Ran a pkc assay. Wandered into the lunch meeting, and heard about Al3+ toxicity in plants, and one of the genes that is thought to be involved in the reduction of aluminum toxicity.

Came home, and took care of some randomness before sleeping.

Mowed the lawn today, watched some tv, and started working on a new backend to donarmstrong.com.

Hung out with paul and brian at in-n-out for a bit. Mmm.. food.

Well, I'm another year older today. Paul, Sophie, Wendy, Brian and Randy all went out with me to go Dimm Summing in Rowland Heights for lunch, and it was quite fun. I'll have to do it again soon.

After lunch, we grabbed milk tea at lollicup, and then wandered back to riverside, where I sat at home for a while and watched the superbowl. Not quite sure what happened, as I can't ever remember the super bowl being this late in the year, but it was on my birthday. A semi-decent game, with the Rams loosing after tying it up to a last second field goal. While football isn't my favorite sport (it's too slow for me) it was still kind of fun to sit and watch.

After the game, I went to huntington beach to eat dinner with my parents at the macaroni bar and grill. I had a pretty decent crepe plate with samon, shrimp, scallops, muscles, and a minced/pureed tomato based cream sauce. Quite good. (Followed of course by tier missu, one of the deserts that I absolutely adore.)

They gave me a ryobi cordless drill/circular saw set, which will be extreemly usefull when I start to take care of getting the upstairs renovated (hopefully soon). I was going to try it out by installing the paper towel holder that I've had for quite some time, but I realized (lukily) that the screws that came with it were too long for the cabinet that I was going to stick it in, and would have gone all of the way through. So soon, I'll have to stop by home depot and pick up some slightly shorter stainless round head screws (probably 1/2" #4's or similar if I remember correctly).

Now it's time for sleep, glorious sleep.

Was on campus making NMR samples for most of the day, then spent the evening working on assignment 1 for GNT 240. It's going along pretty well, but there are some definite holes that need to be filled, which I will get around to later.

Also talked briefly with angela and milan as I was wandering back from getting something to drink from coffee shop on campus. (I'm a coffee fiend... well, perhaps I should say, a caffeine fiend.)

Learning latex in the context of doing this assingment, which is going along pretty well. Although I can definetly see that I am going to need to purchase one of the books on the subject so I can progress a bit faster than I have been able to do recently.

More work, then sleep.

Listened to my alarm ring, then rode to campus. It's a good thing that I live so close to campus, otherwise I would never bother to go to my classes at all. I'd just spend all of my time at home in bed dreading moving.

Listened to some discussino on microarrays, heard some more about the spotted microarrays, and some of the technology behind making the microarrays. It still surprises me that some of the photomask techniques from asic and microchip manufacturing aren't being used in in situ synthesis, but maybe that's just too obvious for people to see.

Running NMR samples while making PKC samples, and working on my GNT 240 assignment while doing some microarray analysis and NMR figure preparation on the side. Got to love my life.

Wandered out with Z to P.H. Woods and ate dinner there, ran into Aaron while I was there. (Had a pretty decent heffewiesen... I'm partial to wiess beer.) Then wandered back home and fixed the dining room table with my new ryobi cordless drill before going out with paul to starcrack.

Then more work on GNT240 and finishing up the NMR samples before sleep.

Lets see, I ended up spending some time driving about riverside today, getting my car's oil changed, picking up a socket set to try to fix the leaky tub spigot in the back bathroom, and some thrift store shopping at the salvation army, where I picked up a really neat 70's overcoat type thingie.

Then I wandered out to LA to hang out with Seth and Chris who had just come down from SF to meet with some companies. Chilled at Baja Fresh, and the coffee shop in the Virgin Megastore plaza on sunset. Drank some 40's and played foosball with chris and justin (I got worked) at Justin's house.

Then off to release (which is at atlas now) to hear Dj. Collette. Mmmm... A string of great tracks got layed down for most of the night, kept me moving until 2 or so. Only 2-3 questionable tracks the whole night, most decent, and a couple that were pretty banging. None that were absolutely incredible, but still, the quality was definetly there. Angela was also there (C). In retrospect, I probably should have called her to see what she was up to, but I suspected that she was busy with school.

An aweseome time, nevertheless. Then I drove the long, boring drive back to riverside, for sleep, and another day of madness.

Yet another thursday. (And a semi-painfull one at that, after a long night of dancing.) Angela's textbook showed up today, so she wandered by to pick it up, right as I was leaving for class. [She was nice enough to drop me off at my lab, so I actually got there early for a change.] More work on some of the microarray stuff, and then I took care of beginning to grade the immunology midterms. Oi. I'm definelty going to get sick of grading those midterms well before I am finished.

Then I wandered home, and spent some more time grading midterms before I went to sleep.

The boundary between reality and fantasy is constantly bluring, like the boundary between madness and sanity. Keeping them straight is the war, and sometimes I'm loosing. Perhaps it's because I can imagine very easily what I am reading in the same technicolor splendor as real life would have. Dreams and waking dreams hold the same measure of sway.

I'm once again reading at a prodigious rate. Something on the order of 3 books a week, while taking care of doing some of the other things that I should be doing. I'm currently working on Lord Foul's Bane, the first book of the Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever series. Fairly decent. Hopefully the language in the story will end up being better described (although quite a large percentage of it smells like thinly vieled quenya.)

I ended up picking up some shirts at a thrift store today, trying to find some interesting clothing to wear. Don't think I'll actually make it to the truely intersting stuff, but I can try. (I'm probably just going to have to start making my own clothes... of course, then my madness in design will begin to show outwardly.)

I probably should also bother to get my scanner set up and working on the linux box again, now that I actually have enough space to have it setup somewhere under my desk. Hopefully it still works.

Anyway, off to sleep before I wander to HB tomorrow to finish working on my table and complete the test grading that I need to do. Hopefully the table will be in a completed enough state to bring back to riverside on sunday (or late saturday.)

Wandered home to work on the table some more, got the legs completed, but not exactly as I envisioned them. (A 60 degree cut with a 4 degree angle is extreemly difficult to produce on just about any thing short of a band saw... and I wasn't using a band saw.

Then I came back home to take care of some more grading. Ugh. I loathe grading exams. Some of the answers are so inane.

Oh yes. I'm also getting quite sick. Starting blowing the green snot today. Hopefully my immune system will kick in and attack my cold, but if not, off to the antibiotics it is.

Spent most of today grading papers.

Paid some bills too.

Also finished reading book 2 in the thomas covenant, unbeliever series. But unfortunatly, I've also developed a nasty head cold, so most of the day (that I wasn't grading papers) I spent in bed. Still have a bit to go on the midterms that I have to grade... but I'll get there.

Spent most of today working on stuff in my lab, and an assignment for GNT 240a. I'm probably spending more time on the assignment than I should, but that's not really anything new. (If I'm interesting in learning something for a class, I tend to do much more work than is absolutely required. Course, I'm not really interested in the grade I get, I'm more interested in learning the information as thoroughly as possible.)

Also listened to some of the mSTART talks today, learned abit about Vitamin D and PKI and it's interaction with drips. Then heard some more about ABCA-1 and it's transcriptional regulation by LDL and cholesterol, but unfortunatly, very little about the function of ABCA-1 and the effect of downregulation of it on the cell and physiology of vascular system as a whole. (Just recently became interested in ABCA-1 for a reason that I will probably get into later.)

Hung out with paul and brian a bit at starbucks (after talking with Z for a bit about religion and the old testament). Brian has picked up a nice new BMW 325i from 1993, that is nearly immaculate (although it has 160K miles on it or so).

Then back home for more work, and sleep.

Spent most of today grading midterms and making a few adjustments to one of the scripts that I use to parse the analyzed array data. (There are some more changes that need to be made to it, but it is nearing completion.)

Hung out with angela for a bit at her place, sort of watched TV for a bit and had almond mochas (mmm..).

I also finished up the final sample and stuck it into the freezer to freeze for a bit. I'll have to cycle it through freeze-thaw sometime tomorrow.

Now it's time to go envelope myself in sleep.

Had a filling put in by the dentist today, came back out to riverside, did some work at home, and then wandered onto campus. I ran into Tim while on campus and chatted for a bit about what was going on... then I went back to my lab to continue working on the assignments that I had to take care of, and discuss the results of the biophysical society meeting with my major professor.

After startbucks, I came back to the house, made dinner, did some more work, and watched a flick. I also scored some more books earlier in the day from the library.