.:Gotta Drop a Blog in The Corner:.

this thesis is getting to me... dragging me down... feels like i'll never be done with it. i'm losing focus. i can't believe i still have "one last experiment" to run in the lab... i've been saying that for weeks now. i never ever want to work in a lab again.

this whole process has definitely pushed me to my limits mentally, and there are moments when i'd give it all up for it to stop. i'm so tired.

been reaching back and listening to some oldies to get me through these dark days/late nights.

February Stars, Foo Fighters

Hanging on
here until I'm gone
Right where I belong
just hanging on

Even though
I watched you come and go
how was I to know
You'd steal the show

One day I'll have enough to gamble
I'll wait to hear your final call and bet it all

so... a lot has happened since last time i posted... but at the same time not really.

i was rushing to finish my thesis... and then things got to be a bit too much for both my advisor and i, so we decided to postpone my defense by a week. that gave me a bit of breathing room, and a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders. i pretty much finished writing it all at the end of last week. just need to get the edits back from my advisor, make a couple changes, and send it out to my committee members. defense is scheduled for next tue, planning to get my powerpoints done by tomorrow, go through a dry run on sat and sunday with my advisor... hopefully get the kinks and hitches out. defend... get edits back from my committee members, handle those and submit my final draft to the graduate school by the 24th (the last day to do it). i hope to be a very happy (mostly relieved) individual by next weekend. so far my thesis is a little over 100 pages (of course double spaced, with references, figures, tables, and graphs... so not all written though about 60 pages are written) and i never thought i could even put something like this together. what sucks is you spend so much time working on this thing, and no one will ever really read it... cause seriously... who wants to know the process used to inhibit leb-1 production with siRNA in MEL cells? (btw it's not even completely finished anyways... the next person in this lab will carry on the project, hopefully with better results). so that's that... but i've definitely been feeling a lot less stressed in regards to this whole project since the beginning of last week.

the other big thing that i started to get stressed about was finding an apartment in boston. so i scheduled a trip out this past tue to wed (since my defense was originally supposed to be over by then)... but because of this whole thesis thing i didn't have that much time to look online and line up places to see on craigslist. so i got to boston, and had just a handful of places i could go check out. i'm happy to say though that i did find a place... close to campus even (about 15-20 min walk, and 3 stops away from neu on the T). deposit was placed, credit check went through, now just waiting for the lease to be emailed to me and hopefully i can get all that out and back to boston tomorrow. so i'll have a new home! it's in an older brownstone... on an old street. i like the name of the street... cause it's funny... it rhymes with bigglesworth (which is great cause austin powers is one of my fav movies... "honestly, who throws a shoe?"). i spent a lot of time tue and wed just walking around the city while i was getting to my viewings... and i think i have a favorite park in boston now and it's not boston common (which is kinda like that default park when people think of boston). i might just take sailing lessons from the piers park sailing center too.

so... that's that with that. i better take a nap and do some more slides. hopefully this will all be over soon.

so i was reading this article about how the canadian north is opening up to development due to the melting of the ice and more hospitable climates for human habitation. as a reader you can kind of infer that global climate change is the process causing this to happen. however what i find funny... more like ironic funny is that the article mentions that as time goes on,

Oil and mining companies, meanwhile, are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on Arctic exploration.

Soon, forestry companies are expected to follow the Boreal Forest creeping north.

Cruise ships are multiplying, allowing tourists to see polar bears and the spectacular break-up of Arctic ice each spring.

ok... so you have tourists going on cruise ships to see polar bears... but what they are really doing is killing the bears, since the pack ice is quickly melting and decreasing in area. this forces bears to swim longer distances and there has been a noted increase in polar bears that have drowned. national geographic had an article in their magazine just 3 or 4 months ago on this very issue. that's just how we are though, we want to be entertained and they never think of long term consequences or the big picture of our actions in terms of the world. it does make me angry when an article like this is written, cause people read it, but they don't think about what it's really saying about our society. everything external to the person is not really external, it will come back and affect you, or people, or things you care about sometime down the line.

had my defense this afternoon. the hard part's done now. just have to make last couple edits to my thesis from my committee member's corrections and turn it in by friday.

I'M FREE!!!!!! and it feels GOOD!!!!

dudes... there is something really wrong with our education system here... not only because of the fact that americans can't locate the US on a map... but because people are unable to formulate a complete thought like this girl right here... and our commander in chief.

jeez louise... such as...

since i submitted my thesis last week and went to get three copies bound... i haven't done anything these last three days. it feels absolutely wonderful... kinda like how ron livingston's character reacts after going to the hypnotherapist in office space. i'm trying to lengthen this the period of this feeling by procrastinating on packing =].

so... i've also been looking on craigslist for some items that i'll need... since most of my old (but new) furniture went to my brother as he had just moved into a new place when i left new york. this time around, without a job... craigslist will do for now... maybe with a couple additions from ikea. besides a mattress which i already have... the single most important thing i need is a desk. it's the one thing that i'm really picky about. i like big desks... ones with lots of surface area. i like to have lots of books open when i study, and i like to have room to spread out my notes. i really liked my old desk (which is now my brother's) because there was lots of room and different levels for printers, scanners, speakers, and a monitor (which was set back a little). the keyboard was on a pullout tray... so the portion of the desk below monitor level was open and available for writing. i have a den in my apartment that i'll set up as my computer/study room. it's kind of small, so i'm looking for a fairly large desk that has efficient use of space by stacking things on different levels... but most of the desks on craigslist i've seen are the normal kinds you find in the front of a classroom in high school. if need be, this is the one thing that i'll splurge on after i move in if i have to. other than that, i've been looking for a dining/kitchen table, a couch/futon for the living room, a coffee table, and an entertainment center type thing. it's too bad i'm not in boston this week... it looks like lots of people are throwing stuff out/selling stuff as it's the end of the month and leases are up... when the first rolls around there will be more people looking for stuff then getting rid of stuff =[.

today was a nice day... so i got ice cream with a friend. i'm really gonna miss anderson's... mmmmm vanilla custard. i think there will be a couple more ice cream trips this week (in addition to other buffalo favorites).

if you're really bored and/or want to fall asleep... here is my thesis, 'the inhibition of late erythroblast 1 (leb-1) gene expression using short interference rna technology'. i figure if i post it... maybe someone will read it... so i don't feel like i wrote it for nothing.