When the President Talks to God

(In my ever failing effort to keep this blog 'on topic' and apolitical, these are lyrics from a song performed by Conor Oberst (aka "Bright Eyes"). Love 'em or hate 'em, it's your choice. You can see a video of him performing the song on The Tonight Show here.)

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"When the President Talks to God"

When the president talks to God
Are the conversations brief or long?
Does he ask to rape our women's rights
And send poor farm kids off to die?
Does God suggest an oil hike
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
Are the consonants all hard or soft?
Is he resolute all down the line?
Is every issue black or white?
Does what God says ever change his mind
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
Does he fake that drawl or merely nod?
Agree which convicts should be killed?
Where prisons should be built and filled?
Which voter fraud must be concealed
When the president talks to God?

When the president talks to God
I wonder which one plays the better cop
We should find some jobs, the ghetto's broke
No, they're lazy, George, I say we don't
Just give 'em more liquor stores and dirty coke
That's what God recommends

When the president talks to God
Do they drink near beer and go play golf
While they pick which countries to invade
Which Muslim souls still can be saved?
I guess God just calls a spade a spade
When the president talks to God

When the president talks to God
Does he ever think that maybe he's not?
That that voice is just inside his head
When he kneels next to the presidential bed
Does he ever smell his own bulls**t
When the president talks to God?

I doubt it

I doubt it

As Dry as the Desert

Friday, May 27th

9:00 am: I turn on the hot water to wash my cast iron skillet. This skillet will make my egg-white omelet. No problems noted.

9:15 am: I've made some jasmine tea. The omelet is done cooking. I sit to break my fast. No problems noted.

9:25-10:14 am: I check email and delete about 20 spam messages. Do my morning tour of friends' blogs. Read the news. Same old, same old. Politics as usual in our nation's capital.

10:15 am: I get up to wash dishes. All I get from the faucet is...a gurgle, then hissing of air. I saunter off to the bathroom, just to see if, by some miracle of plumbing, there is still water available to other areas of my apartment. This time, the faucet elicits no gurgle. Yep, the water is really dead.

10:19 am: I check the foyer area, where management usually slips notices to me of imminent water shut-offs. Nothing. Perhaps Armageddon has finally happened, and it happened somewhere between 9:30 and 10:15 on Friday, May 27th, 2005.

10:23 am: I turn on the TV to check disaster reports. Nothing. Infomercials and re-runs loop on all channels. Oh no. The unthinkable has happened, and our civilization is coming to an end. Thank goodness Blogspot is still up.

10:24 am: I can't even brush my teeth. I feel the bacterial film start to form on the surfaces of my mouth. What will I die of first: dehydration or massive sepsis of the mouth?

10:25 am: Just in case, I check to see that I'm wearing clean underwear.

10:26 am: The unwashed dishes in the sink are starting to emit some rotting smell. This will be the smell of the end of the world as we know it: DEATH - with the occasional waft of dirty dishes.

10:30 am: My mouth is dry. Thus it begins...to end. It begins to end.

10:37 am: I sneak up to the faucet and quickly jostle the handle. Perhaps I could trick the water to coming back on. No dice.

10:38 am: My vision starts to blur. I'll now have to trust the Blogspot spellchecker function to proof this post.

10:39 am: Vision deteriorates to black. Muscles are going into their final - spastic - contractions.

10:45 am: This is it. The end. With my last breath...I.....die. (And hit the 'Publish Post' button).

Of Mountains from Molehills

Once again, I've stalled, and this time, my excuse is that I can't get around usage of the passive voice in my dissertation. I'm running through the corrections of my Results section that Barb has handed to me, and one of the first things she writes in the margin is:

Stay away from the passive voice in this section - and as a general rule in science writing.

Okay, fine. I was also taught (yes, I know - passive voice) that writing in the passive voice is to be avoided, but come on - this is a scientific dissertation. How else am I supposed to prove my scientific aptitude if I can't bore my readers into submission?

I found an online guide to dissertation writing and they had this to say about passive voice:

Avoid passive voice. Example: "Systems were built which caused fires (Bain 1986)." Better: "Bain (1986) documents a fire caused by a poorly designed system."

Okay, I get it. Passive voice = bad. Here's the sentence that's preventing my progress:

"Mono-Mac-6 cells were chosen as a representative monocyte/macrophage cell line because of its robust response to LPS challenge."

The way I see it, here are my options:

First person:

"I chose the Mono-Mac-6 cell line for their robust response to LPS challenge."

Well, I've eliminated use of the passive voice, but I'm of the opinion that using 'I' or 'we' or any other first person subject is a no-no for a formal document such as one's thesis dissertation. Let's try third person instead. Except I can't resist the urge to give myself a really cool nickname:

"The Mike-Meister selected Mono-Mac-6 cells as a representative monocyte-macrophage cell line because of their robust response to LPS challenge."

Again, I've successfully avoided use of passive voice, but also introduced an unsavory informal element to the document.

Grrr...once I've figured out this sentence, I can look forward to rewriting practically this entire section. Perhaps I can look forward to seeing daylight again this weekend.

Morning Glory?

Neighbor is playing house music starting at 2:30 am. I try to go back to sleep to no avail. Oh, well. I'm walking over to the pharmacy later today and investing in those Hearos earplugs.

I've discovered that there is no hot water before 5am in this building. So I sit here in my bed clothes trying to find something useful to do, other than dissertation writing - there are those things that you just shouldn't be doing at 4 o'clock in the morning, and I think they would include drinking, hard drugs (er, not that I endorse illicit drug use at any time during the day, kids), listening to speed metal or BOOMING TECHNO MUSIC, or working on one's dissertation. It's not that I can't, it's more that it's a bad idea. Writing takes a certain amount of focus and momentum, and I don't want to interrupt either if I feel like I have to get up to shower and scrounge breakfast.

I thought I'd write a haiku about having no hot water, but for some reason, poetry about one's early morning routine just didn't have that zing to it that I'd normally like to find in verse.

I look outside the window just in time to see a little bit of purple emerging on the sunrise and rush to find my camera. I've not had much time to play around with it, so I'm definitely still self-conscious about the amateurishness of the pictures. But here's the purple - which disappeared from the horizon about 20 seconds later.

I think I'll give the water heater another twenty minutes to fulfill its duties. In the meantime, I take care of non-dissertation business - filling out my surgery clerkship preferences. They've decided to restructure the program, so now the clerkship will now be made up of three rotations: one long "core" rotation in general surgery, which will be about half the length of the clerkship (about 5½ weeks), plus two shorter rotations, each about 2½ weeks long. I don't have much to go on, as far as ranking my preferences, other than this Word file which compiles some notes about various locations. Here are my core rotation choices (my comments in blue):

• Boston Medical Center (BMC, right on campus): GI Surgery (ick - GI????)
• BMC: Surgical Oncology (could be interesting - can't wait to do Arnold Schwarzenegger saying "It's nawt a tumour!")
• BMC: Trauma & General Surgery (I think seeing trauma for almost six weeks could get old)
• VA Boston: General & Vascular Surgery (I've heard good things about the VA, but horrible things about vascular surgery. Like it's really long and boring.)
• Cape Cod Hospital: Not sure I want to live away from home during the rotation, but I hear it's nice at the hospital. And Cape Cod during the summer would be nice.
• Quincy Hospital: Lots of private practitioners. A view from outside academia would be nice.

Okay, next question: Do you have a car and can you drive another student? Well, the real answer would be 'yes' and 'yes.' The practical question is another matter - having to get to the hospital at 4:30 am will be a challenge in itself - do I want to sacrifice that 15 minutes of sleep to go fetch my fellow classmate? I mark down 'yes' to both, thinking that it will probably a good thing, anyway. Having the responsbility of getting someone else into the hospital on time will be a positive pressure.

Third question: Ranking the general surgery options. I really don't know what I want here. The choices:

• vascular (=booooooring)
  
• trauma (=gross)
  
• anesthesiology (=watching anesthesiologist read the Wall Street Journal)
  
• Roger Williams Hospital (surgical oncology/reconstructive surgery focus) (= 2½ weeks in Providence, Rhode Island)

I go against instinct and opt for the rotation in Providence. I think reconstructive surgery sounds like the most interesting experience here. I rank trauma last.

Fourth question: Ranking the surgical subspecialties. Rank the following #1 through #8. Grr. Fairly sparse information:

• cardiothoracic surgery
  
• neurosurgery
• ophthalmology
• orthopaedic surgery (aka "bridge painting")
  
• otolaryngology
• pediatric surgery (I hear the pediatric surgeons are an extremely nasty breed of surgeon)
  
• plastic & reconstructive surgery
• urology (I hear the urologists are an unusually laid-back breed of surgeon)

I choose the top 3 with some thought (urology, plastics, orthopaedics) then rank the rest a bit randomly. Done.

Ooh. I think there's hot water now.

*******

Right now I'm listening to: Kin, Sounds from the Ground

More trip-hop downtempo stuff.

A River in Egypt

denial, an unconscious defense mechanism in which emotional conflict and anxiety are avoided by refusal to acknowledge those thoughts, feelings, desires, impulses, or facts that are consciously intolerable.

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(Yes, yes, I know. Ba-dum-bump -- *tshhhhhh*)

I think I need to explore this aspect of my behavior. Whether it's a good idea to do it publicly here, I'm not sure - but I have this tendency to avoid potentially bad news by any means possible. Usually, this bad news is manifested as some form of rejection. The latest example was my total dread of reading my advisor's comments and corrections in my thesis introduction. I sent her a draft last Friday and she promised to get it back to me with corrections by Monday. Monday morning, her email arrived - I waited a good hour before opening it. I didn't want to read the bad news. Before reading it, I knew the contents of the email:

Mike,
Seriously - are you trying at all? This introduction was such a lame attempt - it's incomplete blah blah blah and you need to add the following chapters blah blah blah.

B

Of course, I finally opened her email and what it really said was:

Mike:

Your intro is quite good. However, you need to have a few pages on what has been done to characterize trans factors on the promoter and enhancer and answer the question of why the focus of the work was on PU and C/EBPβ. I left specific comments on your desk.

B

Well - that wasn't so bad. It could have been worse - I could have let her comments sit on my desk for another week, but time is not a luxury right now.

I'm wondering why my mind just defaults to expecting the worst. This extreme form of denial manifests itself in other ways in other aspects of my life. In the academic world, I never check my exam results, not wanting to see how poorly I've done, assuming that I've failed. Despite the fact that I haven't come close to failing, that things always turn out for the best, I can't get around these thought patterns.

Even worse, I feel, are the social anxieties. It doesn't take much, but I can withdraw from my social circle du jour in a split second. It's hard enough being one of the few single persons because you're always the individual that makes the group an odd number of people. On top of that, there's the issue of my performance within the group. Am I funny enough? Bright enough? Interesting? Or am I falling short in all categories and therefore justifying my bachelorhood to all witnesses? Just one sideways glance or awkward silence later, and I can sit there and come up with all the social faux pas that I've committed in the last several years that I'm sure everybody remembers and are adding to the ever-growing body of evidence that hanging out with Mikey is such a chore.

So I hide. I can usually come up with any number of excuses - feeling ill, too busy, writing a dissertation - but sometimes it's just an opportunity for me to get away from that performance anxiety I invariably get whenever I'm out with people I care about.

So there it is - if you think I'm avoiding you, you're mistaken. It's me avoiding - trying to avoid - my own petty insecurities.

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Right now I'm listening to: Visions, Jakatta

A DJ mix album, Jakatta samples some themes from the music of American Beauty by Thomas Newman. Includes the track "My Vision" performed by Seal. The mood is really chill and downtempo, something that I need right now.

The Latest in Ear Plug Tech

Dang. $188 for a pair of ear plugs. And apparently they're not even very good.

Six Degrees of Separation

You're never too far away from great people. Obviously, to those of you who know me personally, I am not one of those people. BUT - I know people who know great people.

Last fall I participated in this massive marketing campaign for the video game Halo 2. If you dig around a little, you can hear my voice in one of the files (sounding like a total moron, as usual) on the campaign's website. No, I'm not telling you which one. The video game itself was cool, but the marketing campaign allowed me to meet some really cool people in the local Boston area. There were three of us who showed up the most often, and together we called ourselves Team Chowda. It turns out that one of our group (Will) was the personal assistant of Nobel Prize-winning author Saul Bellow, who recently passed away.

Obviously the last couple months for Will have been quite stressful. I'm sure that he's needed some time alone to deal, but I certainly have been too busy with this thesis stuff to even just write a note and check up on him. I finally got around to doing that today, and the good news is that he's doing alright.

The other good news is that you know someone (me) who knows someone (Will) who knew Saul Bellow.

The bad news is that I'm already this old and still haven't picked up a single Saul Bellow novel.

Recommended Reading

Salon.com just posted a transcript (opens in a new window) of a speech by Bill Moyers at the National Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis, Missouri. Moyers has been under attack lately by conservative pundits for covering stories that they don't want to be heard. Unfortunately, it looks like the mainstream media isn't functioning the way it is supposed to. So read this NOW. And don't get all your news from just one source.

Some other news/op-ed sites:

Alternet
Slate
The New Republic
The Weekly Standard

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And some Not-So-Recommended Reading:

GQ asked Natalie Beach, 12½, to review The O'Reilly Factor for Kids: A Survival Guide for America's Families, by Bill O'Reilly. The review appears in their October 2004 issue (Yes, the one with Lindsay Lohan on the cover. What????) Anyway, I can only hope that my book reviews, if I ever get around to them, would contain this much wit and wisdom.

I'm sure that typing in the entire article is illegal, so I'll just quote some of the better parts:

"This is the most boring book I've ever read in my entire life. It's supposed to be a survival guide for teenagers, but you'll need a survival guide just to get through it."

"For some reason, he tells us about every minute of his life today: getting up at seven to read newspapers, going to the TV studio just before 6 P.M. to host The Factor, heading home to his family. Why am I reading this?" (bold emphasis, mine)

"The only reason kids would read this book would be if they were forced to - like I was."

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What I'm listening to now: Kronos Quartet Plays Philip Glass, Kronos Quartet, Nonesuch Records

I always find it amazing that short musical motifs played repetitively could be something that I could enjoy listening to. Yet somehow, Philip Glass (and other minimalist composers of his ilk, like Steve Reich, John Adams) manage to compose music that can be riveting and emotional. Highly recommended recording. And the Kronos Quartet is pretty good, too.

I Can't Work With This!

I dedicated my time today to creating figures for my thesis. However, my drawing program kept on crashing over and over again. I just spent two hours trying to figure out what was wrong, and I think I've figured it out:

• For quick access, I keep all my thesis dissertation files in a folder on my desktop - this includes both Word master documents, subdocuments, and image files.
• For quick access, I open the folder and double-click on the desired file. This automatically launches the application.
• Except with Canvas, which started crashing several weeks ago. Opening the file from within Canvas (File → Open...) also caused the program to shut down.
• What works: opening the application first, opening the thesis folder, than dragging desired image file onto the canvas of the application window. Opens just fine. Why? Why? WHY?

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Now that I have a virtual canvas with which to express my artistic genius, the possibilities are endless. At LAST the world will be able to see my talent!

Raphael's The School of Athens in the Stanza della Segnatura? Michelangelo's fresco of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel? CAVE PAINTINGS!

Eduard Manet? Vincent van Gogh? NURSERY SCHOOL CRAYON SCRATCH!

BEHOLD! Mikey's freehand depiction of the human genome!

Took merely 30 minutes from concept to visualization, I kid you not.

This one's free. Keep visiting for news about future gallery showings by Yours Truly.

Sleep Disorder

Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.
- Unknown

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While writing this thesis, I've been trying to train myself to get to more normal sleep hours, but I've failed miserably to this point. Perhaps it's an age thing, but I can't do what I used to do when I was just a sapling, that is, just stay up through the day to go to bed at a reasonable hour that night. Nowadays, I feel my eyelids getting heavy, so I just lie down, hoping that a half-hour respite will clear the fog from my mind. Next thing I know, I've had a long, full 8-hour coma, and I'm wide awake even at 5am the next morning.

Yesterday (Sunday), I had the answer. I figured I'd hit the gym for a nice workout - regular exercise has always done wonders for my sleep cycle in the past, and I've certainly neglected exercise while concentrating on the dissertation. I made it, ran some errands, and felt like I'd accomplished quite a bit for the day. Looking at the clock, it was only 11am! Argh. Find a way to stay awake for the next 10 hours. I figure if I can make it until 9pm, I'll be okay.

The entire day, though, I'm too groggy. I do some thesis reading and formatting, but nothing outrageously productive. 8pm rolls around, and I can't keep my eyes open. I can't remember my head hitting the pillow. Unfortunately, that means I was wide awake at 2am, and wide awake now.

Anyway, that allows me time to create a new progress graph for your viewing displeasure:

Executive Decisions

While writing the 'Introduction' section of my thesis, I've made two decisions that are saving me both time and grief. The 'Introduction' is one of those sections that keeps on growing. I thought I'd have it done at around 3000 words, but it's taken on a life of its own, and I'm at 4500 words right now and counting. It just keeps on getting bigger. Anyway, this is where one lays down the background information so the rest of the thesis makes a little bit of sense. One thing I'd planned to do was to create a figure illustrating the packaging of DNA into the cell nucleus. A pretty easy concept, but a tall order graphically for someone like me who is limited both on time and graphical talent. Here's an image from a review paper on the subject:



So, Executive Decision #1: Forget making a new image. I'll lay down some Neil Gaiman-like prose so the readers can create their own mental imagery of what it means to compact DNA into the confines of the cell nucleus. I can guarantee that it will be better than whatever graphic I can conjure up.

Executive Decision #2: I've decided to give Barb's deadlines the boot. I don't care about the deadlines. This writing process is actually fun, but having to worry about someone else's timeline makes it so stressful. It's not like I'm sitting at home slacking. Writing is hard business, if you care about the quality of the end product. I finish this when I finish this.

This has created the unfortunate side effect of me exhibiting some avoidant behavior. I have Microsoft Outlook configured to check my school email, which is the only email address that Barb has of mine, and I've been loathe to open that application for the last, oh, three or four days now. Which means I've been able to avoid any scathing emails from TheBarb: "WHERE'S YOUR THESIS?", but also any other business that I should be attending to such as scheduling surgical clerkship subspecialties (orthopaedics, vascular, cardiothoracic, pediatric, etc.) or setting up my third and final committee meeting.

That's it for now. If I push on through morning, I should be able to turn in the Introduction to Barb tomorrow. Later!

Dropping acid

Literally.

While I was on the phone wishing Mom a Happy Mother's Day, one of the batteries in my wireless mouse decided to rupture, leaking some weird tannish liquid all over my desk and onto my hand. I'm sure that there have been fabulous advances in the realm of battery chemistry, but I'm reasonably sure that whatever ionic sludge is in here is still corrosive, as the exposed parts of my hand started burning something terrible.

And of course, the batteries are of the AAA size, of which I have none extra sitting around.

Now, you may ask, what does this have to do with talking to my Mom on Mother's Day? Why, nothing, of course. Nothing is Mom's fault. Not one darn thing.

Happy Mother's Day. Love you, Mom!

The Sound of Inevitability

...is this:

#%^@*%$^!!!!
#%^@*%$^!!!!
#%^@*%$^!!!!
&*()%$#&!!!
@^&$(_@!!!!

Of COURSE I do things at the last minute.

And of COURSE the program I'm using to make ALL of my figures crashes.

And of COURSE I don't know how to fix it. There's no message, only 'Canvas has experienced a problem and needs to shut down. We apologize for the inconvenience.'

And of COURSE it was working just fine 10 minutes ago.

Does a hard reboot solve the problem? No.
Does uninstalling then reinstalling the program work? No.

Does it work when Mikey restarts the program randomly while typing up this blog? Yes.

#%^@*%$^!!!!!!!
%^&%^;%^&%^$&!!!

I'm never shutting this program down now. I'm finishing all my figures in one fell swoop before this thing crashes on me again. *&*R%$!!!!

And VideoGame Boy decided to turn his subwoofer up to 11 again. F^@&er.

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Right now I'm listening to: The Battle of Los Angeles, Rage Against the Machine

Was listening to some mellow jazz, i.e. Ivey-Divey by Don Byron, but needed some music that would seem to be able to commiserate with my current situation.

Getting what you pay for?

I'm not a Yankee hater. Actually, I look down upon the entire American League just for having the Designated Hitter. Anyway, lately there's been quite a bit of schadenfreude directed at the Yankee organization for various reasons, not the least of which is the size of their payroll. I thought I'd make the following quick comparison.

Team	Payroll	Win-Loss Record	PCT
New York Yankees	$205,938,439	11-18	0.379
Pittsburgh Pirates	$38,138,000	11-16	0.407

That's right. The Yankees have a payroll more than 5 times that of the Pirates, yet if their records were in the same division, the Pirates would be one game ahead.

Just thought I'd mention that before the Yankees start surging later this season. The Pirates, for the rest of the year, will continue to struggle to stay out of last place. Not that I care - I find the business of baseball more interesting than the game now, anyway. That's where all the drama is.

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Right now, iTunes is playing: Toxicity, System of a Down

Speaker War Ammo

Can't say that I've been pushed this far...yet...but it's nice to know this is an option for dealing with Video-Game Boy.

Revenge

use´less adj.

1. Being or having no beneficial use; futile or ineffective
2. Incapable of functioning or assisting; ineffectual
3. Mikey, the day after an all-nighter

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I pretty much slept all day yesterday, the day after I decided to stay up all night rather than risk missing a meeting with Barb. I was operating through this cloud of grogginess that just would not go away. So I slept. Stared at the word process for a while, but very little came out. If my progress on my thesis were a patient hooked up to a cardio monitor yesterday, the machine would have flatlined with that alarming BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. If only I had a crew of people that could rush in when that happens and shock me into productivity.

I'm feeling fine today, so I hope I make some respectable headway. However, I'm quite concerned about my response to such a lack of sleep. How am I going to respond when I'm in clerkships and taking overnight call? This issue has been debated ad nauseum, and you can read up on sleep deprivation in the health care industry here. Without having any experience in the clinic, I can't say that I've developed a set opinion one way or the other, but it seems the safety issues involved for both patients and workers point to the need for making sure health care workers are well-rested.

I can force myself into do some things when I'm groggy, but these are tasks that are usually purely physical in nature and that I can perform in somewhat of a zombie-like state, such as lab experiments, menial household chores, eating, and surfing the internet. Oh sure, I can pick up a book and flip the pages, but I won't retain a single word.

The good news is that it looks like my sleep/wake cycle is close to normal again. I woke at a decent time, around 6:15 and there's no fog in my mind whatsoever. We'll see how long that lasts.

*******

What I'm listening to now: Reanimation, Linkin Park

If I play this loud enough, there's no way I'm going to fall asleep. Actually, when I started this post, iTunes started playing Gershwin plays Gershin: The Piano Rolls, which is great music for starting the day.

Crunch!

I'm late, I'm late for a very important date.
No time to say hello, good-bye, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late
I'm late and when I wave, I lose the time I save.

- The White Rabbit, from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

*******

Obviously I've been a little busy doing the thesis dance, so here's an update.

I've turned in first drafts of two sections to TheBarb. I've got two more sections to go. Barb has been putting a little pressure on me, in a responsible mentor sort of way - not annoyingly so. One date that she refuses to budge on is May 19th, when the thesis absolutely must be in the hands of the second reader, Greg (university policy has two official readers from the thesis committee who pore over the document and sign off on it). That means that Barb absolutely must have gone through my drafts and made her revisions, and I must have the time to complete those revisions before the dissertation goes off to Greg.

Yes, I'm feeling the crunch.

I know I can do this, though. I have to.

I learned some things about thesis writing that I wish I'd known before I started.

1. You don't have to write the thesis in the order that it will be read. I made the mistake of forcing myself to work on the Introduction, and ran into a thick wall of writer's block. Instead of putting that section on the backburner and writing part of another section, I just kept banging my head against the wall. Finally, after talking to some friends, they pretty much told me stop doing that. So I did. And I was able to move ahead. But that cost me at least a week of writing. Maybe two weeks.
2. For me, writing is like exercising. I do okay in the exercise department once I get started, but getting to the gym is the hard part. Same with writing. The momentum will follow if I can just open the document in the word processor. Actually, I already knew this - I just wish that with knowing would come some increase in productivity. Doesn't work that way.
   
3. Clutter is a momentum killer. While staring at the words on the screen, the ever-growing pile of debris behind me was nagging at me to be dealt with. Unsorted mail, bills to be paid, junk mail to be scrapped - I finally took two hours to sort and put everything in its proper place. Not until then did I really pick up the writing pace.
4. Wearing headphones seems to increase writing efficiency. I think its a combination of reducing ambient noise (read: VideoGame Boy's techno party music) and limiting my own movement so my attention isn't so easily taken by household distractions.
5. Figures take a LONG time. I wish I'd thought ahead and estimated how long it would take me to create thesis figures, and then DOUBLE that amount of time. I'm really lagging here.
6. (Yes, an edit. I feel like the cardinals in Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch: "Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again.")
7. I don't write anything before 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I should just do my chores in the morning and then write afterwards. I should have figured this out from when I was studying for the boards. Not sure why, but getting up first thing in the morning trying to cram two years of medical school into my brain just wasn't efficient until later in the day.
   

My sleep cycle is pretty messed up right now. I think it started when I got on a roll and wrote until about 4am one night. Now I'm working until about 6am, getting to bed at 7am, and waking at 3pm. That wasn't so bad until Barb summoned me into her office this morning. So rather than risk missing the meeting, I've decided to stay up. If I can make it until 9pm tonight, maybe I'll get back on track with a more normal schedule.

Here's the latest word count graph:

To my surprise, this thesis could actually turn out to be a rather respectable size (although Barb assured me in the meeting that size doesn't matter. Hunh. I'm sure they all say that. Waitaminute. That didn't come out right...) Anyway, I've only been doing labwork in Barb's lab for two years, and much of that time my experiments didn't work. So I've had a little anxiety about the length of the dissertation, and how thin the final publication will be when I get the document bound at the printer. But, I'm at 6000 words with two more sections to go, plus an entire appendix that will consist of a publication that resulted from work in that other PI's lab. Actually, although I'm not that proud of the work (Why? That would be another blog itself), it's nice to have a first-author publication as a feather in one's cap. See here for proof.

That's about it. So, yeah, I'm stressed, but I'm also content. Weird, huh? Okay, enough fun writing for now. Back to the other writing.

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What I'm listening to right now: Protection, Massive Attack

Nice and mellow, but still engaging enough so that I don't fall asleep at the keyboard.