this weekend was fairly fucking awesome.

friday night i drove to nashville to witness an incredible metal show. i was going primarily to see whitechapel, a sick band. the support bands (i declare war, oceano, and impending doom) were super great too though. basically, four hours of moshing. my faaaaaaave! (yeah, i love to mosh, i get such an adrenaline high from that shit) and god, the vocalist for impending doom looked just like mac from it's always sunny in philadelphia. the resemblance was creepy.

unfortunately, that also meant a three hour drive back to oak ridge. which i began at midnight. with the assistance of a monster and some insanely spicy chex mix and the modest mouse discography, i made it safe and sound. and yes, sorry mum, i went to the show alone. i'm not lucky enough to be surrounded by people who like metal, boo hoo.

laura, yijun, ashwin, caroline, ben and i went camping at frozen head yesterday. a never ending supply of snarky insults from all involved made it one of the best camping trips of my (short) life. along with banana chocolate chip pancakes and three hours of the game contact and ben's siting of a bobcat/bigfoot/mirage. haha. it was all-around awesome. kudos to laura for initiating, encouraging, organizing, and participating in the event.

lab time rehash: this past week was probably the most productive i've had in a month. bizarrely enough, this was actually aided by mark's absence, i think.

two catfish out of the 75 have survived. those remaining two are probably some sort of genetically superior mutant catfish that will grow to be twenty eight feet long, speak six languages fluently, and convert the united states to a dictatorial monarchy. or something along those lines.

with glenn's help, we acquired 50-some bluegill from a state hatchery. and guess what?! not a single one has died! so i started running some new experiments using bluegill on friday. basically, these experiments are to determine if a variable magnetic field will cause any immediate behavioral response in the fish. i really like these new experiments because i'm primarily responsible for their design, unlike the other experiments which were set-up and refined by the summer intern.

another awesome project that glenn and i have started working on will use mayfly larvae as test subjects. this, again, is exciting because i'm going to be doing most of the experimental design. this involves a lot of planning and reading and troubleshooting. i like the challenge of it.

i got 100% on my second calc test.

this week is going to be so much better than last week, i can already tell. thank goodness.

midpoint

we had our midterm presentations last week. basically, everyone talked about their finished and unfinished work up to this point for 10 minutes using powerpoint. pretty standard, good practice, and everyone did a fairly good job. no complete disasters occurred.

my dad and his girlfriend kristina (yes, as awkward as it is we have the same name) came and visited me this weekend. a 24 hour roundtrip drive for 48 hours of being here seems a bit crazy, but my dad really wanted to do it! i'm extremely glad he came, too. i love my dad, he's awesome and we get along really well, and kristina makes things even better.

we went out to eat at hong kong house on friday night. and talked about the future. and beer. saturday we hiked chimney tops trail in the smokies, which was a fabulously awesome time. in order to reach the end of a trail, we had to scramble up a rock face. then on sunday we visited museum of appalachia, a living history sort of museum. i now am the proud owner of a picture of a banjo made out of a bedpan, a jew's harp (which i still don't know how to play) and a book about raising sheep. the moment my dad drove away from the parking at the museum, i burst into tears.

i don't think this is an appropriate place to discuss this, but being here is the single most frustrating social experience of my life. that's it.

the great catfish catastrophe of 2010

to make a longish story short, 37 catfish dead in six days. no joke.

it's not my fault though! they have columnaris disease, which is a common bacterial thing for farm-raised catfish (which they are) and is usually induced by travel stress (which they had). the fuckers just won't stop dying though! we're treating them with an antibiotic, but it isn't really helping. it's so sad...

let's just say i've gotten really familiar with the fish grinder in the back lab recently.

that's really about the extent of excitement for me at the lab right now. i can't run any experiments because the only ones i should be doing use the catfish. so i spend all day reading literature and taking care of the poor fishies. (and surfing the web for various semi-relevant topics, including evolution, GMOs and veganism, shhhhh, don't tell anyone)

the fiscal year at the lab ends on september 30, so the month of september is a bit crazy for most of the scientists. they have lots of papers to write and budgets to calculate and projects to finish/start. last thursday was september 30, everyone was in a procrastination-induced tizzy trying to wrap up everything. therefore, about half of the aquatics people took vacation on friday, and the rest had left by 1 pm. i was literally the only person in the aquatics lab on friday afternoon! it was like a ghost town.

this last weekend was quite enjoyable though! a couple of us went to the (probably) only non-chain restaurant in oak ridge. it's called mediterranean delight, it's more of a carry out place and has semi-authentic middle eastern cuisine. i got a falafel wrap which was quite tasty.

we also took some of sami's water-activities-ginity. laura and sami and i went to mark's house, which mark's been trying to get me to do ever since i got here. we canoed around the lake he lives on for a while, sami's first time ever being in a canoe and first time ever paddling! then, mark and his son joined us and we went on the lake in their boat. sami's first time ever being on a boat! very exciting. laura and mark's son and i went tubing, which i've never done before. it was superbly fun, but my obliques and arms are still sore from hauling my fat ass us onto the tubes.

that was on saturday. then on saturday night we had a little social gathering and most of the interns came. it was a good time all around.

it's all of a sudden gotten a bit cold here though. the temp has dropped like crazy and i might be getting a cold because of it, fuuuuuck. das okay, i think it will pass soon.

i have been learning how to cook (sort of) finally! i've sort of experimented with how to cook different vegetables and use spices and combine foods. lin is my inspiration, she's a bomb ass cook. i've been eating so many fruits and vegetables lately, i think my diet has gotten much better. we also get some of our food locally, at a farmer's market they have in oak ridge every saturday. i feel so much better buying locally.