1. check
2. check
3. check
4. check
5. check
6. check

to be continued.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm thankful that I'm warm and well fed and have a good job and family. I'm also thankful that I can afford to see my family and friends in Illinois this weekend. And I'm thankful for a holiday entirely dedicated to the one thing I am really good at: EXCESSIVE FEASTING.

Have a slice of pie for me, with extra whipped cream. Hell, just have the whipped cream.

living in the future

Let us never speak about my public speaking skills again.

Here are things I'm looking forward to, in chronological order:

1. Drinking beer after study group tomorrow. Study groups should not exist without being coupled to beer drinking.
   
2. Going to CHICAGO. And drinking beer there.
   
3. [Possibly] Making out *
4. Thanksgiving with Shelby! And my family.
   
5. SHOPPING. And drinking hard liquor. With Shelby!
   
6. [Possibly] Making out *
   
7. Seeing my grandparents for the first time in sooooo long. I am a terrible grandchild.
8. Seeing Fastball at Cat's Cradle!
   
9. [Unlikely] Making out **

* Social activity + alcohol ingestion substantially increases probability of making out
** Except in North Carolina, the Bermuda triangle of make-out prospects

Neuro, I can be your boyfriend

Hi, I'm elyse. I listen to Jens Lekman for hours instead of practicing presentations about songbird behavioral plasticity. I dance to the Rolling Stones in my underwear every time I get through a page of a paper about depolarizations in macular tissue. Whatever! I'll just go be a roadie if they kick me out of grad school! That's just as good as having a PhD. My family will be so proud.

Oh, God! What have I done! I came to grad school to have some fun!
The clock on the wall says 4, 5, 6 !
My heart's just not in the scientifics!

Public speaking

Last time I had to give a presentation, it was only five minutes and I spent a neurotic four days practicing and still went dry-mouthed as I stood in front of 20 people with a powerpoint. LAME.

This time I'm taking the maverick approach. I've got a half finished powerpoint and I'm walking around my apartment talking to myself about birdsong. That's the same as "preparing," right? I DO WHAT I WANT.

I've got one of those brain tumor headaches today. It's only on one side of my head, which is new and strange feeling. Owww.

Days that I've been saying I need to go to the doctor: 123
Days that I convince myself that doctors won't help: 123

All right then. Let's not mess up a good thing.

Preface: I am not crazy

I had an interesting paranoid delusion the other day. Don't call the psych ward yet-- I'm no psychiatrist but I'm pretty sure if you can identify something as a paranoid delusion, it's not really a delusion.

Once or twice a week I take the bus to Carrboro to buy groceries, and this gets pretty monotonous. I get a little queasy if I read because it's so bumpy, so typically I use this time for listening to music/assessing my life. I was thinking about how I moved across the goddamn country to change my life, and not enough is changing. I'm happy, but why? Nothing has changed but my location. I moved 1000 miles closer to a certain friend of mine, and I still never see him. I live in this beautiful beautiful place but don't have time to enjoy it. So I was telling myself, change things or go back to Chicago, Elyse, because you didn't come here to dick around, make basically no money, and be 1000 miles from anyone who gives a crap about you.

That's when I started noticing lots of weird little things that you'd only notice if you took the same busride at the same time of day on the same days of the week. There's a boy with a mohawk I admire who always wears the same red plaid jacket. There's the bike (the one identical to my own) that I always notice locked up outside of a restaurant in the same position, with its wheel removed. I started thinking that, if this were A Beautiful Mind or something, all of these little things would be repetitions because my mind can only generate so much material to put in a 'fantasy world.' I like seeing people in mohawks-- there's mohawk boy. It explains how my life can be so superficially different when everything is deeply rooted in the same old bullshit.

And then, to top of all this paranoia, "Carolina in My Mind" came up on shuffle. WTF, life? Why do you fuck with me so much?

So, let me wrap this up by reiterating that I'm not crazy. I don't seriously believe that my entire world was generated as an escapism from my "real life" as an in-patient in a mental ward, and I don't really believe that ALL people in Disney character costumes are out to get me... oh wait, were you not aware of that one? It's called masklophobia and IT IS A REAL CONCERN FOR MANY PEOPLE. Anyway, the point is, I gotta take some action against this inaction.

Things that annoy me today

• When I am riding the bus home with my arms full of heavy, heavy groceries, because I can't afford a car, and there are 20 empty seats on the bus, and some guy insists on me moving my bag so he can sit next to me and not cooperate by leaning over a little when I need to get off at my stop. I am a skinny lady and my groceries crushed my legs, oww, you bastard!
  
• The pregnant "man." Go away, pregnant "man." You have a uterus and ovaries. It is not a miracle you're pregnant.
  
• Chief Illiniwek, and all the sheep from the Illinois suburbs at U of I who can't see anything offensive about him. Especially the girl I know who says people are making too big a deal about offending Native Americans because "they are extinct."
  
• Me, for not sleeping enough. Won't I ever learn??
  

Patch clamp <3

Songs I dedicate to my method-crush, Patch clamp:

• Crazy Little Thing Called Love - Queen
• Why Don't You and I - Santana feat. Alex Band
• Going Out of my Head - the Zombies
• A Case of You - Joni Mitchell

Just another case of unrequited love for me. Alas, Patch clamp, I can't be your electrophysiological girlfriend because you're an incorporeal neuro technique, and I'm a real person. You'll never experience my enthuiastic electrode insertion, and I'll never experience your single cell conductances. We'll have to find that sort of satisfaction elsewhere... for me, probably after a few drinks in a bar. For you... who knows? I don't know your type. You probably like fat, slutty squid giant axons.

(heartbreak.)

FYI

I have been happy here in spite of the lack of making out. For the last three months, it's like some huge weight has been lifted off of my chest. I am no longer depressed and unable to function, like I was in Chicago. I wake up in the morning and I actually feel like getting out of bed and doing things.

I don't know if it's the extra sunlight (Chicagoans do have vitamin D deficiencies), or the academic environment, or my homeopathic antidepressants, or the massive, massive amounts of B vitamins I take to keep my fibromyalgia from acting up... but it's probably a combination of those things.

HOW LONG CAN THIS UNFOUNDED HAPPINESS LAST? It's so much better than unfounded sadness. Now I know what everybody was saying about life and how it's "worth living" and "too short" and "not a cesspool of violent emotional conflict."

On a side note, I have had massive cravings for pop-tarts every time I walk down the cereal aisle since I can remember. I don't let myself eat poptarts because if I started, I'd never be able to stop. So please remind me, when I have babies someday, to never let them have pop-tarts; I'm trying really hard not to damn my kids to a life of suffering via junk-food craving.

FOUR WEEKS
NO MAKING OUT
*head explodes*

Quickies:

1. Why would anyone stalk Sandra Bullock?
2. You might have called me 'toothpick' in high school, but I am going to live forever.
3. Finally, a translation of ancient Greek literature that I am excited about.

Just a sample of what I've been reading instead of blogging! Other things I have been reading: Science articles about ion channel kinetics, and articles about social behaviors and hormones. Mmm, hormones.

did you know!?

... elk and moose are the same animal, with different names on each continent!?
... you can cook pasta like risotto and it tastes delicious?!
... I am getting a FREE FUTON THIS WEEK.

Today was my mom's birthday so I called her, as good children are expected to do. (Being the only child, I must be both the good and bad child; luckily, I forgot that there was no mail today and failed to send her card early enough to arrive on Saturday. That took care of the "bad child.") She was telling me about this "supper club" she and her friends are forming. It has a secret password and once a month, a couple in the club has all the other couples over for dinner. The name of the supper club is "The Secret Spice of Life."

PASSWORD?! SUBURBAN COUPLES!? SPICE!? I am tormented by my suspicions that this is one of those swinger clubs Oprah is always talking about. Now it's even more important that I don't join the world of swinging couples when I get the invitation.

Fear of my parents: perhaps the only moral pillar that hasn't fallen.

APPLICATION SUBMITTED

... one of the most beautiful phrases an automated process has ever said to me. Poetry, really.

On with life. Science is stifling me. I need an outlet. Every week or so I try to adopt the habit most of my coworkers have, which is exercising your stresses away, but I end up stressing about what to do and how stupid I will look doing it. Yesterday I rode my bike around, but since my legs are only about twice as thick as a piece of dental floss... I do not think I will ever be able to bike in the piedmont region. Also, I got lost. Last week I tried running, which was fine, but I can't just run because I will get bored with it eventually. How is it that so many people here use physical activity as an outlet? I feel left out and neurotic. Maybe I will just do what I do best, and that is crappily strum my guitar and/or dance around to the Rolling Stones in my yoga pants.

It has apparently been snowing in the midwest, which makes me extra happy to be living in NC. Sometimes I walk around in the 65-70 degrees November weather and feel like I am living in a tropical area, which is not an accurate descriptor of Chapel Hill as much as a sad, sad reflection of how miserable the midwest is in the winter.

After the UTTER HAPPINESS I felt after Obama's election, I guess I was a little overwhelmed by my workload, because I spent all of Wednesday morning trying not to faint. Mayyyyybe I should buy a multivitamin.

Quick update--

I've been so stressed it's literally making me sick: nausea, migraine, fainting spells. I'm also going through withdrawal from not enough makin' out-- three weeks is a long time. This sort of inhumane suffering robs me of my ability to entertain you with witty malapropisms and outrageously unfounded claims.

Moderate-wing conspiracy

For the record, I have this sneaking feeling that McCain is in cahoots (yes, I said cahoots) with Obama for him to win the presidency and take power away from the 'publicans. I think that moderates McCain and Obama had a couple of beers together a few years ago and decided to rig the game, the way my cousin and I used to play "collaborative Monopoly" against our dolls to take control of the bank. But I don't think that ObaMcCain want to take control of the bank (who'd want to in this economy, anyway?), I think they just wanted to make sure a moderate-friendly government took over post-Bush.

Why do I think this? Because I honestly can't believe that McCain picked Palin thinking it would help him win the election. If he wanted to win, all he had to do was pick some solid, uncontroversial VP , and his ticket would suddenly look like a rock-solid campaign of experience compared to the perception of Obama's naivety. I cannot believe that McCain honestly thought Palin was a winning choice for vice president, and he must have MUST HAVE picked her as a way to handicap his campaign and cede the vote to Obama.

This is my conspiracy theory AKA security blanket. It makes me feel good to pretend, if only for a moment, that America isn't really a place where someone, ANYONE, considers Sarah Palin a legitimate candidate to be a world leader.