Update

Some of you may recall a certain sloshball incident... Well it's been just over three years since that fateful day, and here's what my leg looks like now:

Significantly improved, but still significantly scarred.

Wedding #1

So I last left off the 4th of July weekend/wedding/stomach bug saga with the hike up Mt Greylock and heading to Gloucester for Amy's wedding in a puke-free state.  This was wedding #1 for the year, with weddings #2 (my other Amy, in Ohio in October) and #3 (my other college roommate, in St. Louis after Christmas) later this year.

We got to Glouchester around lunch time, and were able to relax for a while before the wedding.  Unfortunately it was about 95 degrees with 95% humidity (and I'm really only just barely exaggerating - it was awful).  The wedding was outdoors in late afternoon.  I literally had sweat running down my legs.  The ceremony was very nice, and it was really neat how they wove their love of travel throughout the ceremony and the reception.

They had the best food I've ever seen at a wedding.  They had a salsa bar and sangria during the cocktail hour.  Dinner was three stations from three countries.  New Zealand (where they met) was a lamb roast with the most delicious mashed potatoes I've ever had.  Italy was classic pasta and antipasto.  Greece was pita and hummus...and stuff I don't remember...because I only ate about 3 bites of dinner before feeling so miserably sick again.

I felt so awful that I had to go back to the room - Boyfriend was so super sweet and came with me, abandoning his dinner.  Neither of us could believe how distended my stomach was.  Boyfriend zipped me into my dress with no difficulty, even with a bit of room to spare.  Plenty of room to be comfortable.  By time we got back to the room I could barely breathe in the dress.  The weird thing was, without actually getting sick sick, about an hour later I felt ok.  Not good, but good enough to go back and get some more for Boyfriend to eat and at least say goodnight to Amy.  While Boyfriend had some dessert (pavlova! so much better than cake!) I gradually felt better and better.  I can't explain it, but I wasn't complaining.  We would up staying for the rest of the reception, though we skipped the after party.

Believe it or not, the stomach woes weren't over.  Boyfriend woke up sick the next morning.  It was pretty crummy timing since we had to drive back to Pennsylvania that day.  He stayed behind while I went to brunch, and fortunately he survived the drive home without being sick (in my still quite new car!).  By Monday he felt tolerable, and back to normal by Tuesday.

It was definitely an up and down holiday weekend, but the wedding was lovely and fun.  Amy's one of my oldest friends, and her mom's been one of my extra moms for ages.  Amy was a year ahead of my in school, and I met her playing softball in the town summer league.  I believe we introduced ourselves when I slid into her at second base. :)  There were a couple of years where we played year round, with indoor practice at a the batting cages during the winter.  After winter practices we always went back to her house for ice cream and Dawson's Creek (yep, judge away).  My senior year when Amy had gone away to school, I still went over to her parents' house on Wednesday nights for ice cream and Dawson's Creek.  I can't tell you how happy it made me to see Amy so happy.  In every photo I took of Amy she had a giant, beaming smile.  I actually I tear up a little every time I think about how completely happy she is and seeing that enormous smile on her face. :)

Don't read this while eating lunch.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we were going camping over the 4th of July holiday...and well...it could have gone better.  We camped at Clarksburg State Park in northwestern Massachusetts, and planned to hike the section of the Appalachian Trail between the summit of Mt Greylock and the Massachusetts-Vermont state line - about 20 miles total hiking.

We drove up the morning of the 4th, uneventful, easy enough drive.  We had planned to set up camp, have some lunch, then go hike from Route 2 in North Adams to the state line, which would be 8 miles round trip with a fair amount of elevation gain, but not a ton.  When we sat down for lunch, I felt kind of off, not bad, just not quite right.  We ate lunch and decided that we were too tired to hike, and really wanted to be able to hike to the summit of Mt. Greylock the next day.  So we went to Mass MOCA, a contemporary art museum in the area instead.  

That's where things deteriorated.  I actually really liked the museum - and I usually just think contemporary art is either weird or not art.  But my stomach was not happy.  I kept feeling more and more bloated, like my stomach was painfully distended.  Eventually it was just too much and I got sick.  Yeah, that kind of sick.  Thankfully I made it to a restroom - fortunately an unoccupied, single toilet restroom.  The short-lived upside was that I instantly felt better, so we continued to go through the museum.  But it only took about 20 minutes to feel miserable and distended again.

We headed back to the campsite and hung out - I managed to nap for a bit.  I could barely choke down a graham cracker or sit next to Boyfriend while he ate dinner.  The smell of his dinner was just awful.  After dinner he suggested that perhaps going for a walk around the campgrounds would make me feel better.  Well we got about three-quarters of the way around the loop before I was spectacularly sick on the side of the road.  Fortunately not in anybody's campsite, and hopefully it was dark enough that people couldn't really see (even though there was no doubt that more than one campsite of people could hear).

I felt tolerable overnight, but was ready to kill the large group of middle school age kids a few campsites over.  They occupied about 4 campsites, and at midnight they were still yelling back and forth between campsites and shrieking over who knows what.  Quiet hours started at 10.  I was pissed.  I got up around midnight to go to the restroom, and Boyfriend thought I was getting up to yell at the hoodlums.  I really, really seriously considered it.  But I didn't really want to go wandering in the dark feeling like crap.  Man it would have been so satisfying to tell those brats off though!

The next morning I actually felt decent, before and after breakfast, so we went hiking.  I'll blog about the hike in another post, but I made it through (very slowly) despite the lack of food the day before.  Anyway, everything was good on the stomach-issues front all day, and the hoodlums were gone the next night, so yay, at least one good day of camping.

Saturday morning we headed east to Amy's wedding, but that's a story for another day.  Unfortunately the stomach woes weren't over...

We interrupt this irregularly scheduled inactivity...

...to point out that the problem with going to a cafe to write by myself arises when I inevitably need to pee.  I can only hold it so long, and I become increasingly unproductive the more I need to pee.  Time to trust a random stranger to keep an eye on my laptop while I run to the restroom.

Ok, time to resume this prolonged period of inactivity until I emerge from the writing cave.  When I do I will have plenty to say.  Even aside from the craziness of finishing a dissertation life's been crazy for the past several weeks.

P.S.

To those of you who read that last post as one giant paragraph, I'm very sorry.  Blogger on my iPad can't seem to handle even basic formatting such as paragraphs.  It's fixed now.

Shark week started this morning.  Shoot me.  Yay for heightened anxiety.  (Not that I don't think almost everything I just rambled about isn't anxiety-worthy on a normal day.)

The guys from the post doc in northern NJ emailed this morning - their higher ups want assurance that I really will be done by August.  The Queen and I gave them this assurance, along with a summary of my dissertation writing progress and what's left to do.  Since my offer there hinges on this project being funded, I was very, very clear with them when we first started talking about this that I needed to continue looking for other options, and that even if they were funded, if I had a better offer (in terms of money or geography), I'd probably take it.  They were totally ok with this, saying I wouldn't be "screwing them over" if I took something else (their words, no joke).  Though this was when we all thought they had 9 months to fill the post doc upon receiving project approval/funding, but apparently that has changed to 6 months.  And it sounds like they should hear back about their proposal "by May", which for all practical purposes is NOW.  Crap.  The people in Lancaster had better get their act together and realize they should want me.

Oh, the swamp cooler has been serviced and is running for the year.  So there's one thing off the to-do list at least.  My mother would have killed me if she'd come out here for commencement and it weren't running yet.  (Not that it's running and perfect operation will prevent her from whining about the heat.)

Time to find some caffeine and some chocolate.

Pay Day!

My stipend for the semester showed up in my account this morning.  When you only get paid 3 times per year (before each semester, and a smaller amount at the beginning of summer), pay day takes on a whole new level of excitement.  Even though I'll stand to make nearly 3 times my current salary when I get a real job after graduation, it's a little weird and sad to think that these are probably the biggest paychecks I'll ever have!

Signs of a Good Boyfriend

I had a bit of a rough time in the Grand Canyon.  I mean it was a good trip, and I'm glad I did it (not to mention proud of surviving it!), but between puking the first night and the worst/most blisters I've ever had in my entire life I wasn't always a happy camper.

The night before we hiked in, we were wandering around the South Rim, and I noticed this rather funny warning image:

Now the joke was totally on me, because after a super long day of hiking, with the last few miles/hours of it in full-blown 100+ degree desert sun, I totally puked not even 5 minutes after we got into camp.  In my defense, I found this image funny for the super realistic, waterfall like stream of puke - not so much the fact that the guy is puking.  The NPS's signage could use some updating in general, but whatever, joke's clearly on me.

Anyways, you may be wondering how all this is relevant to the title of the post, but I'm getting to that.  While I was puking up everything I'd eaten the previous approximately 24 hours, Boyfriend very kindly rubbed my back (my hair was already up), and when I was finished, fetched a bucket of water to wash it all away.  As if that wasn't awesome enough, it didn't even occur to him until after I'd finished barfing that a picture would have been funny.  Sweet, no? :)

The other source of major brownie points earned on this trip relates to those awful blisters.  I swear I got more blisters on this trip than I've had in my entire life put together.  Really.  We hiked out Sunday morning and my toes still hurt too much to wear actual shoes.  Every night/morning and occasionally along the trail required a fairly lengthy process of popping blisters and covering various parts of my feet and toes in moleskin, bandaids, and tape.  Unfortunately the blisters on the backs of my heels were hard to both see and reach at the same time.  The last night Boyfriend was kind enough to perform some minor surgery on the parts of my feet that I couldn't reach:

Cute, no?

Miscellaneous Tuesday Thoughts

It's payday! When you only get paid 3 times/year, payday takes on a whole new level of excitement. Unless I wind up at a job with some really weird pay schedule, these are also by far the biggest paychecks I'll ever get, even though I should make (lots) more money at any future job.

I just double checked cooking plans with E to make sure I don't accidentally trade something we had plans for at our CSA pickup. Except our pickup is Wednesday. Today is Tuesday. I really was earnestly planning to pick up our produce on my way home today. For some reason I've had a hard time keeping days/meetings straight lately. I very nearly blew off lunch with my old roommate today because I can't seem to keep track of things lately. It took multiple tries to schedule lunch in the first place because last week I didn't remember I had group meeting Wednesday at noon. We've had group meeting Wednesday at noon for over a year now. Except this week it's Thursday at noon. Not helping.

My weird leprosy thing is finally clearly up. Thank goodness. I really didn't want to look like a freak for the rest of bathing suit season.

It's Little Sister's birthday! She's a ripe old 17 today. She can (legally) see a rated-R movie all by herself like a big girl. If you know her in real life feel free to wish her a happy birthday in the most obnoxious fashion you can think of. By the way, the only labels with more posts are "gradual school", "random", and "travel."

A while ago I saw something online about this new thing called Pinterest. I didn't think much of it. Then a couple weeks ago a friend mentioned it, and said she really liked it. Eh, still brushed it off. Well, yesterday I got annoyed when epicurious wouldn't let me add a recipe to my recipe box, so I said eff it and started a Pinterest account. It's awesome and I'm already addicted. I can store and organize recipes or anything other website my heart desires all in one place. Definitely beats having recipe boxes on all sorts of different cooking sites and trying to remember which website or blog I got which recipe off of. I'm having fun with it, but it's not very conducive to getting my research update done.

Speaking of which, I HATE preparing and giving research update for group meeting. Loathe it. I generally analyze my data in a fairly timely fashion, but I don't generally made it into pretty figures and slides that are presentation-ready. So giving group meeting generally means a lot of pretty tedious work. And a last minute crunch to get more data.

Another annoying feature of work lately is the recent arrival of a person that we're pretty sure The Queen hired to be our babysitter/her watchdog, since as department chair she has just about zero time to pay any attention to what or how much work we're doing. As she puts it, he's a "real grown-up," as opposed to a post-doc fresh out of a PhD program, and since he got here most of what he's done has been to stick his nose into everybody's business. Last Friday he came flying into my office to less than tactfully inquire about the status of an instrument. The very next morning I got an email from The Queen asking the same. Coincidence? I doubt it. Maybe if my entire grad school experience had had this level of "supervision" I'd be less annoyed, but at this point I have zero interest in somebody looking over my shoulder all the time. The Queen wants me to stay through August because I have outside funding through then. I'm feeling less and less inclined to stick around that long. Working for the department chair is...interesting...to say the least. It probably merits a post of its own at some point.

Syfy has stopped posting episodes of Eureka online after they air! How am I supposed to keep up when we have Monday night softball games?! We have a few weeks off before the fall season starts, but I'm several weeks behind, so I'd just be all out of sorts watching the new episodes for the short time that I can. GAH!

Last bit of rambling for tonight - I need a haircut. But I'm totally undecided what to do. Sometimes I know I want to keep growing it out or that I want to chop a lot off. I have zero thoughts on the matter now. Since I don't have thoughts do I just trim it and see if I have inspiration later? Or chop a bunch (4-8") off? The shortest I've ever had my hair is about chin-length (about where 8" would leave me now), and I know it grows back, so cutting a bunch doesn't particularly freak me out. Opinions?

Being Eaten Alive

Why, oh why can't the uterus monster just play nice??? Am I really asking too much???

XKCD sums it up about right:

I can't make the hover thing work, but it's 413 nanohertz for the record.

Watch what you say.

Yesterday I was standing in the doorway to some friends' office, and a couple other friends were there, too. They all work in another analytical group downstairs from mine. One guy's wife is about 6 months pregnant with their 2nd, while another girl in there is about 3 months pregnant with her 1st. We had a conversation that went something like this:

Father-to-be: Oh Anne, [wife] had a dream last night that she went into labor, and that she called me here and was screaming at me to call you or [other friend] to go get [first child, now not quite 2].

Me: Haha, I was actually wondering what you were going to do with [first child] when [wife] went into labor. If you decide you want me to watch her that's fine with me, feel free to call whenever you need me.

Father-to-be: Ok, we'll have to see when family and stuff are coming to town, but [wife] doesn't really want them there until after, so we'll see.

Here we all have a general conversation about how the idea of having your parents, in-laws, siblings, grandparents, etc IN the delivery room is soooooo weird. And that the people who videotape deliveries are even weirder. Because really, who on earth would EVER want to watch that afterward?!

Father-to-be: I figure this time will be like the last time. She'll face that way [gesturing], I'll sit up by her head and face this way [gesturing], I'll just stroke her head or do whatever she tells me to do, but I'm NOT looking at the business end.

Mother-to-be: No kidding. I already told [husband] that he is NOT allowed to look.

Me: I totally agree. If I ever have kids I don't want my husband to see anything because I'd like him to want to have sex with me again someday.

Other grad student [looking over my shoulder into the hall]: Oh hi, [advisor].

I whipped around totally panicked and turned BRIGHT red, and was VERY thankful to discover that she was just messing with me and that their advisor (and my committee member) was not standing there.

I probably shouldn't make fun of my sister's gullibility anymore.

Can it please just be over already??

I'm so over grad school. Yesterday was the first day I didn't go to work in two weeks, and that's really only because I had previously made plans.

My instrument has been down for a week and a half, I've been trying to get revisions done on my rejected paper to send it elsewhere, everybody and their mother needs stuff read, my advisor threw a group meeting lit presentation at me on a topic I've never even heard of, my collaborator wants to meet when she's in town next week but I haven't had a chance to figure out what to do with the data or what it means, and my advisor wants me to present stuff I haven't really been working on at a conference whose abstract deadline is in 18 days, and add to all that the imminent arrival of my period and I can't manage think about anything except how much I really just want to cry. And how hungry I am. But nothing sounds good.

I wish there weren't a first year sitting in my office so I could just sit at my desk and cry. I certainly don't want to explain to her what's wrong with me.

Things You Didn't Need to Know

It's that time.

I feel completely irrational, crazy, and out of control. I HATE feeling this way. I hate it SO much more than the actual physical pain. I can mostly function through the pain, but this, I feel like a trainwreck.

Dealing with irresponsible, dumb, and/or clueless people (cough - younger labmates - cough) only makes it worse.

I think it's time for a cup of tea.