it's october
...my favorite time of year. October! And a beautiful, sunny Sunday in Phoenix to start Autumn off pleasantly. October means Halloween. October means my birthday. October means change in so many different ways for me. And I like change.
I have one coffee cup here at the warehouse. Teri and I found a set of cups at the Asian market, each with a different animal from the Chinese horoscope, and listing the personality type of the person born in the year of that animal. I was born on October 14, 1979, making me a Sheep. Teri's birthday is in 1971, making her a Pig. Hers is all about how many friends Pigs have and how they are nurturing people who place emphasis on the family unit. They are motivated and often go the extra mile to put the finishing touches on projects.
Here's mine:
The Sheep Personality
The most feminine of the animal signs, the Sheep is associated with affection, caring, and trust.
The Sheep is a follower rather than a leader, avoiding confrontation whenever possible and always diplomatic. They have inherent artistic talent which usually finds expression in craftsmanship rather than originality. Suitable careers could well include social work, music, or the crafts although they need strong motivation before they will apply themselves.
Ha! Wow. There are only three sentences in the second paragraph. The first two have "rather"s and the last one an "although" to disqualify any of the decent traits a Sheep may actually possess. Must be because Sheep are so feminine, huh? Everybody knows what a liability that particular characteristic is.
Besides my coffee cup sorta pissing me off, though, things are good! I'm glad I have a minute to actually sit down and write. A lot of stuff is going on, so I have plenty to think about these days.
(1) I am signing the lease for the stone house on Tuesday (that link actually goes to a web page about the history of my house), which makes me soooo happy. The peace and quiet of that place is going to do me a lot of good. There is more to be said about this situation, but first I want to mention the other major things that have taken place or will be taking place soon.
(2) I underwent evaluation at Mesa Community College last Friday, by both the lead instructor and my students. I won't see my students' comments until the end of the semester, but Dr. Brown gave me high marks all around, and added comments like "extremely knowledgeable," and "exceptionally well-organized," then talked with me for about thrity minutes afterward and asked more in-depth questions from my lecture about topics he was a little fuzzy on, especially protein (clathrin) coating of vesicles in receptor-mediated endocytocis. Having taken lots of molecular and cell biology, as well as shit-tons of super advanced neuroscience classes, including synaptic physiology, I know entirely too much about the structure and function of membranes. Which is precisely why I asked for my evaluation to take place when I was covering that topic. I'm glad Dr. Brown obliged.
(3) The 6th Alcor Conference is next weekend, October 6-8. There are going to be present several interesting cryonicsts who also happen to be notable scientists. And there's going to be an informal "poster session" wherein said scientists will present past or current work relating to cryonics, cryobiology, aging, nanotechnology, nanomedicine, and neuroscience. I am supposed to talk about my current project at Alcor, show off my lab space (which is still under construction), and perhaps even talk about my previous research. I will also be listening to many of the talks given by scientists at the conference so I can write reviews for the upcoming Cryonics magazine. Not that I wouldn't have listened to them all anyway, but now somebody cares what I think. And I get to write about it. Best of all worlds. Whee!
(4) Jason has a show in Phoenix on the 8th at 8:00 p.m.. I'll be done with the conference around 6:30 p.m., so I should be able to attend, barring extraordinary circumstances. It will be good to see him outside of the context of Burning Man.
(5) My birthday is the following weekend, October 14. I actually have absolutely nothing planned for that weekend except rest and relaxation. I was supposed to attend the annual Society for Neuroscience conference in Atlanta. Nicholas is flying in from London and is scheduled to give a slide presentation ("Cortical dynamics of face expression aftereffects revealed by magnetoencephalography"). Unfortunately, after such a large down payment on the stone house, I cannot afford to jet off to Atlanta for a few days. And I have classes to teach. It's unfortunate.
(6) li_kao and puddinhed are coming to visit the weekend of the 28th...Scott's working in Tucson the following week and Pud may just fly directly into Phoenix to hang out for a few days beforehand as well. I am postponing my housewarming party to Sunday the 29th so that all of my best friends may be present (except for mrsinner, who is cordially invited). There's some big Halloween party in Bisbee, Arizona, on the 28th that odditory wants us all to attend, but I am going to spend the weekend relaxing with my pals at my new mountain home.
(7) I have invited my parents out to visit for Thanksgiving, and they both sounded very enthusiastic about the prospect. They both want to see me, of course, and the house, but their visit now serves a very utilitarian and economical purpose: to haul out all my stuff on the cheap. Everything I own -- which isn't much -- is in a small Public Storage unit in Dallas. I called around and found that it would cost approximately $2000 to have a moving company load it all up, drive it out, and unload it for me. That's practially more than all my shit is worth! So my plan, instead, is to pay for the rental of a trailer that my Dad (with the help of my friends in Dallas) can load and haul out here with his HUGE Ford pickup truck, and unload it (with the help of my friends in Phoenix), thus saving me an assload of money, probably on the order of about $1500.
Man is it good to have friends and family.
I have one coffee cup here at the warehouse. Teri and I found a set of cups at the Asian market, each with a different animal from the Chinese horoscope, and listing the personality type of the person born in the year of that animal. I was born on October 14, 1979, making me a Sheep. Teri's birthday is in 1971, making her a Pig. Hers is all about how many friends Pigs have and how they are nurturing people who place emphasis on the family unit. They are motivated and often go the extra mile to put the finishing touches on projects.
Here's mine:
The Sheep Personality
The most feminine of the animal signs, the Sheep is associated with affection, caring, and trust.
The Sheep is a follower rather than a leader, avoiding confrontation whenever possible and always diplomatic. They have inherent artistic talent which usually finds expression in craftsmanship rather than originality. Suitable careers could well include social work, music, or the crafts although they need strong motivation before they will apply themselves.
Ha! Wow. There are only three sentences in the second paragraph. The first two have "rather"s and the last one an "although" to disqualify any of the decent traits a Sheep may actually possess. Must be because Sheep are so feminine, huh? Everybody knows what a liability that particular characteristic is.
Besides my coffee cup sorta pissing me off, though, things are good! I'm glad I have a minute to actually sit down and write. A lot of stuff is going on, so I have plenty to think about these days.
(1) I am signing the lease for the stone house on Tuesday (that link actually goes to a web page about the history of my house), which makes me soooo happy. The peace and quiet of that place is going to do me a lot of good. There is more to be said about this situation, but first I want to mention the other major things that have taken place or will be taking place soon.
(2) I underwent evaluation at Mesa Community College last Friday, by both the lead instructor and my students. I won't see my students' comments until the end of the semester, but Dr. Brown gave me high marks all around, and added comments like "extremely knowledgeable," and "exceptionally well-organized," then talked with me for about thrity minutes afterward and asked more in-depth questions from my lecture about topics he was a little fuzzy on, especially protein (clathrin) coating of vesicles in receptor-mediated endocytocis. Having taken lots of molecular and cell biology, as well as shit-tons of super advanced neuroscience classes, including synaptic physiology, I know entirely too much about the structure and function of membranes. Which is precisely why I asked for my evaluation to take place when I was covering that topic. I'm glad Dr. Brown obliged.
(3) The 6th Alcor Conference is next weekend, October 6-8. There are going to be present several interesting cryonicsts who also happen to be notable scientists. And there's going to be an informal "poster session" wherein said scientists will present past or current work relating to cryonics, cryobiology, aging, nanotechnology, nanomedicine, and neuroscience. I am supposed to talk about my current project at Alcor, show off my lab space (which is still under construction), and perhaps even talk about my previous research. I will also be listening to many of the talks given by scientists at the conference so I can write reviews for the upcoming Cryonics magazine. Not that I wouldn't have listened to them all anyway, but now somebody cares what I think. And I get to write about it. Best of all worlds. Whee!
(4) Jason has a show in Phoenix on the 8th at 8:00 p.m.. I'll be done with the conference around 6:30 p.m., so I should be able to attend, barring extraordinary circumstances. It will be good to see him outside of the context of Burning Man.
(5) My birthday is the following weekend, October 14. I actually have absolutely nothing planned for that weekend except rest and relaxation. I was supposed to attend the annual Society for Neuroscience conference in Atlanta. Nicholas is flying in from London and is scheduled to give a slide presentation ("Cortical dynamics of face expression aftereffects revealed by magnetoencephalography"). Unfortunately, after such a large down payment on the stone house, I cannot afford to jet off to Atlanta for a few days. And I have classes to teach. It's unfortunate.
(6) li_kao and puddinhed are coming to visit the weekend of the 28th...Scott's working in Tucson the following week and Pud may just fly directly into Phoenix to hang out for a few days beforehand as well. I am postponing my housewarming party to Sunday the 29th so that all of my best friends may be present (except for mrsinner, who is cordially invited). There's some big Halloween party in Bisbee, Arizona, on the 28th that odditory wants us all to attend, but I am going to spend the weekend relaxing with my pals at my new mountain home.
(7) I have invited my parents out to visit for Thanksgiving, and they both sounded very enthusiastic about the prospect. They both want to see me, of course, and the house, but their visit now serves a very utilitarian and economical purpose: to haul out all my stuff on the cheap. Everything I own -- which isn't much -- is in a small Public Storage unit in Dallas. I called around and found that it would cost approximately $2000 to have a moving company load it all up, drive it out, and unload it for me. That's practially more than all my shit is worth! So my plan, instead, is to pay for the rental of a trailer that my Dad (with the help of my friends in Dallas) can load and haul out here with his HUGE Ford pickup truck, and unload it (with the help of my friends in Phoenix), thus saving me an assload of money, probably on the order of about $1500.
Man is it good to have friends and family.