Tomorrow I hand in my notice. I plan to start at the new lab on the 14th, which is a year to the day after my first "last day" at the Whittier, before I began my highly enjoyable (and not at all stressful, oh no...) volunteer period [>] I did not plan this exactly, but it is a pleasing little bit of poetic justice for me.

I need to talk to Human Resources and to Dr Langford to find out what paperwork is required, first, to end my current job, and second to begin the new one. Preferably with all my benefits rolling right over and remaining unchanged, since I'm not changing employer, just labs.

That makes it sound like it'll hardly be a change at all, very decieving.

There are too many things whizzing through my mind at the moment.

My parents are here, though they're late showing up at my apartment, Matt and I had dinner with them last night. I had some nice ideas for things to write here, but that all went out the window when I checked my email before coming to Blogger, and found a very important email.

I had been facing a weekend of wondering, as Dr Langford had said it was down to me and one other candidate, and she was going to ponder it over the weekend...evidently she changed this plan pretty quickly, as I found an email this morning offering me the job.

So...excuse me, I must just go take a cold shower, and pinch myself a few times.

They offered me the job...

Hey, cool, they came back!

*waggles finger*

That'll teach Blogger to mess with me.

Where have all my links gone?

The template remains unchanged, so I'm going to wait and see if this resolves itself. Then maybe I'll go buy HTML For Dummies and make my own template so there's nobody to blame but me when it screws up.

I have an interview tonight after work, something in the Medical Department, involving immunology, but he wasn't very descriptive about their research projects. I will find out tonight though! Then I have the second interview for the neuropathology job tomorrow, but I'm not sure of what time yet...

The interviewer on Thursday told me during the course of the interview that it's obvious to her I'll go on to grad school of some variety, I'm clearly too curious and intelligent to want to be a technician all my life...

Coming from a young 30-something PhD who holds a junior fellowship at UCSD, that's quite a compliment.

I've spent the past few years of my life being told in various ways that I'm just not cut out for academia, that I'm not motivated enough, or intellectual enough. Maybe it's time to stop listening to the naysayers and just follow what I want to do.

Like Alice & The White Rabbit All Rolled Into One...
I seem to have spent the last couple of weeks scurrying about thinking "I'm late I'm late"...or something along those lines. There haven't been too many instances of random potions and cakes instructing me to drink or eat them, which is good since my appetite has gone through the roof (probably the result of a drastic decrease in smoke inhilation) and I'm sure I would just blithely follow instructions and end up oscillating back and forth between ten foot two and three inches tall.

The Alice analagy also holds up with my mood, I've been extraordinarily touchy recently, just like so many of the characters in Wonderland, or Through the Looking Glass. It didn't carry across in the Disney adaptation, but Alice really is a bit of a spoiled bitch.

There has been a resurgence of the jolly old low self esteem. I feel slow and stupid, and despite remembering that I've lost a significant amount of weight, and am still toning up every week, I feel fat and plain too on the really bad days. I'm ready to move on from the job I'm in, which leads to the question of whether I'm good enough to get a position anywhere that I would want to work. Would a lab that strikes me as cutting edge and high-powered, with nice people working there thrown in as a bonus, even consider taking me on as their associate?

The answer to this seems to be "yes". I got an email about the interview I had on Thursday, asking me to come in for a second interview with the big boss (who was out of town last week) and mentioning that she hopes I feel that this position is right for me too...

Whew.

Another interview, with the Vice-Chancellor of the Pathology Dept. Or is it Vice-Chancellor of Neurobio...? Either way, I'm getting interviewed by a Vice Chancellor Good thing I own a second pair of smart pants.

My parents are coming in to town on Thursday, I suspect I will show them my apartment for about five minutes and then go to bed! Thank Heavens Friday is a holiday, I will be able to show them around town a little and relax from the chaos that started with the phone message last monday asking me to contact the Neuro/Path lab for an interview.

I still haven't varnished these darn chairs.

Eeeeeeeeek!

I have an interview today!

At least my parents are safe and sound in LA, I was on the phone to my Aunt when they walked through the gates, so I got to meet them at the airport electronically.

But...Interview! Eeeeeeek!

While I'm at it, listing everything that is making me busy this week, I'll add in the highly probable appearance of a Monica on my horizons on Friday, the most concrete arrival of my parents in LA today, followed by their descent to San Diego a week from tomorrow...and have I mentioned that I really need to vacuum? And do the kitchen and bathroom floors? Oh, and varnish the chairs too...

Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me. Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me. Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me. Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me. Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me. Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me. Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me. Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me. Nobody will care about the carpet fuzzies but me.

Why yes, I did have coffee this morning, how did you ever guess?

Whoah!

A nice restful do-nothing (and not feel bad about it) weekend turned into a very busy and productive beginning of the week. Not to mention the first week where I haven't been fried and ready for an extra day's sleep by Tuesday evening.

Yesterday I made some big steps towards putting my financial house in order, such as signing up for online banking, transferring the data into Quicken on my computer, going through and assigning categories to most transactions, tweaking how it's all categorised to suit me...basically playing with a new techno-toy. Now I have a pie chart telling me exactly what percentage of my takehome gets spent in cafes, and how much goes to karate, the statistical analysis possibilities are endless. Hopefully it'll help me budget and save more effectively too.

I also found the website where I can manage my work benefits, and, in the process of finally setting up my 403(b), I discovered that I already have a tax-exempt savings type thingy through UCSD. A compulsory one that all UC employees automatically have built in their names (and deducted from their paychecks). Thank heavens for compulsory automatic deductions, now I don't feel like quite such a wastrel for waiting almost 18 months to set up my retirement scheme.

A voicemail on Monday, and a conversation yesterday are also providing much busy-ness for the next 48 hours, a bit stressful, but overall a very positive thing, and I'm not going to jinx it by publishing any more information. It's just another jigsaw piece.

We Were Wildly Idle All Weekend...
Matt and I swapped undisclosed locations this weekend. Well, I disclosed the location before we set out, but only to check if he was up for a 2-3 hour drive at either end. He took me to the beach in front of the Hotel Del on friday night so we could watch the waves without crazy hippies leaping around nearby fires and trying to borrow his guitar (as is usually the situation on Ocean Beach). Then on to our local cafe, where a very strange looking man (no eyebrows except for the one tattooed over one eye, and his eyes appeared to be completely black) was alternating between a banjo and a guitar, then we went home, where we planned on sitting about with lots of candles lit, but fell asleep on the futon instead. Yes, we are wild and crazy sleepy middle-aged 20-somethings.

Then on Saturday we headed for Idyllwild. There was SNOW! Granite boulders, redwood trees, California oaks, a little creek...and I have to get working, so I can't write any more. But it was lovely, my pants didn't survive the granite and thornbushes though. Or sliding down a slope (made up of said granite and thornbushes) on my ass...

Nap-Time For Little Rosie...
Wow, I woke up today feeling a great need for further sleep, and decided to call in sick, then I didn't surface to conciousness again until after noon had been and gone. I guess I really did need that nap.

I think I've reached, or maybe just left, the far end of the counter-swing to my depression. I went from despondancy and not caring about anything, to taking a bunch of incedentals waaaaay too seriously, and paid for it with a month of on and off migraines and finally some monumental back tension. The massage I had on saturday helped that, but not until it had also provided me with some new and interesting aches of it's own, primarily from the high tension and all the "toxins" being released. There were probably a lot of those pesky toxins now I come to think of it, I have a pretty healthy diet, but I supplement it with a variety of metabolic poisons such as caffiene, alcohol, and nicotene, not to mention the toxic effects of stress, fear, and other emotional body-busters. I have an image of rivers of radioactive green toxins being released from my muscles and connective tissues and running riot through my circulatory system, until they either resettle into new posiitons or get flushed out by the stupid amounts of water I have been drinking since Saturday.

Now I'm eying up my second bowl of home-made raspberry mocha.

Fear not, this isn't me ignoring my own observations of the effects of metabolic poisons, I truly am turning over a new leaf. Smoking has been drastically reduced, and water intake is on the increase. I'm spending less time stressing over life, and more time paying attention to leading it, and fixing the problems. This site gets to see my continuted panics, because that's how I stop them from bouncing around the inside of my skull and get them out of the way so I can get on with things IRL.

Besides not getting lost in Mission Valley any more, I fully intend to stop flipping out about my life until I have solid evidence that flipping out is, indeed, required.

I will also learn (eventually) that a quiet, briefly worded response doesn't indicate unhappiness or resentment, it indicates acceptance. Thanks to Kenny C. for that last hangup.

I have a wonderful, patient man who sees I'm having trouble, and waits until I figure out what's wrong and come talk to him, even if that means weathering me being wierdly moody and ignoring his driving directions. This may sound rather cold to some, waiting until I choose to talk rather than asking me what's wrong, but it works for me because until I know myself what's wrong, asking will only make me more frustrated with my own behaviour and result in more moodyness (and ignoring of driving directions). Oh, and the not asking only applies to the wierd moods, not the palpably upset moods.

So...it's still shitty February, and now it's raining to boot, but it's only February for 4 more days, then it's March, and my parents are visiting, and for me that's a good exciting thing, not something to be stressed over, because they easily entertain themselves following me around for whatever stuff I have to get done and we'll still have plenty of time to sit about talking, and for them to get to know Matt.

It's still shitty February but at least I'm not fruitcaking myself into spasms worrying about what happens while I'm sleeping.

I think my usually shitty January has transferred itself to a shitty February. Or maybe it's just winter all round, this whole quarter-year is one I generally get the blues through anyway.

Unfortunately it's just another bout of combining factors, none of which are anyone's fault (except maybe the BS at work) and all of which will go away in time, though not by my staring at them and willing them to *poof* dissapear. The biggest one currently seems to be the American idea that two weeks of vacation time for an entire year is more than enough to keep the workers rested and happy, thus leading to work hard, play hard and leaving rest and relaxation by the wayside, whimpering into it's mug of hot chocolate while trying to erect a broken deckchair.

Heh, just that little random image cheered me up. Probably because rest and relaxation was also wearing fuzzy slippers and one of those ridiculous beach hats that my Grandad used to wear for gardening.

One of these days I will stop getting lost in Mission Valley.

Maybe it would help if I remember whether I'm supposed to be going East or West though...

Somehow we shall continue to improve our fitness levels and decrease our weights... while I insist on making toffee-chip tollhouse cookies and keep thinking up new variations on cakes to make for everybody. Is it possible that I missed baking? Naw, not at all, I only used to bake a cake most weekends back home, and when I was at college I'd bake something almost every time I went home for the weekend.

However the theory seems to be holding true, I'm pretty sure I gained a little over christmas, but it could also have been leftover bloat from my momentary pregnancy turning into bloat from dehydration, flying and lots and lots and lots or French wine. I finally got up the courage to weight myself again last week, after an absence form the scales of almost two months, and found that I'd dropped either 5 or 10lb more than last time I checked (I can't remember the exact previous weight, but I know I hadn't broken a certin threshold yet). Either way, I know for a fact that this makes a total of just over 40lb lost in a year. 40lb of FAT, pure lard, that I have discarded, actually more than 40lb of lard has gone bye-bye, because I've built muscle-mass too.

So, hooray for whatever it is I'm doing now, and long may it continue. I'm liking this healthy feeling.

I keep feeling the need to sit down and write (or type) but I never seem to get around to doing it, or when I do, my mind alternates between completely blank and way too much stuff to make sense of.

I got carded for cigarettes for the first time in a while, probably something to do with having had most of my hair cut off, so now it's in a cropped curly/wavy messy but very stylish arrangement. Apparantly I look a great deal younger now. It's a little odd to realise that somewhere along the way I crossed the line into thinking of looking younger as a good thing, rather than an inconvenience.

It's near impossible to describe hairstyles beyond "short" vs "long" so: it's short, decidedly shorter than anything that could be called a "bob", but defintely not "cropped" or butch (thanks for that one Marc). I'm also having to fight an urge to make all kinds of silly references to my friend Bob, to whom I had to explain the meaning of the word "bob" in a hairdressing context.

Matt got all his furniture moved in and arranged in his new place, so he's now living about a block and a half away from me, and so is all his stuff. No more hour round-trip drives to pick up something forgotten at the other place. Coincidentally it's three months to the day since I started the move out of my last apartment. I can't believe it's been a quarter of a year since I moved onwards and upwards from the fourth floor to the almost-basement.

I've had a couple of reminders recently of what life was like for me a year ago, indeed, through the whole past year, all the ongoing changes; some gradual, some huge leaps that caught me by surprise weeks later when I realised how different everything had become, and yet how natural the new situation felt. Of course it's a great big plum pudding mix of external and internal changes: losing weight/gaining muscle, throwing out some long standing inhibitions that were way past their sell by date, gaining strengths, finding some good friends, moving into my own place...and I've lost verbal steam. I started talking guitar with Matt and misplaced my thread. Oh well. Time to get a shower.

Every time you see my apartment something has been moved or there's new furniture...

This can no longer happen, as my apartment is now officially full to capacity. Just right at the capacity level fortunately, not overflowing. I found a desk I liked, and that was an agreeable price too, and it fits perfectly. This also can be translated as "it only just fits", both are true. I'm not quite used to the new arrangement yet, there is a definite need for pictures of some variety on the walls now; the best thing is that the desk lamp has banished the slight lack of ambient light that was beginning to bother me. I'm not a fan of gloom.

Rainy day today, I'm very much voting in favour of nap-time, but unfortunately I have this thing called a job, so the nap will have to wait until this evening.

I'm hosting my first ever party on Saturday. Not a little gathering, but a real party, with a theme and everything. The theme is spreading the joys of traditional Christmas Pudding to the various international peoples of my lab. With the added bonus that Rohan was deprived of "chrissie pud" this last festive season, as he was in Wisconsin, and not Australia, so he gets his pudding fix.

Of course, this party will be held mostly on my patio, as the apartment is way too small to fit a dozen people comfortably enough to allow little luxieries such as sitting down, and movement.

Holy Flaming Brandy Batman, I'd better make a shopping list and go fill it. I was starting to dread this gathering, thinking "What have I DONE??" and imagining everybody being way too cramped and having nowhere to sit, the pudding being burnt and a small riot of hungry scientists demanding to be fed. Then I realised that they're all nice people, and even if the pudding is a disaster, we can all go for sushi along University Avenue as a substitute.

What a full weekend, I don't think I'll be able to get it all up here without boring everybody (including myself) to death. Many fun things are exceedingly tedious when recounted.

Suffice it to say that it was the best birthday weekend I can remember, without feeling like I was being made too much of a fuss of, which always ends up feeling somewhat superficial: "we're only here because it's your birthday and we have to..." There was much genial friendliness and even more aimless wandering about Baloboa Park. I got a nifty decorative lamp and a large blue and grey stoneware bowl and matching pitcher. I narrowly escaped being given a diamond ring too, but not in the context you'll assume I'm sure.

The weekends are getting better and better, I just need to work on the bits in between, the days commonly referred to as "work.

Always. Frequently. Sometimes. Rarely. Never.

Those are the options I'm given when I fill out the mandatory update form at my counsellor's office to see if I'm still dysfunctional enough to warrant treatment. My answers have improved (in the sense of the state of mental health they indicate) and the general gist has changed a lot over the months, leaning away from depression and tending more to anxiety. Maybe not the best of solutions, but I can make anxiety work for me a hell of a lot easier than depression.

I usually end up picking either "frequently" or "rarely", the only time I use "never" is in the questions relating to substance abuse, and I don't recall having used "always". It's so definitive, there's so few things that one can confidently apply it to. So I end up sounding like a noncomittal depressive. Anxiotic. Ummm... is there an "-ive" for people suffering from anxiety disorders?

My point is this: there is a world of difference between "never" and "rarely", and just as much of a world between "frequently" and "always". Imagine a friend who always, without exception, turns any situation to being about them and their difficulties, then imagine a friend who does it frequently, but there are still things that remain yours, or a third party's...you probably wouldn't remain around the former very long, but the latter could easily be a good friendship, as long as you can see past the self obsessive tendencies.

I realise that so many negative "never" and "always" things have been eliminated in my life, or downgraded to "rarely" and "frequently" or even the middle-ground "sometimes". On top of that I've gained many positive versions too. Yet sometimes I still focus on the occasional "never" that won't go away. Or the "rarely" that feels like it should be a "sometimes".

I feel as though I have all the right ingredients now, or nearly all. No, I take that back: the only remaining ingredients to be found are seasonings, garnish, the base is there. So I have all the right ingredients... I just need to adjust some of the proportions, or maybe my sense of proportion with regards to some ingredients. A litte more of this a little less of that. Change this one from a smidgen to a splash and that one from a chunk to a chip.

Good Gods, I'm talking in code. But it's mostly for my own benefit anyway, I know what I'm talking about, and by talking about it I've remembered that I really do have the right basic ingredients, and that's something I was nowhere near having a year and a half ago.

So hooray for investigative cooking in the game of life. Experimentation in the creative process of the confection that is my life. It's turning into a damn fine cake, I don't need to fret about the frosting really, it's not the most important part.