...what?

from the heart-warming children's book 'If You Give an Octopus a Rubik's Cube'.

just kidding. it's science.

howdy

feels strange to be back. but that could be due to dehydration from consuming massive quantities of coffee, magner's, and sam octoberfest. oh and a bumpy flight from logan. to call my traveling companion a nervous flyer would be like saying helen keller had a slight vision problem; somehow that gets transferred to me (i'm young and impressionable), and it gets tiring to keep a plane in the air through sheer force of will.

anyway, a proper update is to come once i get pictures downloaded.

me neither

"The opposite of a mosquito is spooning: mosquitoes are awful, whereas spooning is super. The one thing I haven’t really figured out is where the person in the back is supposed to put that bottom arm."

via Abstract City

if anyone ever comes up with an answer to this conundrum, i want to know.

that is the greatest blog ever, by the by.

completely off-topic: i may have found a way to catch at least part of the sox game on thursday at fenway. fingers are crossed. toes are crossed that the rangers keep their current distance for the wild card.

library love

book that i highly recommend without even reading all of it yet: Outliers - The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. i got almost halfway through just sitting at kraftsmen bakery yesterday after picking it up at the library; it's quite thought-provoking.

[sidenote: be wary of the pigeons outside kraftsmen. they've developed a taste for blood. i watched one tear the hell out of a piece of ham the other day.]

and i'm very impressed with the 'young adult' cd selection at the stella link library branch. besides providing the youth of houston with flo-rida, they had deerhoof, antony & the johnsons, fischerspooner, and hot chip. all of which are now on rotation in my car. free music!

accepted!

i'm officially author of the riveting 'Smad1 Smad5 ovarian conditional knockout mice develop a disease profile similar to the juvenile form of human granulosa cell tumors'. thus proving a PhD is a waste of time. (for me, anyway.) and i only really care because it should help my resume for the job i want.

it's funny to me that i'm now searchable on pubmed, something that was the bane of my existence during those long nights in seeley mudd, looking up papers for neurobio.

shipping up

i am incredibly spoiled. next week i'll be back in the bay state for the second time this year; unheard of. but this will be special because a. i'll be playing tour guide again and b. i will see miss andrea, light of my life, for the first time in TWO YEARS.

i can already tell that i'm reaching a level of excitement that borders on annoying for my traveling companion. "we'll get maple syrup! have you had maple syrup? the real stuff? and lobster! and irish pubs! how about a duck tour? maybe tunnel bar? mmm peet's coffee!" i'm trying to rein it in.

bugs

i know i said there would be a moratorium on cockroach blog entries. but i have to break it. a line has been crossed.

this summer hasn't been so bad. roaches and i have been coexisting peacefully for months now, and by 'coexisting' i mean 'smashing them with 10 pounds of the may issue of Vogue whenever one appears'. (sorry for the noise, downstairs neighbor.) no freaking out, no tears; i had resigned myself to the situation. but that was until last night, when i saw that they've been IN MY BED.

how do i know they're hanging out there, presumably having pillow fights and snuggling up in my comforter? because there is poop left behind. POOP.

how do i know what it looks like? oh i wish i didn't. no one should know. and bugs should never be so large that they leave FECES THAT ARE RECOGNIZABLE TO THE UNTRAINED EYE. but there it was, on the sheet. and then i checked the rest of the bed. ah yes; that's not a mint on my pillow. excellent.

so if in the near future you see me with bloodshot eyes from lack of sleep while scratching myself to death, i'm not a crackhead. it's the fucking roaches.