Passion

 Good things are coming up! I'm starting to get excited.

I finally booked plane tickets to go see my mom in May. My original plan was to call her, like, Thursday while she was at work (the Thursday before Mother's Day - and my birthday) and ask her what her Mother's Day plans were. When she said "nothing" or "just hanging out" I was gonna reply, "Aw, that's too bad. I wish we could go out to dinner or something." And then she'd come home and I'd be IN THE KITCHEN and we'd go out to dinner and it would be totally awesome.

You know, planning surprises is REALLY HARD. So she knows about the visit now, but I'm going for a nice long five-day visit, and we both have the opportunity to make sure we get all those days off work, so we'll have plenty of time to spend hanging out together. I haven't seen her in a year and half, which is absurd and totally unacceptable, so I'm really really looking forward to this visit.

There's a bunch of other stuff on the horizon for this summer. First off is a casual get-together with House Cup friends in June - people from around Michigan and some of the connecting states are going to meet up for an afternoon potluck type thing. I've met most of the people who are coming, so it will be a nice chance to chat with some friends I don't see often.

July gets really crazy. Or, the third weekend in July is crazy. The Michigan Brewer's Guild Beer Festival is on the 22nd and 23rd, and I've been looking forward to it since LAST July. I've been to the festival the last two years, and it's just awesome. It's such a fun gathering, and there are hundreds of different beers to taste. The atmosphere is fabulous, and the company is even better.  This year, sadly, Jim's sister is getting married that Saturday, so we won't be able to spend the whole day there, but I do plan on taking most of that Friday off work so we can spend all of Friday at the festival.

August looks clear at the moment, except for maybe a fiber festival on the other side of the state...

The first weekend of September is going to be the highlight of the summer this year. I've been talked into attending DragonCon in Atlanta. There are several House Cuppers (Slytherins, actually) who live there, and my House Cup friend from San Francisco is going to be meeting up with them down there too, so it was really inevitable that they'd talk me into going. Plus, James Marsters, Felicia Day, and Anne McCaffrey will be there. It's a huge convention for nerds. It's going to be four days of epic drunken House Cup nerdery.

In the meantime, the sun is slowly returning to these parts. It's making me cheerier and giving me more and more energy. I feel less like sitting in the dark in my apartment and hiding from the world, and more like MAKING things and DOING things and SEEING people and GOING places. I need to start channeling all that energy somewhere (and I miss living in California, where I remember this energy being so much more powerful...).

This evening I started working on a costume for our Friday night gaming group. One of our members just had a baby (and was our DM, and is not going to be attending for the forseeable future), so we've switched to a new campaign for the next several weeks. I'm playing a witch, the kind who lives in a secluded hut and has branches in her hair and is a little crazy but makes the most effective potions you've ever tasted.  So I scored some free glass test tubes from work and spent this evening brewing up the perfect potion. I settled on water, butter, xanthan gum, and food coloring.  Then I had to figure out how to cap the tubes, which was a bit more of a challenge, but wax-soaked cut-up-sweater-squares glued and then tied on seem to have done the trick. None of them are leaking yet!

Now I just need a stuffed weasel (on its way overnight from amazon.com!) and a black skirt I can shred and tie branches into...

I had a dream this morning that I went back to UCSC. I'm not sure what my excuse was for being there, but I was going to be there for an entire quarter. I got on a bus at the metro station, and was really confused that it was labeled h2, but when I asked a girl on the bus she informed me that it was the replacement for the 20 and that it went on pretty much the same route up through campus. So I chatted with her for a minute, and enjoyed the sun streaming in through the bus windows. I got off at the classroom unit building, which in my dream was on the west side of campus near the base (weird). I went inside thinking I was going to sit in on an English lecture that I knew Jamie was in, but I sat down next to the undergrad from my RNA seminar here at Yale, and he told me there was going to be a quiz instead of a lecture. I laughed, said I didn't want to take a quiz, and left the classroom.

I headed up towards the center of campus, realizing that I was madly in love with it and didn't want to leave again. I remembered that UCSC held Camp Birchwood over the summer (I don't know how the hell my brain melded summer camp in Minnesota when I was 13 with my Santa Cruz college experience), and that if I was a camp counselor I'd have an excuse to stay. Then I remembered I hate kids.

There was also some weird stuff with me in an apartment building that wasn't mine, trying to find a t-shirt, and something about dogs, and my Santa Cruz experience having been fabricated by someone else and not by me. I don't really remember that segment of the dream....

Now that it's spring here in New Haven, and the sun soaks into my skin and makes me giddy, I feel like it would be difficult to leave. The weather really shouldn't influence my decision, should it? You can't choose your grad school based on weather. Silly dream.

Today:

6:15. Ignore alarm.
8:45. Wake up and think, "Damnit! Didn't wake up to read papers." Roll over.
9:05. Scramble out of bed and get dressed in a hurry.
(9:14. Note that internet isn't working.)
9:35. Buy breakfast and coffee.
9:55. Arrive in lab.
10:00-11:50. Work in lab, read papers.
11:50-12:30. Read papers in panicked sort of manner.
12:30-1:10. Buy lunch, ride shuttle. Still haven't read second paper.
1:10-1:20. Lie in sun. Be amazed that sun came back, despite all evidence that it had permanently deserted New England. Decide to become sun worshipper.
1:30-3:30. Sit in class and feel depressingly stupid for not remembering pKa information.
3:30-4:00. Rush home, grab nice clothes, walk hurriedly back to lab (make mental note that am wearing tank top outside for first time in seven months).
4:00-5:05. Work in lab.
5:05-5:06. Throw PCR in machine, neglect to set up culture for tomorrow, rush out door.
5:25-5:30. Arrive at Pierson, change into nice clothes, arrive early at Fellow's Dinner. Feel on top of things.
5:30-8:35. Fellow's Dinner. Eat expensive food, drink expensive wine and cognac, and discuss world politics and religion with educated real adults while supposedly representing... some population (grad students? Pierson students? geneticists?). Pretend to be knowledgeable on these topics, while admitting uninformedness to fellow graduate affiliate. Reveal plans to not be graduate affiliate next year.
(Side note--had conversation about PhD program. Which title is more impressive, geneticist or biochemist? I vote biochemist, but was voted unanimously against by the four other people involved in the conversation. Thoughts?)
8:35-8:45. Escape from fellow's dinner and walk home.
8:45. Arrive home feeling exhausted yet strangely happy.
8:47. Realize internet still doesn't work. Begin computer struggles.
9:00. Get internet working again.
9:02. Uninstall unnecessary programs to keep computer from being sluggish.
9:03. Try to listen to This American Life, realize computer sound no longer works.
9:04. Take moment to bang head on table.
9:05-10:46. Search entire internet for help getting sound working again.
10:46. Mention problem to Rico Suave Sex God over AIM.
10:47. Install file under link Sex God sends.
10:48. Sound works again.
10:49. Take moment to bang head on table.
10:50-10:55. Update lj.

Gonna go read/take a shower/knit/sleep/rinse and repeat now.

Briefly, in other news:
Started new lab rotation, like it. Favorite cousin engaged; I will be in Utah in July for the wedding (Yaaay!). Did not get NSF grant, do not know anyone who did; feel stupid about this. Am so poor can no longer afford laundry/groceries/anything else; am still buying coffee in the mornings--clearly unsettled in the head. Luckily, was told this morning that new lab has free coffee made every morning by lab tech, is plenty for rotation students.

Right, bout that shower/knit/read/sleep thing.

( EDIT: Oh yeah, and... )

I guess my attempt at dreaming of sunny things paid off. Last night I went to read in bed around 9:30. I woke up at midnight and again at 7, at which point I realized I was still wearing my clothes and my contacts, and there were books and papers littered around me in the bed. So I pushed them all to one side, rolled over, and went back to sleep. And between then and 10, when I finally woke up and crawled blearily out of bed, I had the most beautiful dream.

( Cut for a bit of graphic sexuality and a bit of nostalgia and just generally more than you want to know about the inner workings of my subconscious )