And some photos of Vegas malls

Woo!

In Vegas!

It's been a fun few days here! Went shopping with my bro to Zara's and got to see a fashion show.

Happy holidays

I wouldn't think this last year but the best gift my advisor could give me is cutting my research experimentals in half. I only have to do two dosage curves. Which roughly translates into two weeks of experimental data. Woohoo.

So while my undergrads rest up, I'll be writing a few more chapters. My GABA and last chapter, is on it's way.

And here's a photo of some of the holiday merriment.

Hat party?

I usually post research stuff because currently, I'm not that interesting at the moment. What was going to be a quiet saturday night at home became a trip to the Haight for a hat party with some grad students. It was definitely an interesting party, but nothing to exciting.

Afterwards, we went to Cafe Deluxe, paid only half of the cover and listen to some jazz while seeing the bar tender do some fire breathing in a red Russian suit. Wish I had a picture to show but instead here are some of the friends that came with me.

Writing, writing the night away.

The hardest part about writing a thesis is getting started. At least that's what they tell me. For me,iIt's the amount of papers you have to read. So apparently, im switching gears and analyzing my data first. It feels weird because I would rather write. Gah.

Research and some gobble goble

Yesterday was a bust in terms of doing anything remotely productive research wise. Got up at 10 to take my bird out of the brine to prep it for cooking, and it surprisingly it came out well! Definitely know what to do next time I cook it. Lots of cooking, trips to the store, entertaining guests and what have ya. Still for my first bird, I liked how well it came out.

Today, went out shopping a bit, got my bro a nice jacket from Zara, along with fingerless gloves from banana republic. So that was nice, wrote half a page of my introduction for my research so that was great! I'm going to write more tomorrow as I felt really tired in the evening. I'm going to shoot for a page tomorrow. Sunday, I'll come in and score slides and write.

Say anything

One of my favorite movies. I feel really tired, mentally drained. Poor food, little sleep. However I've gotten through 13/17 of my slides! It's funny how cold this room is. As soon as I turn off tr heater, it's gotten uber chilly. So I was excited to see such good baseline firing ( meaning no user errors in the experiment) but I got poor response from the ETH. Emailed the advisor and she said it's on order and I should probably focus on setting up my graphs ready for the inclusion of my data.

I'm feeling kinda good, getting work done. I wish I had an easier project, but I've gained a lot of experience from this lab. It's getting done! Painfully.

At a snail's pace.

Yesterday, I sorted all the literature that u was going to use for my thesis. And I made some progress on my thesis. Granted, all it says is "Dh and LK are important to ecdysis..." but still.

The CNS didn't make it, don't know why. I'm optimistic though. I'll try again tomorrow. I'm on 9 out of 17 slides, I should be nearly finished by tomorrow, and tonight I'm going to outline my intro for the diuretic and leucokinin portion of my thesis. The other half will be my electrophysiology, which I'm hoping I'll be able to add more too. So yay.

Thanks to @molecularbond for totally picking up my spirits.

Research update!

The Cns didn't respond to the ETh, going to have o try again tomorrow. Also, 2/17 slides analyzed so far. No progress on the thesis writing. Will try tomorrow. Maybe I'll do lit searches tonight

Gotta figure out the funk

I don't know why I can't get back into research. I wish i can isolate what my issue is. I can't figure out what drives me any more. I think I'm slightly demoralized by what my advisor said, that I need to get more work done. Sigh. Have to stay home and read papers...

Sooo sad

Download now or watch on posterous

p62.mov (3816 KB)

Awwww

From my highschool!

Exciting

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Download now or watch on posterous

p19.mov (12692 KB)

I love this new interface. Completely, clean and streamlined. The user interface is great and the upload is sooo fast.

Burned out .. to laziness

I don't know what has happened to me. Before I used to study from 9-1, go into lab, run some experiments and then study from 6-11 or 12. For days straight. Now I can barely muster the energy to write a paper on Crohn's disease. And I haven't written jack for my thesis. I do have some ideas how to write my materials and methods section though, as for my data, well, that needs more.

I saw my brother's white coat ceremony, which was pretty amazing. My little brother is going to be a doctor. Which, I know, he'll be great at because he's capable. I'm going to try taking some allergy medicine to see whether it's the my allergies that's not allowing me to get a full night's rest.

And multitudes of halloween parties coming up! woohoo

Poof! He's back!

Where did i disappear to? Mostly the land of "get your data together or die." Wasn't really hard when faced with thesis or death, mentality. Ever since I finally figured out how to use my sleep apnea machine well (apparently, air goes in the nose), I've had more energy and mental fortitude to put up with undergrads and interns.

The days have been the same, getting up early(crack of 9:00) to do research, get home before 12 to review MCAT material (tons of pratice questions and understanding why i didn't get the right answer). I like that by doing practice questions, and getting the answer right, i never question that i never got the material down. There are days where i get every single question right (woo!) and days where I miss everything but one (go law of averages).

But what I'm really impressed, is that after a full day of research (read: trying to not blow stuff up), I can go to the gym, get home around 6, eat and walk my dog ( mmm dog) and then studying till 12 (with a few breaks of youtube distactions and iphone games). I suppose I should try to fit in more studying time, but sometimes that just doesn't happen. Tomorrow though, I'm going to try and quickly get an animal on the rig, run back home to study and then prepare to go out with friends for once! BTW: y'all don't know this but I've been studying everyday non-stop without breaks, so yeah, i deserve this one.

Next episode: Roth's going to do co-keynoting a biology graduate retreat? Whaaaa...?

OMG data collection

Just ran an experiment yesterday, and things are somewhat coming along. It sucks that I come into lab almost everyday to generate data and some grad students in the lab, never show up, and generally are on the "good" list.

No matter. I can't possibly be concern with crazy lab mates and instead, will have to focus on my own research. I have the data, and I can possibly come up with some decent graphs if I keep at it! So there is some hope.

Last night, I decided to get myself a quick treat to fries and a caramel sundae at McDonald's. I feel a bit gross. Ever since I started to cook for myself, I felt better and felt disgusted by processed fast food. Tomorrow, I hope to get some running in (missed monday and tuesday). Tonight (wednesday), is goign to be another long night of setting up lab. Soooo yay? (Not really).

Mixed greens and turkey meatballs

Got home from class and had frozen turkey meatballs, rice and greenbeans and carrots as starting ingredients.



For a quick meal, and mostly from trader joes ( I got the meatballs from costco), this turned out well! Cooked the veggies in olive oil, pepper, italian seasoning.

I'm thinking pasta tomorrow's dinner.


-- Posted from Roth's iPhone

Location:Greenpark Way,South San Francisco,United States

To iPad or not to iPad

Besides the arrival of the iPad, there are some serious tablets out there. Just early today, they announced the pricing and specs of the new HP Slate. Despite the low battery life (5+hours vs. 10 hours for the ipad), you get a full fledged working tablet. And a front-facing camera. And a digitizer and fully capacitive multi-touch screen.

Research-wise, I can see myself bringing in the slate to run the spike-sorting software in the lab while simultaneously jotting in data in my excel spreadsheet. Maybe even do a video journal of how my research is going. Pretty awesome!

On a personal note, sleep has been better for me but it feels like my body hasn't had sleep for years and is trying to catch up. I do feel more awake then usual, but man, I really do enjoy sleeping. It's given me at least the energy to be awake to go running. And finally, my endurance has return so i can faster and longer miles.

Longtime no Bloggie

Wow! It's been a looong time since I've blogged anything! I think it's because I haven't had much to say, research has picked up a lot quicker than I thought and I've been overall busy. However, spring break is here, and it's either blog or write a few pages of my thesis. You can see what I've obviously wanted to do.

So I've had these amazing dates and I want to post some of them on my blog. Generally, I'll give insider dating tips in San Francisco and the Bay Area. Far too often, I've heard that boyfriends haven't had a clue where to take their girlfriends for a date night. Sometimes dinner and movie doesn't cut it. I've got some fairly inexpensive (and fun!) dating tips for guys and gals who haven't had a clue what to do.

I'm really not much of a bar person, so going to a bar and calling it a night, isn't what I call a special and unique evening. I'm also a grad student, so I can't afford to pull off a large production. But hopefully, in the coming days, you'll get to see a few of the awesome dates I've been able to pull of.