from the desk of stinkpot

Maggie: Don’t worry, God will help us.
[Loads shotgun]
Tracy: Then what’s that for?
Maggie: In case God doesn’t show up.

the screenwriters for pumpkinhead had enormous talent; and by god, did they flaunt it.

well, i thought i’d follow their leads and flaunt my own talents. it’s taken an entire year, but someone has finally looked past my apparent indolence and ignorance, to recognize what sets me apart here at mit. i’ve got mad stupid pumpkin carving skillz.

exhibit a:

a portrait of my advisor, eric alm, in pumpkin. that pumpkin snatched first prize at our building-wide pumpkin carving contest the other weekend. the competition was fierce: the young children (sons and daughters of faculty and research scientists) were disturbingly good at wielding knives. the grad students, outclassed in skill, made up for it in heart – my colleague produced the crowd-favorite pumpkin by deftly shaving an hourglass centered around a large vertical ridge: it was a giant orange ass.

i think what really won the hearts of the judges, however, was my attention to detail, such as the 6-inch carving knife obliquely jutting out of my pumpkin’s head [not pictured above]. my advisor asked, “why is there a 6-inch carving knife sticking out of my head?” before i had a chance to respond, a bystander wittily interjected, “it symbolizes your sharp wit.” yup, that’s it.

[eric, if you're reading this, i promise i don't want to put a knife through your head. unless it means that i graduate faster, in which case ... golly, it'd be awkward if my advisor read my blog.]

wow, i’m so amazed by what just happened that i’m compelled to immediately blog about it.

i closed a major credit card in about 30 seconds.

how it went down:

[0 sec]: call bank of america

[5 sec]: went through the backdoor to get a human

[25 sec]: verified my identity and asked to close the account

[30 sec]: done and goodbye

nothing over customer service lines is supposed to be this easy. i even popped popcorn in anticipation of a sales agent’s 15-minute badgering “that i’d be making a terrible mistake.”

now that it’s all over, i almost feel a bit cheated. half the fun of canceling things over the phone is wrestling with the operator; at the end of the epic service call, you feel like you’ve earned the right to cancel that piece of plastic.

at least i’ve still got popcorn.

we saw hellogoodbye at avalon this evening. they’re one of those guilty-pleasure indie-pop bands who just defecates catchy melodies and nasal vocals. (it leaves a real mess on stage.) hellogoodbye at least has enough electric guitar, really tight jeans and trendy eye glasses to buy a couple pesos of indie-street cred. but, being surrounded by hundreds of teenage girls begging to bear the rivers cuomo-like frontman’s spawn ultimately tattooed guilt onto my forehead.

[who are you girls? and why are you so short?! a little vacuum would form behind me, wherever i stood; i kept feeling teenyboppers fidgeting, trying to see over my shoulders. more guilt.]

thankfully, the show pulled a jesus and made all my concert shame go away. hellogoodbye turned out to be one of those bands that just sounds 453.5X better live than on their pirated MP3s. group trance dancing, a la that really strange cave party scene in the matrix 2, is always creepily fun.

i wish i was a rock star.

i’ve been doing a lot of hanging out with my labmates these past weekends. it’s made me really happy; when i look back, i realize that i didn’t take demographics into account much when i joined the alm lab about 6 months ago. instead, i made my decision on silly things like advisor, research potential, etc.

nevertheless, thanks to someone unexplained karma-build-up, i still ended up amongst a small, tightly-knit group of kids who’re all at about the same point in our lives. so far, we’ve been getting along fabulously: everyone’s young, enjoys the outdoors, and wannabe-hipster. it brings joy to my heart to see how much they all love science, and that none of them are especially ugly.

over the past 3 weeks, we’ve all gone rock-climbing, birthday-celebrating, apple-picking, and camping together. (luckily, the significant others all like one another.)  rather than try and remember what exactly those things entailed, i thought i’d just post some pretty pictures. (i’m really falling in love with my camera. i think i’m finally learning how to let it produce decent photos.)

jesse’s birthday:

rock climbing:

more to come …

we sold our beloved fish tank today
the big tank was getting to be too much work for us. christina and i were both a bit upset; we had raised most of the fish in there since they had been fishlings. more importantly, the fish had all gotten through our bumblings as first-time fish owners. those fish are survivors.

poor christina even looked a little misty-eyed – she fed them each morning and talked to them daily.

i think we may get less time-intensive pets in the near future. until then, there’s a big empty acrylic fish tank in our hearts.

i once asked drew endy what the best thing to visit in boston is.  dryly, he replied, “the airport.”

christina and i have been doing a great job these past couple of weekends of getting out of boston.  last weekend, we took a day trip to northern connecticut.  only about 45 minutes away, we had a wonderful drive, watching the trees blush red and orange the entire way.

first stop: a maize maze.  (yea, remarkably clever.)  nevertheless, running around a several acre labyrinth of 8-foot high corn was surprisingly fun.

as well as unexpectedly challenging:

the rest of the day was spent playing with the big:

and with the small:

the day ended with a lovely wine-tasting at a charming family winery.  there, the grower’s daughter regaled us with stories of her father’s first forays into wine-making.  apparently, he’d stuff casks into unoccupied hallway nooks – a practice ended when the wine barrels started exploding.  (turns out when you filter out yeast from wine, you better be sure you’re doing a good job.)

stories like that make wine tasting fun.

funny – up until several days ago, i was in a bit of a funk.  my research had bogged down and i was a tad glum.  adding injury to insult, i had caught cold.

fast forward to today: a great insight by eric has catapulted my work forward again.  suddenly, i’m in good spirits (especially outside of the lab) and my headache/fever are on the run.

scary how my health and mood positively correlate with my scientific progress.

it’s just happened again – some melancholy song randomly starts playing in the background and i can’t shake the feeling of being old.  it’s this sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach; it feels like that terrible homesickness on the first night of college.  maybe more like the despair you get when you see a summer crush for the last time.  i feel like i’ve lost something that i can’t get back.

it’s so strange – i’m 23 for godsakes.  and yet, every time i hear these certain songs, i suddenly have this acute awareness of all the time that’s passed by.  it’s happened a couple of times this week.  my no-play-list so far: “let go” and “brian wilson.”
gah, what a drama queen.

insanely busy – haven’t been sleeping much in weeks.

nevertheless, not so busy that i can’t transcribe the pearls of wisdom my adviser eric bestowed upon me a couple of hours ago.

1)  never do anything (even under direct orders from your PI) that will not eventually become a figure in a foreseeable paper.

2)  he can’t remember this one.

3)  you have full license to shirk any responsibilities assigned to you, as long as you’re making respectable progress towards your thesis.

i had intended for this blog to be mainly photoblog. believe it or not, i’ve actually been taking a lot of pictures lately; it’s the image downloading/curating/editing that i’ve been avoiding.

as much fun as a picture-less blog post is, i thought i’d try and work through my backlog of photos. tonight, i finished uploading some photos from a camping trip christina and i took to maine about 2 or 3 weekends ago. we went up with our neighbors, hillary and jesse, who toted a wonderfully comfortable and colorful guatemalan hammock:

once again, we camped at this idyllic site, right near the atlantic shore:

together, jesse and i were able to channel enough outdoorsman know-how into a cozy fire:

over which we cooked the 3 lobsters we had somewhat foolishly bought at a nearby docks.  i say foolishly, because we bought the lobsters and then thought about what we’d cook them in.  luckily, we found something later that afternoon at shaw’s fit enough to be lit on fire:

the lobster and corn were delicious.  the next morning, i went scavenging for interesting pieces of nature to photograph:

hillary burned herself with a marshmellow:

and jesse went playing in the trees:

we then rounded out the weekend by going to an absolutely massive flea market, filled with wonderful still lives of silverware:

finally, we bought some more lobsters at the nearest dock and headed home.