quick update...

so yeah... did i warn you that i suck at blogging and don't post for months? well, if i didn't here's the official warning.....

WARNING: THIS BLOG IS POORLY UPDATED

... um better late than never? 

so, as expected, life is SUPER busy. i've been studying like a madman for my upcoming comprehensive exam, collecting data for 1) peter allen's GraspIt project at columbia (the 6-page Haptics conference paper is due Wednesday), 2) marco's VR collaboration in pisa, italy before he goes there next month, and 3) the experiment i have to present at neuroscience in a month. That's in addition to checking over all the data from the UCSD PD project that everyone wants to publish asap, but sorry peoples, i'm putting that one on the backburner until after SfN. 

for some reason i'm much more sane than i probably should be. maybe the stress bubble will pop in a week when the exam comes around and i'll turn into a nutjob, but for now, all is good. probably because i'm keeping a good balance... eating healthy, running everyday, having a great time playing soccer/softball, going out with friends (a beer or two is good for the brain, right?). oh! and my paper got accepted!! wish it was a bit earlier in the year so i could get a hard copy at the conference, but hey, i'm not complaining :). i'm really looking forward to SfN. i know a lot of people going, so it should be tons of fun. 

i'm also probably in a good mood because the cubs got swept in the 1st round of the playoffs again and the ny giants look great this season. i miss going to the cards games (the game today against the cowboys was unbelievable!) but it's nice having the free time. the suns season will get into full gear soon too, so i'm looking forward to that. 

the only things that suck right now are college football and the stock market. oh well, guess ya can't have everything.... 

til next time.

beach/baseball/bar

well this weekend was quite fun filled. bert was in town, so saturday we went to the la jolla beach, then the padres game, then a really high up bar (22nd floor0 that had a kick ass view of the ballpark. david luke was getting in on with some LA taiwanese chicks, it was really funny. i met a guy named peter that is going to give me free passes to sea world. so hopefully i can go with sarah when she's in town for work.
it's weird not being around when the dbacks are home... this is my longest hiatus from vending ever. well at least they seem to be winning, albeit to the pirates. but i must admit, i don't miss it too much yet. i'm way too busy in the lab for that. speaking of which, i should be performing my first real data collection tomorrow! woohoo! we still have some questions about the error in the eye tracking system, but hopefully they'll be weeded out with the normalization procedures we're adding. oh! so i may have mentioned that the paper that we thought was a shoe-in for Journal of Neuroscience got rejected... well we (meaning marco) wrote an appeal to the editors and they are letting us resubmit! man, what an emotional roller coaster this paper has been!

cali baby

so i got to san diego last thursday. it was a beautiful and easy drive, except the hour you're going through the mountains and you lose reception and there's no gas stations for 100 miles. but that didn't phase me and my wonderful mazda 3, we kicked that mountain's ass. i believe the fish enjoyed the ride as well... meaning they're still alive. i went to see the dbacks play the padres last night in petco park. it's a really nice stadium. the dog whisperer was there. i guess that's a big deal at petco park. they showed him on the jumbotron with a dog and gave away posters of him at the end of the game. well the dbacks lost which was a bummer, but, and i still can't believe it, i ran into SANTANAMAN! for those of you not privy with the phx sports scene, this guy has season tickets for the suns and shows up at plenty of other events always sporting black sunglasses and a full-rimmed hat. everybody (especially in beer vendor world) knows him. so it was pretty kickass because he bought me a drink and brought me down to his seats which were better than the one i scaled off the street 2o minutes til game time. he said i should go to the next two game too, but i really got to get some work done in the lab. they are going to the del mar racetrack on thursday, so i might join them (santanaman and company) for that. oh, also happen to be sitting next to bob melvin's cousin. nuts. she was a padres fan though.

things in the lab are going great. collected some eye tracking and kinematic data on friday and i've been analyzing it the past weekend and yesterday. i think there are definitely some behavioral differences present between the conditions (yeah, that's vague... but what if you're my subject? i can't fill you in on the details yet!) howard is a cool guy; he took me out to lunch yesterday after showing me the virtual reality setup they have. he's a great guy to talk to.

of course i had to get to the beach ASAP, so i spent some time catching up on journal articles at solana and pacific beach on saturday. met up with brandon (bert's roommate) and taylor (his girlfriend) which was cool. this weekend bert and andrew are coming up to visit, so it's bound to be pretty wild. justin's coming to town too to catch the giants play the padres, so this weekend is shaping up to be pretty busy! and i thought i would be by myself the whole time... sheesh.

ok, time to be productive...

i learned today

that you're not supposed to clean your ears out with q-tips. heh. did anyone else know that?

also, if food has mold, don't eat it, even after picking off the mold. it's already engrained in the whole thing, like roots, ew.

on a side note, cubs fans are a beautiful thing. no other fans drink THAT much on a monday night. gotta respect that.

pink, the color

so it's been 8 days since i've last written anything, wow time goes fast - i was really trying to keep up to date with this thing. not that i have many people tuning in, but whatever. the big boss man was back in town so it was a buzy week. it was nice to actually talk in person; i think we're ready to do our thang at UCSD now. oh, update: i have a place to stay!! it worked out awesome actually. i got the prof i'll be working with there to write me somewhat of a fake UCSD affiliation letter and i got to staying in graduat housing. right on campus. super cheap. so i can't wait to go. i decided to drive so the fish can come along and keep me company riding shotgun.
oh, the title of this post.... i bought a new bike!!! oh wonderful craig's list. it's an awesome 80's shwinn road bike. and it's pink. it's out of my control i swear. i landed a pink phone and now a pink bike, both without my choosing. well i guess that's a lie, i did choose to buy both, but only with no other options left on the table. anyway, i guess that means i'm turning into a girl. yikes. i think i'm just going to embrace it and be free. only took me 25 years to come to that conclusion and get out of my awkward stage. heh. better late than never....

but anyway, i love my new bike. sooooooo much better than the piece of crap i bought from walmart a year ago that already has had 2 flat tires, 2 stolen tires, a broken front brake, a gear shifter than doesn't work properly so the chain gets stuck and makes the petals not work, and it's 300 pounds (more or less). but of couse now i can't ride my new bike for like a month until i get back to SD, i'm trying to figure out if i should try to bring it, seems like a bit of a hassle in the car though... we'll see.

so i'm leaving thursday. i would be leaving tomorrow, but there's no way in hell i'd miss the cubs series monday, tuesday and wednesday. hopefully it will be as crazy as everyone expects... cubs fans are loyal travelers and know how to drink; best two qualities you can ask for as a beer vendor. should be a lot of fun. i don't know how well the turn out will be for the dbacks though since they blew the 4-1 lead in the 9th to lose 5-6 and didn't get webby the win even after he pitch 8 great innings. dammit. now they're tied for the lead in the NL west. they need to win some of these games against the cubbies... guess we'll see...

Another mandatory meeting

The worst part about having a concessions job is the awful meetings that they make you go to all the friggin time. If someone has to tell me to wash my hands and say thank you one more time... Well i'm a wuss so probably listen and just bitch about it quietly. At least I have my phone so writing a post gives me something to do.

Last night our softball team lost in the semifinals, bummer, we totally should have won. That means no more softball til September... Oh well, soccer games will start soon even though i'll miss a bunch of games when in SD, poop.

Well I guess i'll pay a little attention, all I can think about is bbqing later.

domestic engineer

i bought a cookbook today. i decided it's about time for me to stop relying on pasta, jars of tomato sauce and garlic salt as a homemade meal and actually try to start cooking dinner. i stole the title of this post from my labmate lisa, who is truly a domestic engineer, i'm just trying it out as a hobby for now. i don't think i'll ever feel like a real person until i start using the kitchen as it's meant to be used. when i think of childhood, every night my mom had dinner made for us... maybe that's why i've been a slow learner, since i never needed to learn before.

oh but i'm kind of cheating, the book i bought is called '5 ingredients, 15 minutes' or something like that... but hey, it's a start :)

tuesdays

one last thing to share. tuesday are my favorite day of the week because NYTimes Science section comes out that day. every week i take 10 minutes to an hour (depending on how interesting the articles are) to see what's new in the world.

today i learned:
1) a mixed drink with diet soda will get you drunk quicker than a drink with regular soda, but any carbonated beverage works faster than a non-carbonated mixer.
2) snowboarding has more injuries than any other outdoor sport

isn't that useful?

on a side note, i can't believe the mets almost blew a 9 run lead in philly. god it's been difficult to be a mets fan lately. at least the lead in the nl east is now only 2.5 games, hopefully they'll keep it close now. the dbacks have been breaking hearts as well, they had a ridiculous lead in the nl west that is down to nothing. unbelievable... the 2nd half of this season should be an interesting one...

cramp it up

so one of the main reasons i started this blog was because i've been having some trouble writing a 'statement of the problem' for some experiments we are planning on running. basically it's just a few pages about what research questions i want to ask, why i want to ask them, how past research supports the ideas, and how i plan on answering the questions. sounds easy enough right? grrrr. problem is, i need to get this done ASAP because all the experiments need to be run in about 3 weeks since i'll be collecting data at UCSD and i have to get back to ASU at the beginning on the semester to teach. i've written about 2 paragraphs in about 4 days. that's no good. instead i've been searching craigslist for a place to sublet for the month. hopefully i'll find a nice, fairly inexpensive place. i'm excited to spend some time in san diego!! i've planned my trip so i can catch the dbacks playing the padres at petco park a couple days after i get there! woohoo! i'm trying to convince some of my friends to make the trip out as well. i've only been to petco once and that was at the end of a cancer walk, so i haven't seen a baseball game there yet, can't wait! that will bring my tally to 8 ballparks this summer, not too shabby (at some point i'll write a post about my awesome east coast ballpark tour, promise!). it'll be nice to get out of the heat for a bit too, although it really hasn't been too terrible this summer (unless i'm just getting used to az, who woulda thunk?). i'm really looking forward to going to the beach too, i miss the ocean like woah.

ok, i'm going to get this statement finished today! or else i'll be very mad at myself. and you don't want to see me mad.

i'm mobile yo

Just checking out mobile blogging... Here's a picture of me with some of my beer buddies on my night off at the suns game and a picture of me setting up a data collection last week. let's see if this works!
ok, back to work....

basics

i'm creating this blog because life right now is pretty dang awesome and i want to record this epoch of my life to look back on it and smile. at no other time in my life will have the freedom, the opportunities and the fun that i'm having now. not that life in the future will be bad, just different.

so here's a little background:
1) i will always admit to being born and raised a jersey girl. love the beach and the east coast attitude.
2) went to college in Ann Arbor, MI (GO BLUE!!) developed a love of college football and the nba to go along with my love of the nfl and mlb. loved my 4 years there.
3) decided i wasn't done with learning and moved to AZ to get my PhD at ASU in Neuroscience. i'm a total science geek and have been kicking some major ass in my field.
4) through a winding path of coincidences, i wound up getting a job as a beer vendor. aka, getting paid to go to all the valley sporting events and getting a weeks worth of exercise every night... best job ever.
5) conundrum: science and beer vending won't always be so easily meshed into my life. i don't know any of my professors who have such an 'interesting' side job... something is going to have to give... bummer.
6) but for now, let's just ignore that and have some fun.
7) welcome to my diverse, lovable world.