An open letter to Oncogene

You suck.

Seriously, its 2010 and the oldest PDF's on your website are from 1997! WTF Oncogene. Do you think that science prior to 1997 is not important? Do you think that we newbie scientists don't want to read them? I mean seriously, Annual Reviews has older PDF's as does the American Physiology Society and you, part of Nature Group can't get you shit together?
You wasted 1 hour of my time as I had to hunt down a freaking library copy card - most people don't even know what those are. Then I had to walk across campus to the library! You're lucky it was a beautiful sunny day otherwise I would've been really pissed. Yes I know, too you whats 1 hour to walk out and get a paper. Well for me its 1 less hour to spend reading and thinking about science. And since I'm currently banned from actually doing science till this freaking grant is done, it 1 more until I can actually do science. I don't have all day to do this shit people. I have from 9-5. Thats what happens when you have child(ren)!

Seriously, get your shit together.

An open letter to my asshat neighbour

Can I start by saying Fuck off?

I understand that waking up at 8:00 am on a tuesday morning is a bit much. Not all of us work 9-5 so I get that you don't necessarily want to hear a dog howl mournfully for 2 hours before going to work. But I've been living on my little corner lot for > 5 years and have never ever caused any problems. No noise, no loud parties, no massive domestic fights. So leaving an anonymous, bitchy note about the fact that the dog was howling and the need for me to find less disruptive solutions was a bit dickish. Firstly because its making me announce to my readers that we have new dog, in a less then happy look at my dog way, secondly because I haven't ever caused any problems before. Do you think that I didn't give a shit? How about knocking on the door and asking me if I need any help? Maybe you could ask if something is wrong with the dog? Something along the line of we never noticed before that you had dog, did you rescue hir? Is she anxious from being abused? Or how about leaving you fucking name so that I can come and apologize and let you know that we just got her and we're trying everything to ease her anxiety, from leaving the talk radio on, crating her, not crating her. Walking her >1 hour in the morning before we leave for work. Spending every waking minute with her for the first 3 days, even in the freezing fucking rain. Why? because we didn't want her freaking out and waking the neighbours. Mr.SM sat with her all fucking night the other day so she wouldn't cry and disturb the neighbours. Want to know what the next door neighbour said? Don't worry about it, we're so happy that your little guy has a friend. We don't mind, it happens while dogs adjust. Because we've been here >5 years and never cause problems dickwad. So if you want me to take your compliant seriously, have the fucking balls to tell me who you are so we can actually have a conversation that might lead to some solutions. Oh and you're not living in the freaking burbs asshole. This neighbourhood has alot more noise than a freaking dog.

Yours truly,
SM

*** I have never ever complained about dogs being noisy. Thats just fucking stupid in my books. Dogs bark and howl. Whatever. The amount of noise a dog makes is nothing compared to the freaking ambulances, trucks, and other freaking noise out there. You're living in the subarbs

and the dog is amazing. monkey is in love. will post about it when i'm not pissed at the fucking neighbour

First dates

I feel like I'm going on a first date. I'm having dinner with a friend for the first time in > 5 years. We lost touch after she married a complete ass. Yet I've always thought about her and missed her. We've gotten back in touch recently and are having dinner tonight. I'm currently waiting for her to arrive. I hope this friendship can be re-kindled.

But OMG am I ever nervous!


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Cath won't blame will she

If I say that's how you play a hockey game. It's not like LA can score 6 goals in 1 min:))

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Earth Day

Today is Earth day and I'm sorta in a whatever mode about it. Possibly because I feel conflicted about large portions of the environmental movement. I think we need to do alot more as a society to reduce, reuse and recycle. Frankly we buy way too much shit, or we (as my little family unit) until I became broke ass due to the birth of a monkey.

I don't need to have a bunch of knick knacks or the latest trendy clothing and I'm sorry Mr. Carpet Salesmen a $1000.00 area is NOT something I think is disposable if it gets stained. I want to be able to steam clean shit out. Sorry I don't think I need to buy new couches simply b/c my current ones are 10 years old. They should be built sturdy enough so that I can simply re-upholster them. Sorry but I don't need to replace my 5 year old ipod simply because its not as trendy as the newest version. Why does apple need to refresh it every 6 months? (mind you I was so annoyed waiting for the latest macbook update....)

However, I don't agree with the whole organic food movement. Organic is not better because its organic and buying local isn't always the best choice. Large farms are not the enemy simply because they are large. I may be have a bias since Mr.SM's family business deals with agriculture and because I'm training to be a geneticist and I understand the simply because something is genetically modified does not make it inherently bad for you. Its a bunch of grey zones, which is why I can go to my local snobby grocery store and find organic bananas that are cheaper than the non-organic fair trade bananas. You can't just look at a label, you have to actually think about and know who is doing what. There are larger farms that treat their employees well, pair fair wages and try to minimize their environmental impact because its the right thing to do, without a lot of fanfare. They've always done that.

Still because I believe that Global warming is happening and that we should make changes to our lives to minimize our impacts we have in the past year:

started car pooling
started composting - we have 1 small bag of garbage a week. If monkey could learn to poop in the freaking toilet, so we could start night time training, we'd be down even less.

oh and we use natural light whenever etc etc.

Beat down

I've written out and submitted to my PI the first 4 parts of my mock grant (the written portion of my comprehensive). Its have been a hard and brutal process. In good way. If that is possible. I am constantly getting my ass shredded to itty bitty bits by questions, things I need to know, things I need to think about. I just want to do science people! Stop haggling me with all these hypotheses, caveats and plan B's. I'm a genius don't you know! I have amazing hands and my experiments will work, giving clear and interpretable data!

No, i'm not a genius and yes I know these things are good for me. I swear this is the best place to be having this torture inflicted upon me, if there is such a thing as having a "good place to inflict torture". I just need to remember why I came here. Oh Yes that's right, I wanted to learn how to do science properly. WTF was I thinking??!!! This doing science the right way, learning techniques so that I'm not bullshitting and I am respected is HARD people. Its freaking hard. Oh gosh yes its nice at the end of it all to know that I am respected, my work is valued and trusted but damn it my head hurts. My brain, throbs at the end of the work day. I didn't know that my brain could actually throb in pain from thinking too hard.

So I've completed three re-writes of the first 4 parts of the grant. The lit review, the prelim data, the General and specific questions, you know what I thought was the hard part. Hehehe. Uhm, yeah how am I going to answer those questions? What am I going to do? Exactly. Not maybe sorta, possibly, I was thinking. But EXACTLY.

I didn't think my brain could hurt even more.

The Mother of All Scientist Meme

Have some of you noticed that ScienceMama from Mother of All Scientists has not posted in awhile? I remember she had given congrats to Arlenna when she became a new mum and left a comment or two over at Isis's place, but other than that there has been little activity. I'm hoping its because ScienceMama's new little one has arrived and between a newborn, a young active girl and life, she just doesn't have time for us in the blogosphere.

I'm not sure if ScienceMama is reading blogs with no time to comment or is just lost in real life. Either way it would be nice to get an update. I also don't know how noticeable my little heading will be, but if we all post a shout out to her, maybe she'll pop by? I would do what Dr.Becca did with CEiA, but ScienceMama don't have no email posted! Is everyone in?