Our city didn’t see much of an autumn this year, as the crazy weather down South’s been bringing us some chilly rain over the past two weeks. In fact, we spent most of our time indoors at this year’s MD-PhD retreat due to the heavy rain. Fortunately, despite missing out on the fall foliage and golf, we made sure to be present at the Saturday night clambake, taking down 5 lobsters between the two of us. Since returning from the retreat, and with Melody back on nights, I’ve returned to a late schedule at work again. The week’s dinner menu has slowly evolved to include canned soup, instant Korean noodles, frozen dumplings, as well as leftover pasta and cold pizza from the building lobby. I haven’t gotten the MSG headache yet, but I’m sure my blood pressure must be up several points…

all work no play makes glenn a dull boy.
all work no play makes glenn a dull boy.
all work no play makes glenn a dull boy.
all work no play makes glenn a dull boy.
all work no play makes glenn a dull boy.

You know… while it’s commonly thought that scientists have something against furry little animals, I just realized today that most of my friends in lab are actually rodent pet owners. Among my classmates and labmates, we’ve got a guinea pig, a chinchilla, a rabbit, and of course, our amazing super-rats! My theory is that working with rodents each day actually help us labrats (pun intended) appreciate them much more than the average Joe. Anyway, this past weekend’s been one of those random-run-in-with-Asian-postdoc-in-Asian-restaurant weekends. We ran into a Korean post-doc from Melody’s lab at a Korean restaurant, and a Japanese post-doc at, of course, a Japanese restaurant. Amazing, huh? By the way, there is a new press release about our recent article in Science.

My 4th author Science article has just been released this evening. In retrospect, I was somewhat surprised myself that this paper got published in such a prestigious journal. We were probably lucky that one of the reviewers liked us so much. It kinda makes you wonder about all the other high profile publications out there. Anyway, I had originally planned a 16-hour work day, but after my last 5 hours of work just entered the trash, I’m going to just give up. Yes, give up. That’s what we all should do. As Cartman would say, “Screw you guys, I’m going home!”

One of the great things about cleaning my apartment is the potential of actually coming across useful stuff that I’ve once misplaced – like money. Since we’re getting new windows installed at home, my roommate and I had been doing a bit of cleaning this weekend, and she actually came across a hundred bucks … of Monopoly money. She did also uncover a shiny real quarter, though I would’ve preferred a real hundred-dollar bill and a smaller denomination of play money. But I guess I can’t complain – free money is free money (though it’s not technically free ’cause it was mine to begin with). Anyway, our fancy new fiberglass windows promise to be much more energy-efficient than the old single-pane windows which were encased in skimpy metal frames. Unfortunately, the beefy new frames also lead to a smaller effective area for the actual window, which will probably allow less light to enter. I hope this doesn’t ruin my Feng Sui!