12/15/99

Conversation with a man in denial:

Jen: Hey, did you see what Jane wrote about us in her entry?

Jay: Yeah.

Jen: It was funny. I liked how she wrote that I'm not hyper like most short people she knows.

Jay: Yeah.

Jen: Actually, you're not hyper, either.

Jay: Yeah, because I'm not short!

Jay is 5'6". The scope of his denial is quite impressive.

I started my Christmas shopping yesterday. I have all my shopping for my sisters done now, but I still have no idea what to get my parents, especially my dad, who is impossible to shop for. I tried doing a bunch of my shopping online, but two of the three sites I tried crashed my browser (one crashed it during the order confirmation screen, so I'm not exactly sure if the order got placed or not. Do other people have these problems?) and the third site wouldn't let me place my order because the item was out of stock. I'd never heard of this before--don't they usually just take your order, charge your credit card immediately, and then ship you the item 6 months later? Anyway, I was able to find the exact same item in stock in a "real" store downtown, so it all worked out.

I've been trying to finish up my work in the lab, too, but it hasn't been easy. The lab is full, and there just isn't enough equipment or space for everyone to work there. I share a desk and a bench with a postdoc who's constantly in the lab, so I effectively don't have a desk or a workspace. I'm also trying to work out a mouse genotyping scheme and have to share a single incredibly slow PCR machine with 4 other people who are responsible for genotyping all the mice in our colony (if you don't know what this means, never mind, it's not important). And I can never do any data analysis, because there's only one PC in the lab with the software I need to analyze my data (all our other computers are Macs, as is my home computer, and won't run the software).

So basically, I go in to the lab, try to do stuff, realize that I can't, go home, watch TV, and fall asleep. I've been watching so much daytime TV that I've now seen most episodes of Ricki Lake twice ("oh, great, it's the "hefty hoochie mama contest" episode again!"). Then I go in at night for a few hours. You'd think I'd be able to find better things to do with my days...exercise, read up on the project I'll be doing in my next lab, do all the tweaking I've been meaning to do with this page...I've been so lazy, though. I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm just hoping that I'll be back to my normal energetic self after all this holiday stuff is over.

Oh, and here are the rest of my pictures from the diarists' gathering this weekend. Click on them to link to the full-sized versions:

L to R: Eleanor's leg, Sunshyn, Kathy, the back of Wendy's head, Rachel, Stasi, Jolene, the back of Heather's head and Beth.		L to R: Wendy, Heather, Eleanor, Sunshyn, Kathy and Rachel.
Karen with her eyes half-closed talking to Lucy.		Kathy and Rachel.