Down day

I don’t know if I can do this today.  I said yesterday that I was feeling a little down.  Well, that’s gotten significantly worse today.  I feel awful.  I’m sure it’s almost entirely hormonal, but I really can’t seem to convince myself to perk up today.  Usually, I can come up with something to get myself going, and once I do get going, whatever little momentum I build up will usually at least carry me through the day.

But today I just feel paralyzed.  I can’t get myself out of my chair.  I really just want to go home and curl up.  But I’m here.  Sitting at my desk.  And I can’t get out of my chair.  This isn’t my normal I’m lazy and don’t feel like doing anything stuck in my chair.  No, this is different, and I don’t like it.

I did manage to get up and make some calming tea.  I think that has helped a little.  I’m trying to do little things.  I ordered some supplies.  I’m trying to convince myself to take some stuff down to the autoclave, but I haven’t managed to commit myself to that yet.  I haven’t even managed to move stuff around on my desk so that I could make a list on my notepad. 

It’s a down day, and I can’t seem to shake it.  It’s supposed to storm this afternoon.  I wish it would start now.  It just feels like a day that needs rain. 

Okay, I finished my tea and I’m going to get up, wash out my mug, and pop stuff into the autoclave.  Then I’m going to plan my experiments for the afternoon.  Then I’m going to eat lunch.  Then I’m going to do said experiments, like it or not.  I will not get stuck here.  I will not.

New Howard Hughes Investigators

I was reading this article, and the following quote made me feel a little sick:

The 42 men and 14 women named Hughes investigators today

Obviously, there's lots of things that could explain those numbers, but GEEZ!  If that's not indicative of a problem somewhere along the line, then I don't know what is.

I can't decide...

...if I should be peeved or thankful.  My sister just called to tell me that one of my great uncles on my father's side passed away last night.  He had been sick for a while, so it came as no surprise.  However, what I can't decide if I should be peeved or thankful about is the fact that my father didn't call me to tell me.  He called my sister.  He didn't tell her to be sure to tell me...the first thing she asked when she called was whether or not he had called.  I don't want to go to the funeral, but I live close enough that I could have.  I wasn't especially close to my uncle and his family, but they are family, and ones I've seen in recent memory and actually like.  

I mean, I am glad that I didn't have to talk to my father.  He made us make a personal appearance some years ago just to tell us that our grandfather was in prison for shooting wife number 4 or 5.  But he can't even call me to tell me somebody on that side of the family that I actually liked had died?  That's the peeved part. 

I guess I'm just confused.  And I was already feeling a little depressed.  So now I feel a little extra crappy.  Hmph!

The importance of clarity in writing

This is from an AP story I first saw on the abc news website:

Common Virus Blamed for 5 Infant Deaths, CDC Says

Better laboratory tests reveal a common illness can be deadly to newborns

By MIKE STOBBE AP Medical Writer
ATLANTA May 22, 2008 (AP)

A common virus traditionally viewed as mild killed at least five U.S. infants last year, government health officials said Thursday.

The five deaths mark the first time an infection was found to be fatal, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Really?  This is the first time an infection has ever been fatal???  Erm, Mike, you, my friend, need an editor, proofreader, friend, something!  The name of the virus finally shows up at the end of the last sentence in the first full paragraph.  What's up with that?  Why couldn't we have done something like "This marks the first time Coxsackievirus B1 has been found to be fatal."???  Maybe I'm just irritated because the primary piece of information I wanted from the story was what the virus was.  Somehow I don't feel like I'm alone on that though.  Hmph.  

And now back to the lab work previously in progress.

A little whining, a little updating

My arm is officially not going to rot off.  Apparently I have developed a nice little DTH response to that lovely bit of fauna known as poison ivy.  And thanks to a little steroid cream, we're looking better already.  Yea!

For some reason, something possessed me today to genotype a whole horde of mice.  I rant out of tubes at 63.  Who bleeds that many mice at once?  Although, somehow, without even trying, I can still bleed upwards of 40 mice per hour, so that's something to be proud of, I suppose.  (Feel free to imagine me rolling my eyes here!)

Of course, now I'm flowing all those evil samples and teh intertubes are about done entertaining me.  Oh wait, that's my last sample running now.  Yea yea yea!!!

I'm hungry.  I have no good snacks.  That makes me sad.

My sister told my mom the other day that she wants to get her belly button pierced.  (Insert another eyeroll here.)  My sister is no wafer-thin little thing, and I don't think anyone outside of immediate family has so much as seen her belly button since she was a toddler.  But whatever.  I told my mom that she should tell her that when she gets a job and can pay for it herself she can get it.  I'm not going to hold my breath on the job or the piercing.

I was looking at cute little doggies this afternoon!  I want a doggie!  We tried to adopt a dog about a year and a half ago, but that turned into a major disaster.  That's another story for another time, but suffice it to say that the foster mom was just kidding when they told us that she was crate trained and house broken, and didn't bother to mention the SEVERE separation anxiety.  But anyway, when we were at the beach last weekend there were soooo many cute dogs and I want one.  When I get tired of trying to convince myself that I don't want a baby right now, I think about dogs.  

Hmmm...is it bad that I'm just sitting here watching the cytometer clean instead of going back to lab and trying to look busy?  I'm tired of this week.  Oh well...at least now that all my mice are screened I can setup some new stuff.  New stuff that might even work!  (Trying ever so hard to be optimistic...)

Thoughts on education (that deteriorate into a rant)

I’ve been reading and thinking about education a bit today.  My sister (my little baby sister sniffle) is graduating from high school this month!  She goes to a public high school in rural Georgia, which is the same school system I was in from first grade on. 

For those of you that aren’t aware, public education in Georgia is, well, a disaster.  It was okay when I was in school, and obviously varied greatly by school system.  However, things have gone downhill superfast.  Scary super fast. 

A number of issues have plagued public education in Georgia:

• That whole evolution thing (for my most recent amusement, see here)
• Curriculum issues—implementation of a new math system that seems to be dicey at best, instituting new standards at the middle school level before the elementary level, etc.  My favorite, however, is requiring four years of high school science for all students.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for awesome science education.  However, it appears that no one took into consideration the number of new teachers this would require or where the money for those new hires is coming from.  It’s going to be very, very, very ugly in a few years. 
• Leadership issues—in particular, the Clayton County school system is going to lose their accreditation in the fall.  (Check out articles here and here for more information.)  The decision hasn’t been finalized, but I don’t see it turning out any other way.  (The really sad part is, this is an entirely administrative and non-academic issue.  Morons!!!)  This whole thing really makes me sick.

All of this just makes me very sad.  Younger BIL will graduate next year, and we will be out of the Georgia public school system for good, other than my MIL, who teaches 5^th grade.  I really wish there was something I could do to at least help a little, but I’m all out of ideas. 

The other thing I was thinking about today was this article from The Juggle on WSJ.  The question it posed was “College: Time to Accept it’s Not for Everyone?”  I can’t even express how much I agree with that.  Some students are not good at academics.  Period.  Which makes me extra angry that Georgia now only offers a high school college preparatory track.  Some people are not good at “book learnin”.  GET OVER IT!!!  The thing is, those people are typically good at something, sometimes really, really good at something non-academic. 

Why do we punish those students???

Why should we discourage some students from becoming skilled laborers?  Why do we deny them the opportunity to learn a trade in high school?  Why do we expect all students to excel at academics? 

I can think of kids I went to high school with that were damn good mechanics, electricians, etc.  Those people didn’t need to take four years of science.  They don’t need to take Math 4, whatever that entails.  I don’t care if my mechanic knows trig, heck, algebra.  I want him/her to FIX MY CAR!!! 

I believe education is important, and the everyone should have the opportunity to follow whatever path it is that they choose.  I just don’t have a problem with a kid working really hard at learning to be an electrician rather than studying chemistry. 

Book Meme!

As seen at dirt and rocks--a book meme!

The top 100 or so books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. Bold the books you have read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell


Anna Karenina


Crime and Punishment


Catch-22


One Hundred Years of Solitude


Wuthering Heights


The Silmarillion


Life of Pi: a novel


The Name of the Rose


Don Quixote


Moby Dick


Ulysses


Madame Bovary


The Odyssey


Pride and Prejudice


Jane Eyre


The Tale of Two Cities


The Brothers Karamazov


Guns, Germs, and Steel


War and Peace


Vanity Fair


The Time Traveler’s Wife


The Iliad


Emma


The Blind Assassin


The Kite Runner


Mrs. Dalloway


Great Expectations


American Gods

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Atlas Shrugged


Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books


Memoirs of a Geisha


Middlesex


Quicksilver


Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West


The Canterbury Tales


The Historian: a novel
(in progress)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man


Love in the Time of Cholera


Brave New World


The Fountainhead


Foucault’s Pendulum


Middlemarch


Frankenstein


The Count of Monte Cristo


Dracula


A Clockwork Orange


Anansi Boys


The Once and Future King


The Grapes of Wrath


The Poisonwood Bible


1984


Angels & Demons


Inferno


The Satanic Verses


Sense and Sensibility


The Picture of Dorian Gray


Mansfield Park


One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest


To the Lighthouse


Tess of the D’Urbervilles


Oliver Twist


The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time


Dune


The Prince


The Sound and the Fury


Angela’s Ashes: a memoir


The God of Small Things


A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present


Cryptonomicon


Neverwhere


A Confederacy of Dunces


A Short History of Nearly Everything


Dubliners


The Unbearable Lightness of Being


Beloved


Slaughterhouse-five


The Scarlet Letter


Eats, Shoots & Leaves


The Mists of Avalon


Oryx and Crake


Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed


Cloud Atlas


The Confusion


Lolita


Persuasion


Northanger Abbey


The Catcher in the Rye


On the Road


The Hunchback of Notre Dame


Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values


The Aeneid


Watership Down


Gravity’s Rainbow


The Hobbit


In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences


White Teeth


Treasure Island


David Copperfield