Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Cheap Indian Shoes

My shoes are falling apart. I bought them in India about a year ago now. The glue that holds the sole to the canvas has pretty much let go. I’m not sure that they will last too much longer. It’s not a good time to have to go buy shoes. I don’t have the money to buy new ones right now. I have way more important things to spend my money on, like my new computer. But I have to use my shoes to get to work. So I may have to have to just buy new ones. My boss probably won’t pay me if I don’t go to work. What a horrible cycle. I have to go to work to get money. If only I could find a way to get rich quickly, without much work. A “get rich quick scheme”, if you will. I’ll have to see what I can come up with. I’ll let you all know.

Monday, May 16, 2005

And the award for the most naive person in a supporting role goes to…

I’m not sure what my deal is. I must be a homozygous knockout for the having a clue gene. (It’s probably not a good sign that I would say that.) Last Thursday I was sitting at home eating dinner minding my own business and my roommate asks me if I want to go to some coffee house that has live music. So I’m like, yeah, that sounds good. So he goes out for a little during the early evening and then comes back later and wants to go to a sports bar where we can watch the basketball game. Now I don’t care about basketball but I like beer so it’s not a total loss. So we stop at one for like 2 minutes on the way to the one that he wants to go to. I’m thinking that’s kind of weird but whatever. So we sit down at one place and get a beer. He finishes his pretty quickly and half way through my beer he’s like man lets jet. There’s still a quarter left in the game and half of my beer too. I said that too him and he says I’ll help you with the beer and pours half of it into his glass. Now I didn’t pay for the beer but it seems to me that when you buy a beer for someone you should probably let them drink it and not take it back. So we leave that bar when he finishes my beer for me and we go to another place. We see the last 30 seconds of the game at the third bar. Then we leave. I’m like wow that was pretty much a wasted night. But at least I didn’t pay for the half a beer I had. So then at the car he sees 2 girls walking though the parking lot that he had seen in the bar. So he says hey they were in the bar, they’re checking us out. They’re doing the same thing we are, I’m going to go talk to them. That’s about when it hit me that the night wasn’t about the game so much as cruisin’ for chicks. Way to stay on top of things Pete. You’re sure to win this prestigious award next year too! Ahh well, at least I got half a beer.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Slow Down There!

So now that I’ve moved into my new, new place in DC it’s time for me to figure out how to get to work. Not that I haven’t been going to work. It’s just that I have to find a faster way there that won’t make me go broke. If I park at the metro station near me, it costs $10 to park and ride. Today I drove up to where I used to live and rode the bus and metro from there. So I didn’t have to pay for parking and the Metro ride is cheaper since it’s not as far. But the busses are so unreliable that it added like 20 minutes of just waiting at the station. During that time 2 busses that I should have been able to take were supposed to have come. But they didn’t. I can’t believe that the busses in DC are so bad. Inconceivable! So I’m going to drive up there again tomorrow and see if I can park closer to the station so that I can walk to and from the station easily. That should help me to cut my time down to about an hour. That’s not that bad for the DC area.
Work was about normal. The experiment that I’ve been working on didn’t work. It worked last time. So it should take another try or 2 before it works again. That will give my boss plenty of time to give me dirty looks and reconsider why he hired me. But then that’s life when you have an anti-science zone around you.

Friday, May 06, 2005

Boxing Day

Well, it's come. I'm moving tomorrow. I'm moving to a new house in the DC area. After living in the Town House that I'm currently in for 3 weeks, my roommate told me to leave because there is a possibility of personality conflict. One would ask, “”did you pee on his bed? “No”, I would answer. I have been watching a lot of TV. He would rather I didn't watch TV or spend time in the living room so that he and his girlfriend can have the living room alone. But mostly, he wants to have a friend of his move in instead of me living here. It would have been better if he had just told me no, I can't live here before I moved to the area. But then I guess if he had told me upfront then it would go against his character of being a dick.

So I'm moving. I'm not excited because now I'm worried that everybody in DC is like that now. Like this new guy will be all stupid like the guys I'm living with now. Probably he’s better. He’s not as bad as these guys. I’m just worried because of the experience that I’m having now. Yesterday the one roommate told me that he would be able to help me move but then today he told me that he has to work. How nice for him. I haven’t seen the other one. Which wouldn't upset me but we do have some things to settle. Also I haven’t told him off yet because I figured that things around here are bad enough. I was hoping for the chance to do that after I left. But we'll see.

Anyway, I'm all packed up with everything in boxes. I'm just waiting to start tomorrow. It'll be good to get out and finally get settled. Since I've been here for a month already. Seems like its time to get settled in. Plus my boss hasn't figured out that i'm jinxed and that there is a zone around me in which science can’t be done. Once he figures that out work won’t be so fun. So I’d like to have things at home going well before he realizes that. Then I’ll have to deal with all this crazy stress at work. I won’t be able to take the stress from both sides.

Monday, May 02, 2005

In The Fast Lane To Hell

Actually I just merged from the entrance ramp to the highway. I put ear tags on some mice and I took tail snips so that I could genotype them. When we used to talk about the animal trials going on at Pitt, we would talk about different ways to do an experiment. One way was just as good as the other it just meant that you would go straight to hell rather than taking the slower way. I should take this opportunity to point out that I’m not against animal trials. They are useful. They save lives, teaching us about how drug therapies and other procedures can help doctors. CPR was invented on dogs. My lab at Pitt was working on a solution to replace normal saline that would protect the organs better than saline does. Research isn’t always done in a good way, respectful of the animals that God created for us to rule over. But animal research done in a moral way is a good thing. I would just rather that someone else was doing it. Preferably far enough away so that the lightning blot won’t hit me.

Does anybody know why we don’t cast lots anymore? I’ve been wondering that for some time. Thing would just be so much easier if, when I had a decision to make, I just pull out the old sacred dice and toss them down the craps shoot. Where should I live? Should I take this job or wait for another one? Should I hop on a plane and visit Dave in Australia or Lori in India? I’m just saying. That’s one tradition that we should have kept from the Old Testament.

For those keeping track, the title for the April 28th post is from the Ice Tea song (Ain’t Nothin’ but a) Hoochie Mamma.