the kids

we got sturgeon, and my, are they damn cute! and so docile. you can hold em like little puppies.

because there are twenty sturgeon, kitty suggested we name them after the duggars.

chill...just relax

okay, so ashwin says this all the time (particularly to me, surprise surprise) but i'm actually trying to take it seriously right now.

what i really crave is some affirmation of my life. is what i'm doing what i'm supposed to be doing, is it the best possible, blah blah blah? the big speed bump right now (and the only people who actually read this will know all about it) is next summer. i dreamed up this fabulous idea to do an aquatics-themed research project at the field station that i spent a month at a couple summers ago. fabulous, yeah? i mean, really, i almost peed my pants from excitement when i first thought it up.

but i've been getting lots of hesitation and uncertainty from the three professors who i've talked to about it. well, except my actual advisor, but he seems to be cool with anything i want to do. but i'm just soooo uncertain. grr.

anyways, i've been putting off this post because so many damn things have happened since the last one. and i don't have the stamina to write about all of them and manage to make it an interesting read.

the veganomicon is probably the highlight of my life right now. i'm neither a cook nor a vegan, but i aspire to be both. and i wish i had bought this damn vegan-cookbook-bible the first week i was here. caroline and sami (with moral support from caroline's friend jason) helped me make the lasagna this weekend, and it was actually fabulous. yuh. not a single animal product went into it, and responses varied from "it's pretty good" to "it's awesome". except some damn assholes said it wasn't "real" lasagna. whatever.

tonight's experiment was the black bean burgers. they didn't go quite so well, and i refuse to let anyone try one, but i keep telling myself it's all a learning experience and i'm going to fuck up a lot. and that's got to be okay.

as for other recent happenings, i ran a 5K and PR-ed by a minute without even trying too hard (see above for a picture of sami and i looking sexy and sweaty post-race). i saw kylesa and high on fire at the valarium. kylesa is awrsome. i don't particularly like female vocalists, but laura pleasants kicks some major ass. high is fire is like the most simple sort-of-metal ever, but it's enjoyable for what it is.

we also had a halloween party, which will probably turn out to be the social culmination of this program. everyone (legit, everyone) was present, which is a shocker because it's almost impossible to convince some of the other students in the program to stop studying for ten minutes and hang out. ashwin cooked some fabulous indian food, and fried rice. which was impressive in itself because about halfway through his stove broke and we had to haul alllll of the food over to sam and sami's apartment so he could finish it all. it was an incredible feat. the rest of the night was just pure insanity (in a way that makes me hella miss lawrence), but i probably should stop there. i'll just leave you with a picture of two of my favorite people getting down.

some of us have also revisited the taste of thai in knoxville (during which we probably made lori fairly uncomfortable, woops), and a good local vietnamese restaurant called kim son that's almost literally right next to the apartments. unfortunately, there was also literally only one vegetarian option on the menu. but there was one, and that is enough for me.

and that's about it. oh, wait. except for all the shit that's been happening in lab.

my remaining two catfish did end up dying. shit, farm-raised catfish are the worst, and i try not to feel too bad about it. the bluegill are tots doing fine though. logan and i did find some imposters among the bluegill the other day though! somehow, some fathead minnows have gotten into their tank. they were probably with the bluegill when we initially gotten them.

i've run the permanent magnet experiments on sixteen bluegill, which went well, and they really don't seem to give a fuck about the magnetic fields. bluegill love pvc pipe huts though. i've also developed an experimental set-up in which we determine if the sudden introduction of a variable magnetic field will cause some sort of startle response in fish. seven bluegill have gone through this experiment, and all of the kinks have been worked out, so i'm pretty proud of it.

mark was gone last week at a conference in florida, so as always i felt a sigh of relief to have him back. we're currently on the hunt for some sturgeon, which we would have already had by now is some dude at the chattanooga aquarium had done his job. sturgeon are an exciting prospect because they're known to be magnetosensitive, so they might actually have some sort of response to the magnetic fields. it's great to show that fatheads and bluegill don't care about the magnetic fields, but it'd be awful nice to have some more interesting data.

we have about a month left in the program. this means three things to look forward to: doing an abstract, writing a 10-15 page research paper, and creating a poster for a poster session. basically, hardcore wrapping up our experience here and proving that we did something during our 40+ hour work weeks at the lab.

now i should probably study for calculus instead of procrastinating by blogging. maybe.

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.

"what is vee oh el es?"

i have finally had the opportunity to participate in one of the most essential cultural activities of eastern tennessee. yesterday, i went to a UT football game!

that is, university of tennessee-knoxville. mark, my mentor, texted me late on friday night to let me know he had a couple of free tickets. some people were planning on going hiking in the smokies yesterday, and i really wanted to go with, but i decided that the game was more important. and i'm glad i went. it was fun, and i've never fucking seen so many people dressed in orange ever.

UT also has an unnecessary number of mascots. the main (maybe?) one is a dog named smokey, so they had two smokey mascots, but they also brought out a real live dog at the beginning. then there was some guy in a daniel boone outfit. and then, they call themselves the vols, which is short for volunteers. tennessee is called "the volunteer state" because a bunch of tennesseans volunteered their services at the battle of alamo. so bizarre.

the game was also unexpectedly exciting. they were playing against university of alabama-birmingham, a smaller state school with a so-so football team, so UT was supposed to have it in the bag. well, by the end of the third quarter they were tied! they ended up going into double overtime, but UT won it.

friday night, a bunch of people ended up going out to eat at a restaurant in knoxville called hong kong house. some of the chinese students had already been planning on going there because it has legit authentic chinese food. they even had a section on their menu called "american chinese food", haha. the food was quite tasty, but fuck chopsticks dude. afterwards some of us went to a pretty classy bar. apparently, you don't have to be 21 to go to most of the bars in TN, except for the smoking bars. which makes no sense.

new york times, baby!

this is the most exciting lovely thing that's happened to me yet.

we have a sister lab in washington state that's currently working on the same issues as us, the potential effects of hydrokinetic devices. mark has mentioned them several times and he may be a bit envious of their $40,000 (!!!) electromagnet.

so today he sent me an email with this link.

the article is about our sister lab, but if you make it all the way to the 11th paragraph, there we are!

skeeeee, i was so stoked when i read this. because it means that stuff i'm working on, at least stuff that's like what i'm working on, is worthy of an article on the nyt website!

i wrapped up my minnow experiment last thursday. basically, this experiment consisted of putting our newest permanent magnets (which are 2x as thick as the old ones and therefore the magnetic fields are 2x as strong) under three fish tanks, and setting up three more tanks in a similar fashion but sans magnet, and putting a fathead minnow in each. then i recorded the location of the minnows every 5 minutes. we wanted to see if the magnetic field in the experimental tanks would cause the minnows to be distributed differently than the minnows in the control tanks.

since then i've finished collecting all of the location data and have concluded that the minnows don't give a shit about the magnets. just like the snails didn't. which isn't so surprising.

hopefully i'll get to start experiments with an electromagnet soon. we are hypothesizing that the electromagnet, which produces an AC magnetic field, will actually affect the distribution of aquatic organisms. unlike the permanent magnets with their DC field.

and glenn may have found a suitable electromagnet (maybe). some company in chicago sells demagnetizers that produce AC fields and won't overheat when left on for 24 hours a day. they are also of a decent size and not prohibitively expensive. looks promising!

i like how "not prohibitively expensive" is $1,000. wayne and joann, the stockroom workers at LU, would flip shit at how readily the lab spends money. it's crazy.

also, nine of us aquatics people went barge electrofishing at a reference site called brushy fork last friday. it was suh-weet! electrofishing is like a treasure hunt. it was also nice to get outside and wade in a creek after spending all week in the lab, staring at a computer monitor for hours on end.

as for the social side of things, everyone in the ORSS program but one kid went whitewater rafting this weekend. we went on the ocoee river, which is a gorgeous, fairly wild river. most of the rapids we went down were class 2-4. nice nice. it was a pretty busy section of river, though, because several raft companies use that section. also, some guy in another raft, but from our same company, fell out and ended up breaking his leg. i saw the blood, dude. so we sort of had to chill out and wait for him to get to safety.

after rafting, which i think everyone enjoyed, we went and had a late dinner at a nearby restaurant called good fellas. in GEORGIA. yeah. we were in another state. it was a super fun dinner though. i think everyone is really starting to gel. we've started to have legit conversations, not those canned, script-like conversations that we started out with. gossip has also begun to occur, another good sign.

good. great. awesome. pics soon hopefully. my camera cord seems to have hidden itself, boo. i did finally give up on my damn iphone and i went and ordered a new one at at&t today. i can't fucking live without a smartphone these days. i almost couldn't even find the at&t store without mine!