Detritus, page one

Random thoughts.

1. I half-accidentally stayed up late last night finishing the last Harry Potter book (I had planned on accidentally staying up late). On the whole I would say that I am...satisfied. I think it was ended well. Rowling certainly didn't pull any punches, I was really surprised by the number of important and main characters that died. Ron finally getting together with Hermione was well done. And the whole section of Harry knowing he is going to die and walking off to do it was amazingly crafted. However, NEEDED MORE GINNY. I wanted more of that romance, and even the epilogue where we found out they married and had kids wasn't satisfying enough in this respect, as there wasn't a feeling of strong connection between them (though obviously it was implied, I wanted something palpable. A kiss, holding hands, something.) I still think I like Half Blood Prince best, but again, I think Deathly Hallows was a satisfactory ending.

2. "If I could play all the memories in the neck of my guitar, I would write a song called Senorita With a Necklace of Tears"
- Paul Simon, "Senorita With a Necklace of Tears"

3. A few weeks ago my Grampy died. He was called Grampy because he wasn't my blood grandfather; he was my mothers first husbands (who was killed) father. As my mother put it, he was an absolute gem of a man. That former side of the family and my side of the family never really interacted, and this man didn't know me from Adam, but he always, ALWAYS, took an interest in me. Every year he sent me a Christmas card, which is memorable for two reasons. First, he always gave me $50, which to a kid in the late 80's was like winning the lottery every year. Second, the Christmas card always had a letter from him on the inside, immaculately typed out on the card itself, never a typo. He was always so proud of his typing. During the portion of my life that I was really interested in golf, he would tell me about how he would go golfing where he lived down in Arizona. He was also always immensely proud of my education, and I am very glad he was alive when I got my PhD.

Grampy was 96 when he died, and made sure to tell everyone he was in no pain. He had two wives, a girlfriend, and he outlived them all. In the past 5 years or so he corresponded with people by email using WebTV, which is awesome that he got into email. He was an absolutely sweet prince of a man, I wish I had known him better, and I always think of him around the holidays. Bye Grampy, I will miss you.

4. My mother came to visit me this weekend. I probably should've been more lively, but I think we had a good time regardless. She left a couple books for me to read from her library. Both are about Nikola Tesla, and I am very much looking forward to learning more about this amazing genius.

5. All indications are that I got the NIH fellowship I applied for back in August. I won't find out officially until February but the program director told me point blank not to resubmit my proposal because I'm in the top few percent. Which completely changed the tenor of my week. I had been planning on busting out a revised proposal in three days (basically, think of it as doing a term paper on a semesters worth of research in three days), which would've consumed all my time, to finding out not only I don't need to do it but that I probably got the fellowship. It's absolutely astounding that I got this fellowship the first time through. It's most likely due to a combination of A) money loosening up at the NIH, B) a solid research proposal and C) good preliminary data from good scientists before, but it's still a very positive thing.

6. I will now quote from the summary statement I received from the reviewers of said fellowship proposal. This statement is talking about me.

"Perhaps the only easily identified weakness with the candidate is that the work produced so far is very solid, but not paradigm shifting."

Now, it's hard to describe exactly what is so damned funny about this statement, but it has my entire lab, including my boss, cracking up. Really, it boiled down to the reviewer looking for something to criticize. But come on, apparently my lack of shifting paradigms is a glaring weakness in my body of work. After we found out I was getting the fellowship my boss was actually disappointed that we weren't going to be able to resubmit the proposal simply because we couldn't respond to that asinine comment.

The ironic thing, the truly ironic thing, is that I DID shift a paradigm! It just happens to be a paradigm all of 4 people in the world care about.

7. As the days and weeks wear on in my post doc, I find myself happy with my position, but increasingly isolated. The holidays don't help, of course. I always tend to get down around the holidays. But this time I don't feel so much depressed as...alone. Knowing myself I think sometime about the middle of January my resolve/pride/fear will crack and I'll hit up a dating site. I want someone to be with, and damnit I don't think it's that crazy an idea. According to you guys, there is at least a smidgen of awesome somewhere in me. That has to count for something.

8. I need to finish Pebbleman. It is weighing on my conscience. It's a good story, damnit. It deserves better than to be abandoned half finished. Plus I want to finish it before starting on another story idea I have. Called "Saturday Sun". Sometimes I think I should just cancel my WoW subscription and devote my nights to writing....but that ain't going to happen.

9. There is no 9.

10. "Wh-wh-what do you do - in the bath?"
- Lemon Jelly "In the Bath"