Busy work week albeit only 4 days. I finally got a start on sectioning these aorta samples from infant hearts. The valves were defective and resectioned in surgery; the surgeon is also a researcher and is interested in the protein complement local to the sutured areas so I’ll eventually be taking measurements on the proximal and distal regions of these tiny hunks of meat.
Eventually because as it turns out I had to put the samples back in the deep freeze until I get my Hepatitis B vaccinations sorted out (Health and Safety, dontchaknow). After that, my work week slowed considerably.
The weekend was hectic or, should I say, IS hectic. Me and Jax took Tuesday and Wednesday off to extend the Bank Holiday weekend to 5 days. All shed work, all the time. The photo is Shedinburgh Castle peaking out over the Tram cut.
Fines and fees: £45. Almost, but not quite, fuck all running.
Went through another of The Notebooks. Here’s a collection of excerpts:
89°F, high humidity. Carb replacement: pint of chocolate soy milk mid-run, pint of Bud Light @ Mellow Mushroom, after.
4 August 2001
Cartoon from The Flagpole, the torchbearer of all things Athens, GA
Saturday after the Architecture Boat Tour, we went back to the hotel for drinks and muscle relaxers to ease my back spasms. Then, Blue Chicago for the evening, leaving at 1 am. Up at 5:30 to head to the race, but only the El was running (well, the El and me) so I still had to put in 3½ miles just to get there. Finished, then another 1¾ to the nearest station. Slow, but I bet I was the first finisher who could blow 0.08 at a DUI stop.
9 September 2001, writing up Chicago trip before heading home the next day
Flew home. Rain, traffic awful. Got to Debra’s to pick up Bobo at 8:30 pm then started packing for Edinburgh.
10 September 2001 entry ( rushing around before interview trip to University of Edinburgh)
Hijacked airplanes destroyed World Trade Center and part of Pentagon. Shock, drinking. Still sore from Sunday. Trip delayed.
11 September 2001 (the need to rush was lifted around 9 am this day)
4.4 miles at the Bot Garden. Sore first mile then picked up pace. Averaged 7:10 per mile.
12 September 2001, no further mention of terrorism until travel resumed in a few weeks
The Harry Potter forehead scar came from the bike wreck. This is all I know for sure about Harry Potter.
Backpack list for long A-to-B runs: compass, maps, bus and train schedules for the day, notebook and pen, water bottle, snack, dry clothes, strippenkaart, vordeelurenkaart, ID, cash, pot, eyedrops, neusspray.
Part of the planning for “Run Across Holland” which went on the duration of my two year postdoc position. The national cycle/fiets map I blackened in with runs to connect the, first, east-to-west then north-to-south jogs has long since fallen apart.
Some random other photos. Above, 20 July 2004 we were back in Athens and voting in the primaries. Below is from earlier than June 2002 (when the photo was finally developed), showing the proper, minimal supplies to write a dissertation:
In April 2005, I drove a University of Georgia van to Blacksburg, Virginia to pick up a gifted mass spectrometer. Went for a few hours run in the wilderness area nearby and discarded the soaked shirt with George Bush as Alfred E Neuman as I emerged still far from the vehicle.
This notebook, covering nearly 5 years, overlapped quite a few others; but, this was the ‘official’ run log for the period. At the back, lists of races and notable runs were tallied for the first time…and, long before my naming at a hash, there were hashes listed here. Excellent memories considering how shit everything in this one seems to be.
For decades (back to my teens), when asked about the path to one story or another, my stock reply has been (and is), “yeah, well, there was an incident.” You know, like, “Bun, where are your clothes?” or “how did you go from Atlanta cab driver to internationally known* academic?” are answered, completely, with, “there was an incident.” {* note that “known” does not equal “respected.”}
The Uni defines inicident this way:
“An incident is an unplanned, uncontrolled event that has led to damage or losses to property, equipment, materials or the environment.”
Grain of salt: they also promote this graphic on Accidents, Incidents’ more serious sibling:
Key: Lifting an upside-down box leads to flatulence. Magnetic tools may be drawn to the plate in your head. The colour of your blood appears vastly different depending on the background, but if this applies to you pick your hand up off the floor. Dancing with a cylinder near nuclear waste receptacles is not advised.
Continued work on the bedroom door, started cutting the skirting boards for the 2nd bedroom, and took delivery of the fireplace inserts. Approached a work colleague who fosters kittens about keeping us in mind when the foster-kitten season starts (now that the major noisy work is done, we need a kitty).
Wednesday at 5pm GMT, Jenna Ryan and Jake Angeli lost their chances at pardons for their misguided misbehaviour and now face long stretches in a Federal lockup. Seinfeld speaks for most of us in this case:
Fines & Fees: As the kitty bulges with the cash and is likely to accumulate several thousand pounds by the end of the year, we decided to take the monthly F&F and pay down the principal on the mortgage. This is actually an incentive to bad behaviour covered by these debits but, hey-ho, it will be nice to get out from under this debt however we manage it. £30 in fines, £34.50 fees.
Asymptomatic COVID testing has been in place for students since last term but it is now open to employees who have to travel in and have contact with students, other techs, and visiting personnel. I’ve been running what for me is a high fever but since my normal body temperature is 36C (96.8F) and my raging furnace only brought it up to just short of 37C (98.6F) I was able to skirt the thermometer gun toting gatekeeper and get my weekly test of the gag reflex (still negative for the virus, btw).
Oh, Jackie works at an NHS hospital (several, in fact) and got her first COVID vaccine jab Friday. Follow-up due in April but this is already a massive relief. I’m hoping that my occasional time spent at the Medical and Dental Schools will allow me to queue-jump a little, too, but I’m not expecting my first one for a few months (unless the GP or my pharmacist rings to say there is a dose going spare at the end of a vial at the end of the day).
My run mileage dropped off with recuperation from last week‘s dental work and whateverthefuck that illness was. I did finally manage to fit in Commute #4 of the year on Friday by leaving the lab as soon as a vented instrument was put back under vacuum and the bake-out started. Total for the week: 17.6 miles.
Finally, Hank Aaron died. In the 70s, the Braves were my hometown team and they were regularly the worst in the Major Leagues. You could often hear conversations all the way on the other side of Atlanta Fulton County Stadium so few were we true fans. There were only two bright spots in this long, dark period: one was the time I looked up to see a Jack Daniels bottle hurtling above left field and smacking Pete Rose in the back of the head, and the other was Hank’s 715th home run (watched on tv as you couldn’t get tickets for love nor money until the day after the record was broken, when season ticket holders would throw their’s out car windows while driving by before games). RIP.
Commute #3 was an uneventful canalside jog to the labs Monday in cool (but warmer than the past couple of weeks) mist. Commute #4, planned for Friday, was postponed due to continued pain and swelling from dental work.
I threw a LARGE filling from the upper, left, front premolar (the one next to the canine tooth up and over there) two days before Christmas. It was from the second repair of a root canal in the mid-80s and, unsurprisingly, the inside half of the tooth broke off a couple days earlier but after a dentist made plans to extract it this week. Pity, because otherwise it was a healthy bone with a long root (hence the slow recovery from this injury).
It was mildly infected (and there were some bone slivers STILL working their ways out on Sunday) and Friday night the infection spread enough that I suffered a migraine in the night and most of yesterday. Fucking miserable but the body is taking on the infection without antibiotics and the swelling is almost completely gone, now. Whew.
Other news…
At work, we don’t usually do lipidomics and try to steer clients that seek that sort of analysis to other facilities but there was grant money for this junior researcher at another uni to try something with one of the facilities in a West Midlands consortium (mine is part of this) and with no money of hers and no expectations of success from us I’ve been using the lockdown weeks to develop some methods for her samples and am now considering offering this as another revenue stream. If this doesn’t develop into a shit show…an oily, fatty shit show.
House news: 2nd bedroom, living and dining rooms (as well as the kitchen) still look like they’ve been abandoned after looting but we’ve scheduled a full week off soon to install the fireplaces then have a headlong run at the remaining rooms — in the order listed, above — to have the house itself finished mid-summer.
Fines + Fees = £20 + £28.30 = £48.30 with two days F&F free. £24.50 of the fees were for wine and booze and the fines were for a missed yoga/hobby day and a “double dip” the night before the dental surgery.
A bottle of Sea Dog rum to find when we bring the Christmas decorations down next year
Despite the coup attempt at the US Capitol, this was a sedate week. We mounted the skirting boards in the bedroom yesterday and finished the painting today and started whittling away at the Winterval Holiday leftovers and other excess in the fridge so we can settle back into a winter dining routine.
Friday I received an email to the effect that due to the National Lockdown I should minimise my presence on site but as I have multiple sites I can spread my on-campus presence around to be immediately available 5 days per week. And, with the spirit of the directive being that I should work remotely I’ll consider heading in late or home early on Mondays and Fridays (when I am housed, alone, in the FTICR lab down at Chemistry), I provided some in person training till noon then some of my ICR work ahead of 2021 Commuter Run #2 in heavy snowfall along the iced over canal paths next to the iced over canal. Brilliant.
Thursday I went to the dentist about the filling I threw the week leading into Christmas. Looks like the tooth is not salvageable as it has already been repaired twice AFTER a root canal nearly 35 years ago — the tooth was among those damaged or knocked out in a motorcycle mishap in Atlanta back in me and J’s first months together.
The earlier part of the week was quite copacetic but snowy and icy.
So, next winter’s holiday fund is already up to £109. I wonder if I should use this for the kitchen refurb fund, instead.
No devastating obits — to me, at least — although Gerry Marsden singing “Ferry Cross the Styx” is stuck in my head. Pleasing obit of the week goes to that scumbag woman who met her maker in the Capitol (no I will not, “say her name,” but do invite comparisons to Ethyl Rosenberg, Benedict Arnold, and Alfrich Ames).
Sixth-floor Biosciences Tower stairwell landing last Monday
January 1 started around 8 am with a hearty breakfast and NO RESOLUTIONS but instead a set of Fines and Fees to highlight and possibly curb poor behaviour. The idea is that you shouldn’t get high before 4 on a workday (or the conclusion of a workday if, for instance, taking the afternoon off or finishing a house project early for the day). Work related drink is exempt as are pints on runs (if pubs ever reopen…we’re in Tier 4 now); £10 fines for early doors and another £10 if mixed drink and drug intake is on the same day (complete exemption, though, for any day psychedelics are employed).
Spotted from bus; brilliant because for our Boris to complain would return focus to the biggest lie of Brexit
There is also a £10 fine for failing to either spend 30 minutes playing uke or guitar or 30 minutes doing some reasonable form of yoga. An additional £10 gets tacked on for the aggravating factor of doing absolutely fuck all for the day (anything qualifies as “productive” so this really requires professional level sloth).
The fee structure is this…pot costs £1 per gramme to use regardless its source. Any drinks not paid for at a pub or restaurant also incur a £1 fee (shot of booze, can of beer, 150mL of wine).
The kitty for these will be held until Thanksgiving when we decide how to spend the largess of my lard-assed-ness. (Note from February: we decided to use it to pay down the principal on the mortgage rather than have that much cash laying around.) After the first 2 days, it has already reached £33 and I am considering spending a pound when I finish this line.
The bike was at about the halfway mark of the canal run
Work recommenced today (3 Jan) and I had my first commute run of the new year. It has snowed off and on for 3 days now and the paths were beautiful and treacherous and fucking cold.
Ha…”fucking” cold. This is why I didn’t include a swear jar fine structure.
The post from the previous photo is painted to match the graffito behind it
Brexit has not yet affected us. Tier 4 has changed nothing about how we live our lives save for dining out and meeting up in bars. There is some excitement in the news next week with the US political shit show (again, no swear jar) but all is well, here.
A “Kentucky Grandma,” unless there is another name for 2 parts Bailey’s + 1 part CHEAP bourbon
I shouldn’t whinge…it’s booze of a sort. And, it was pretty palatable as served above, with a couple ice cubes, 2 shots (100 mL) of the offending Bailey’s, a and a shot of the cheapest bourbon or other straight whiskey in your dominion.
Our principal investigator got a short bottle of tequila, for which she has at least once declared her undying affection, from her Secret Santa. I specifically asked for Henderson’s Relish on the app our organiser was using and wound up with Bailey’s, fer fuck’s sake. I wish I commanded respect, but anything is better than Oxford.
Two shots (100 mL) of Bailey’s Irish Cream, one shot (50 mL) of bourbon … or Canadian whiskey or rye or Bushmill’s anything else without malt. Swirl in some ice (and some milk if it is a school night…if that is an issue). For a warm version, heat a couple of shots of milk and put boiled water in the glass first, then add the milk with the alcohol bits. Better than you might think, and you need to pay close attention to the units (if morning after is an issue). They sneak up on you.
Into work before 7, I checked on the status of the FTICR, the Tribred, the QE, turned off the bakeout in the Elite and waited 3 hours to start retuning and calibrating it. Finished a lot of pre-vacation bureaucracy then finished up the actual lab work with just enough time to run a not-to-short route home for an online budget meeting from 2:30 until 4. Rounded the day off answering a few simple queries from folks in the group. Satisfying end to the two day work week. Here’s hoping the construction work lined up goes as well the next 5 days.
Post 69 of the 2020 Cummute Commute Effort deserves a smattering of juvenile innuendo.
I went into work because something that needed to be done Monday interfered with my cement mixer delivery. So, I went in.
Mostly, it involve cleaning some really sensitive electronics in one of the mass specs. The worst part was getting to the parts in question, but the cleaning, once you get there, is dead simple…time consuming but runs without your attention. If someone were to come along (impossible, as the building is closed save for 6 key workers and a few of our supervisors) and ask what I’m doing, I could accurately say FTD. Much, as it turns out, like I’m doing with this post.
7.7 miles, overland mostly but some canal and tram path.
Endless British Pub Crawl (Part 3) 