new month, new institution

Well, here I am in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Or is it Urbana-Champaign? Who knows these picky local details. Suffice it to say, I am currently a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I am busy learning all kinds of techniques (and even showing off a few of my own). I got funding to do a research exchange here through something called EDEN - the Evo-Devo-Eco Network, a National Science Foundation research coordination network. That basically means that I'm here for the next few weeks to try out some new techniques, and learn some new skills.

So far, so good. I arrived on Monday evening, and I've already done loads of stuff. I would go into details, but the techniques that I'm doing aren't that exciting when you start to explain them. Molecular techniques sound really cool and difficult, but appear to boil down to adding minute quantities of things to very small tubes and sometimes transferring them to other tubes. I would wait for the video if I were you. Ah, video. Part of the funding requirements are that I produce video of the protocols that I'm learning here as a resource for the developing Evo-Devo-Eco community. Which will be completely non-entertaining to do, but hopefully useful for someone else.

I seem to have arrived at a rather opportune time. Aside from it being well and truly spring here, there is also the EbertFest - Roger Ebert's very own film festival, held in the refurbished and beautiful Virginia Theatre. I went to Metropolis on Wednesday, and it was spectacular. Tomorrow night, more movies!

I'm living in Graduate/Married Student housing, which is quiet and spacious. A little too quiet and spacious. After spending a month in Panama with four housemates, being alone is a bit of a shocker. Especially after having spent Easter weekend at home.

But I'm very busy. And I've decided to start up a running program again. I found a really nice route though - across the park, through the Japanese tea gardens*, across the street to the university large animal veterinary barns. Round barns no less.

Tomorrow is Saturday, so I'll sleep in a bit, but then there's lab work to be done, and assorted other work to catch up on. But I'm planning to head out with my camera, so I'll post some pictures soon. There's also the marathon run this weekend, so bus service will be somewhat sporadic, so a good reason to go out for a walk.

So, while being away from home is less than ideal, I'm having a great time and learning a lot of things. Which I guess is the whole point. That and taking advantage of seeing great movies!



*There is actually a Japanese tea house a stone's throw from my apartment. Tea ceremonies are Thursday afternoons. Yes, I will be skipping out of work early to take part.

pulling me back to shore

pulling me back to shore a photo by anyram on Flickr.

Ever since the earthquake and ensuing tsunami in Japan, I have been thinking about this place, Matsushima. I took this picture about four years ago, hitch-hiking my way south from Sapporo to Kyoto. It's a little bit north of Sendai, and purported to be one of the three most beautiful places in Japan. We got a ride from a young guy with a souped up car and three cell phones that he seemed to be talking on all at once while he drove us from the highway into this little tourist town.

Although this place is in a protected bay, and was spared much of the damage from the tsunami, nearby towns have been destroyed and lives lost. I'm lucky though. My friends in Japan were not affected by the disaster, but I can't help thinking about this little town, the beautiful coastline, and the people I met there.

itchy itchy, scratchy scratchy

From shoveling snow to swatting mosquitos. Yup, back in Panama.

I'm caught between being happy to be here and getting to work, feeling guilty and somewhat embarrassed about not having gotten down here sooner, and sad to be away from home. And then there's the constant feeling of being overwhelmed by everything I want/need to accomplish.

I'm taking a weekend of relative ease, mostly to plan my next moves while I'm here. I have about a month before I start moving around for the summer. The plan so far? After Panama, a weekend at home for Easter, then off to Illinois for a research exchange. After that, a month at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. A weekend in the Paris of the Prairies for family and celebrations, and then a week of vacation with my fella' on the Canadian East Coast. That takes me into July. Not bad, knowing where I'll be for at least the next four months.

At any rate, posting will probably continue to be sporadic. Ideally, I'd like to accomplish three months of work in a little over one, so it's safe to say I won't have a lot of spare time. If you've actually kept reading this blog despite my complete lack of posting, then you are indeed a dedicated reader.

bad bad grad

Well that was an unproductive month*. It's a good thing September is over, because it was a crappy month anyways. August was fun: presentations, coursework, unexpected funding... and then September was all writing and wasted efforts. Though as my roommate pointed out, I did do a lot of reading that should be useful in the long run. Here's hoping October will make things happen.

But instead of buckling down to get things done, I'm running away for a week to recover some sanity. Hopefully the distance from work for at least a few days will give me new impetus to do that buckling down and actually accomplish something. Which would be a good idea, seeing as this semester I have to jump through some scholarly hoops, and prove to my committee that I can stay in school.**


* Why yes, I suppose we are already a week into October. Don't tell me that. I want to live in my little dream world where time pauses because I still have things I need to do. Either way, September still sucked.

** Which I'm sure will be fine if I ever finish writing my proposal. The one for my thesis, not the other one I was writing (that we didn't even submit). Gah. Stupid proposals.

Well that must have been at least 20 minutes of effort. It must be time for a break.

That's about how my brain is functioning these days. I guess that's the trouble with proposal writing - there's always something else that you would rather be doing.

Clean the cat litter? Super!
Make some more coffee? Why not!
Check the facebook status of everyone you know? Valuable use of time!
Download more references? I'm sure they'll come in handy eventually! Even if you don't read them!
Check the news in three different languages on at least 15 different websites? Can't hurt to know what's going on in the world!
Update your blog? Hey, at least it's writing!

I've also decided that I need to see home, so I splurged and bought a very overpriced flight to Montreal. Just don't tell my supervisor. I'm sure it's a terrible idea, at least considered from the work perspective, but then again, I haven't seen my home since June.

In other news, I have plenty of embryos, but no protocols worked out to preserve them. I'm sure they'll stop producing as soon as I figure out what I want to do with them. Because of course, I am interested in early stages. Fingers crossed that it doesn't become an issue. At least fixing embryos will be contributing to actually getting some data for this thesis, and not just compromising my sanity with never-ending proposal writing.

lazy hazy crazy

Today was supposed to be all productive and writing, but that hasn't worked out so well. At least updating is writing and that's much closer to what I should be doing today than aimlessly surfing the interwebs.

It's been a busy month. That policy course I was taking, while officially over, now refuses to finish. We are still doing interviews, etc. and the course ended nearly two weeks ago. Uncharacteristically, I am not being very helpful to the group paper we are putting together. But I have bigger fish, er, snails to fry. Preferably in garlic and butter. I am in the process of writing grant proposals, but extra funding for my project has materialized, seemingly out of thin air for me to go in a very interesting direction. And not exactly in a direction that I thought I would be moving into: next generation sequencing and transcriptomics. I don't know what that means either*. I am very excited and overwhelmed by it all -- it's not every day that people are coming to you wanting to give you extra money for research.

So that's all very good.

My next feat will be to move into my office. I have a key, all I'm missing is a desk. That isn't being used by someone else. Long story short, some people may look like grown-ups, but they behave like children. Especially when it comes to sharing.

So, the next few weeks I will be reading and writing, writing and reading. With a short break to go out collecting. And getting a better idea of what exactly I want to do with my new-found research monies.




*Okay, that's not true. Mostly.

it's raining ants

Two things I forgot (or tried to forget) that I didn't like about living in the tropics:

1) Ants are everywhere. Especially my kitchen. We have a serious issue with some kind of little tiny ants that go everywhere, and get into all of my food. Including this morning's breakfast. I'm not impressed when my cereal has legs. On the plus side, at least I noticed before I started eating.

2) Rain. It rains a lot, and when it does I just want to sleep. And as an added bonus, it makes it hard to catch the elusive taxis.

That is all.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.