I'm moved in.

Ed=the conqueror.

Amuhrica, FUCK YEAH

Don't want to jinx it, but I may have some very exciting news to post about this evening.

That is all.

Go to the field on weekdays, have a picnic on Laborday

So I am pretty much completely obsessed with Tina Turner. I'm planning a post about the parallels between TT and Maria Callas. I don't use the F word lightly, but they are both so fierce. (I will have to watch Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome yet again.)

But, after all, I do need some frenetic TT to get me through the last week in the Cone lab, which shaped up to be a non-stop shit-show, cluster-fuck. I was trying to finish up some last experiments so that I wouldn't have to get my coworkers to find my 4.5-years of unorganized supplies while I am 2000 miles away. So, we did finish most of the field work (I think) and I am finishing up the last experiments as we speak. So to say.

I have slept 5 hours in the last 48, but for some reason I am still going strong. Here's why: I've found that by staying out of the daylight, I can totally subvert my body's natural circadian clock. I actually caught myself purposefully not looking out the window at work today so that I would fool myself into experiencing perpetual night.

I know. That is so vampire-emo.

Some nerdery:

One of the last experiments I am doing is a real-time RT-PCR, which is a pretty powerful (if not standard) genetic technique. Basically you make cDNA from a RNA sample, and then carry out PCR with the cDNA to quantify the transcript level. Sounds pretty simple right?

In theory. But of course as Homer Simpson likes to say, "In theory communism works."

So you have to flash freeze your tissues in liq N2, grind them, extract them with trizol (that helps keep the RNases from chewing up your nucleic acids), chloroform extract the trizol, precipitate the RNA with isopropanol and salt, wash the RNA with EtOH, and resuspend it back up in DEPC H20. After each step you have to centrifuge, and remove the supernatant with a Pasteur pipette.

To keep from getting the reverse transcriptase from extending any genomic DNA contamination, and therefore negating your RNA quantification, you have to then digest your total RNA sample with DNase I, then phenol:chloroform: isoamyl-alcohol extract, and resuspend.

Then you need to carry out the RT rxn with MMLV (monkey murine reverse transcriptase), RNase inhibitor, dNTPs--then PCI extract the first strand cDNA, use spectrophotometry to determine absorbancy, and then run real time PCR in technical triplicate with endogenous controls to quantify RNA levels. I won't even go into the primer design phase, but those have to be gene-specific and optimized separately.

Ideally you would assay the integrity of your RNA and then check for inhibitors of the qPCR rxn. On a formaldehyde (denaturing gel).

The real-time PCR uses florescence to quantify the accumulation of double stranded products in real time; by including a passive reference dye and SYBR green (which binds to double stranded DNA) you can measure product after each of the 40 cycles.

I know. Pretty ridiculous, right? Considering that I didn't know how to do any of this about 5 weeks ago, I think I am doing OK.

What's next?

Considering that I've barely started on manuscript preparation, I have to somehow copy most of my lab notebooks from the last 4.5 years, and take my shitload of files.

Did I mention that I am leaving on Tuesday morning?

I plan on packing Sunday and Monday. That will be fun and exciting.

Go westward young man.

It has finally hit me that I am starting a completely new life in a state 2000 miles away where I know a handful of people. I will miss Craig and zipper so much! Not to mention the other Columbia friends L&K, Rachel, etc.

Sorry that was totally rambling, and probably mostly incoherent, but I am about to nod off into a coma for the ages, so gentle reader...goodbye for now.

Today I just couldn't take the mounting pressure of the end of the summer blues. Finishing up all the experiments at work, writing the manuscript, making sure Stanford gets all my paperwork (tuberculosis test!?), arranging logistics for the 1,920 mile trip to Palo Alto--all without knowing where I am going to live yet--is weighing heavily on me.

Got to cook some tonight, I'm trying to use all the food I planted. That was fun. Yay for volunteer lemon basil, now If I could only tell when my green zebras were ripe...

Watched some of the Olympics again tonight. Spoiler Alert!

Even though going 1-2-3 in the men's 400 and 2-3 in the 110 highs, the crumpling of both the 4X100 teams put me in a bad mood. O cette ennui bleu dans le coeur.

Rachel and I finished the night by drinking plum-blueberry-lime smoothies and watching the US get gold in the men's beach VB. America! Fuck yeah!

I know that everything will be ok, and in the long run my worrying is unfounded and unproductive. Headline: Neurotic, ex-Lutheran, gay scientist, opera singer dies of stress-induced heart attack at 23.

But as Scarlett said, "Tomarrah is anotha day."

Peoples of the earth, you have all been poisoned

Lest you, gentle reader, think that I have one whole brain, here's this:

Deejy-weejy and I came up with the gay decathlon:
1) Dressing
2) Activism
3) Gossiping
4) Underwear modeling
5) Oral sex
6) Dancing
7) Cooking
8) Sashaying
9) Hagging
10) Madonna/Tina/Whitney/Cher/Kylie/Dolly Karaoke-ing

Had a wonderful B-day.
Got to go to Ha-Ha Tonka (a made-up Indian name) with riveting company and see castle ruins, the spring, some caves (which were closed), and hiking. Also a decadent picnic. Then on to swimming and Indian food and then Sparkys. It was a fantastic and relaxing Saturday.

Sunday was spent recovering. Lots of sleeping in, gardening, dog-parking, phone-talking, and spending time with my baby Zipper and his owner Craigers.

Went to rehearsal tonight for POP and then I'm working on reading some "fun" summer reading. I'm on about 4 books at the same time. Here's what I've learned so far:

Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence. Yes, he was the puppetmaster. No, I still don't get economics.

Burroughs, The Nova Express. Doing heroin and writing about gay sex leads to multiple-page ruminations about centipedes, ejaculate, and talking bugs. The Western Lands and Naked Lunch were basically the same thing.

Learning Perl. I am a complete retard and will never learn to program.

Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 457/839. I totally understand why the peasants had to revolt and murder the milquetoast aristocracy in their sleep. I reject your bourgeoisie values, the wheels of the revolution will crush you.

O nature green unnatural mother

As I squatted dirty faced and bug spray perfumed over my legume garden this weekend, hand feeding freshly-picked snow peas into mouth, again hand feeding freshly-picked snow peas into mouth like some hunched intently focused chimpanzee slurping ants off a twig, I contemplated my opportunity for creative self-actualization.

For the past 5 years science and singing have been like rather, rinse, repeat--my sole source of fulfillment and satisfaction.

I have been taking a hiatus from singing for the last month (which might change with a chorus part in G&S's P.O.P.) to concentrate on other things.

Namely, chilling out and exercising. And gardening.

I have several plots with various themes. There is the eggplant, various peppers and tomatillo plot X2. There is the exotic tomato plot, the hybrid tomato plot, the heirloom tomato plot, the exotic leaf and head lettuce/spring garden plot, the spindly cucurbit plot. Also the 2 culinary herb plots and the aforementioned legume plot. Of course who could forget the annual bed consisting of zinnia, aster, cosmos, marigold, salvia?

I like growing things. I like being dirty.

Is this a distraction from my destiny? i thought as I sipped freshly brewed mint tea as the bruised mint so garishly green in the scalding water, released bits of floating leaf into my mouth at 9:30 PM as the last blue twilight disappeared and grass blended into my hands blended into the empty seed packets blended into that gray-blue before the real night lit by the moon takes over.

So much guilt.

When life opens its little raincloud of shittiness, I try to concentrate on the positive things and not let pettiness run my life.

I am so fortunate! I am young and beautiful, have amazing friends, a loving, gorgeous bf, am going the land of milk-and-honey next year for grad school. (I'm humble too.)

Insert Cher, "Ugh, you are a snob and a half."

So anyway, I'm planting this enormous garden this year, and putting in some "island of misfit toys" stuff: green zebra tomatoes, and black crimean tomatoes (they look like a big bruise). Also: 4 kinds of basil, a flower garden, an herb garden, and a cucurbit patch.

Tonight I had a radish top, granny smith apple, Parmesan cheese, lemon juice and balsamic vinaigrette salad. All in all, it was a pretty life-affirming experience.

Now I'm back off to work, practice, the gym, then home to transpose some Sibelius, and bask in the fact that yes, indeed I already graduated and don't have to worry about school (until Sept 22).

Le sigh.

Tranced, fanatical they shrieked and sang

I've been toying around with the idea of singing Ives' song "General William Booth Enters into Heaven" for my upcoming recital this summer. The song is a huge mess: multiple musical quotations, the occasional 4.5/4 bar, a hefty vocal line (including an Ab), not to mention the singer has to compete with a typical Ives "elbow" chord peppered accompaniment.

Where would one get the inspiration for a 5 minute religious revival?

One of the best movies ever.

That's right, Elmer Gantry.

Charlatan doesn't begin to describe Burt's character...it was probably the turning point in my childhood that distorted my view of any "man of god" into a degenerate snake-oil salesman.

Elmer Gantry was a typical role for Burt. He only ever played the alpha male, a hyper-masculine sexpot. Like an ape in a suit (Sorry, Wrong Number is perhaps the most conspicuous example), his animal magnetism was so raw you had to watch it through spread fingers, like a jury looking at autopsy photos.

Look out!

From the great state of California

So much has been happening lately that I can't keep up.

1. I graduated from college (2 degrees suma cum laude). I was also the banner bearer at the A&S graduation --to my horror and my mother's elation--so a throughly embarrassing experience was had by all.

2. I went to Puerto Rico for 3 weeks during January for the winter nursery, and Craigers got to come for a week on the cheap. I should have some posts about that, but the internet down there (in the south, aka the poor part of the island) was ridiculous. Had lots of fun, but was so ready to come back.

3. Grad school: I got interviews at Duke, Stanford, UC-Berkeley, UCLA, Emory, and Wash-U. So far I've been accepted to Harvard genetics and Duke genetics/genomics.

4. I am in California for 9 days (suck it Missouri!) to visit UC-Berkeley and Stanford, so I'm really excited about that. If MBK wants to come and rescue me from the nerdery and show me a good time in SF, I wouldn't complain.

5. I am missing the maize meeting (boo whore) but I am doing some really cool research at work. I'm sure I'll eventually get around to posting something about that. I was super freaked about my plants and when they are going to time out in the greenhouse, etc, but I think all that crap will work itself out.

6. I am putting together one crazy recital with RA. Tentative date is going to be late spring, and I'm doing the Wolf Harfenspeiler, Chausson Serres Chaudes, a Sibelius set, an Ives set, and probably arias from Il Dulca D'alba and Eugene Onegin. I'll put together a post about all that crazy lit, but it looks like for now that I'll be singing in 6 languages. Seriously, whiskey tango foxtrot.

7. I am doing a one act opera called Three Sisters Who are Not Sisters by Ned Rorem. The libretto is by Gertrude Stein, so you can imagine the inane-ity to ensue. Right now, we are going to do it as a student production--so that means that we will have to find funding, performance venue, do the staging-costuming-lighting, organize rehearsals, etc. I'm post later about this, but I expect it to be crazy like a fox.

I also plan to do some posts about Sarkozy, Slava Mogutin, Maeterlinck, and my latest thoughts on Bette Davis.

TTYL chaches.

I'm a murderer.

I killed a mouse with my bare hands Thursday night, put it in a Shakespeare's cup and threw its seizing body out the front door. I didn't feel the least bit guilty--at the time--because:

1) It was loud and slow. Being Darwin's handmaiden is an ugly job, but someone has to do it. I am just Jules striking "down upon thee great vengeance and furious anger".

2) While I am far from being a neat housekeeper (all those threats of cleanliness imbuing godliness), a mouse crapping in my house was too much of an affront to my pride.

I had initially toyed with the idea of buying a live trap, but I guess this is the last nail in the coffin of my compassionate conservatism.

Where does this bloodlust originate? I may have inherited it:

When I was home one weekend, my father beat an armadillo (that had been eating the salad greens from the garden) to death with a baseball bat in our backyard while my horrified sisters and I watched. It bounced at least 2 feet off the ground.

Man of action indeed!

The Immolation scene from Götterdämmerung is lofty background music for my midnight biscotti making, but who can resist a good multi-tasking opportunity?

Don't you love how letting your mind wander at 2AM can resolve hitherto unarticulated aversions?

Crewcut sporting lesbians, invariably standing on courthouse steps dressed in pantsuits, have been a fixture of gay-marriage debate for as long as I can remember. I concede that they have a vested interest in the struggle, as a biological clock (the main impetus for seeking "equality") seems to not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. To each her own.

My repulsion by the side-show comedy that is the same-sex-marriage debate was caused by something more sinister than the "morally-bankrupt heterosexual institution" tripe. And thanks to Florence King, I finally have figured out how I feel.

I might as well have said, "I don't want to get married, I'd rather live in Paris and have affairs like George Sand."

I CAN'T WAIT TO GRADUATE.

I'm so close. Seriously, so close.

Continuing in our long line of costumes in *poor* taste, here's a Halloween recap y'all.
05: Batman and Robin
06: Pitcher and catcher
07: Priest and altar boy

Last weekend was spent at NATS and associated activities. Besides staying at a hotel that was hosting a blind person convention, I spent time with the real crazies: singers.

I am also wrapping up a NSF GRFP application, studying for the GRE, and gearing up for the fun that is filling out grad applications.

Time will tell what becomes of all this crap.

I also realized what is up with my tomatoes. Apparently, I didn't really follow my carefully drawn map, because what I thought were brandywines were actually yellow boy hybrids. So that's why they started rotting after turning a light orangish. Hmm. So today I picked a basket of tomatoes (in November!) and made what might be the last feta, EVOO, tomato, kalamati olive, and lemon basil salad of the fall. Sigh.

My garden was a productive and therapeutic experience, and I plan to increase the plots next spring. In addition to a cutting garden with more herbs, I want to put in some cucurbits and other fruit (blackberries, strawberries?). Ack! How will I make it through winter?

In other horizons, Craiger and I are excited about the live (in HD!) Met broadcasts that will finally come to Columbia. Going to Met on a regular basis would be a luxury that I will probably never be able to afford, but this is almost as good right?

What does one wear to an opera broadcast? Are the exotic-bird plumages still required?

Living life as one big resume-building experience gets old. I have begun seeing people as commodities/tools to be optimized and exploited. Is this normal?

I'm currently knee-deep in the NSF GRFP application...I'm proposing a rather ambitious project to elucidate paramutation mechanisms (Lit reviews are more fun than homework). I guess it's a good sign that I really enjoy this part, being as it's what I am going to do for a living, haha.

A portrait of my mind at the end of its tether: every time I think about how many things are on my to-do list, I envision Ursula singing "I'm a very busy person and I haven't got all day!"

Disney allusions: the ultimate litmus test for insanity. Or as Michael J Budds would say, (referring to Joan Sutherland as Lucia) "she's nuttier than a fruitcake!"

A more mundane tid-bit: I made salmon cakes with some grated zucchini, yellow squash, lemon juice, pepper, and fresh tarragon from my garden. Yum!

Happenstance:

Right now, there are three (3) construction worker-types (with chain saws and toolbelts, oh my!) in my backyard cutting down branches from around the telephone lines.

The kicker: none of them are as beefy as my boyfriend.

And I would really rather just take a nap.

Ok. I'll just say it.

I am obsessed with Strauss' Elektra. Craig and I checked out the DVD and watched it a couple of weeks ago (The 1989 Eva Marton Vienna Staatsoper). Most of the scenes can also be found on youtube.

It can be angular yet voluptuous--and Eva Marton is a beast...basically it requires shouting for two hours over a full orchestra with constant brass.

The opening line "Allein! Weh, ganz allein" gets me every time.

Things that make Ed happy:

1) Only having one class tomorrow (at 8AM though, boo)
2) Finishing some fine mapping tomorrow at work
3) No opera rehearsal
4) Going to the batting cages with Craig tonight

Hello, gentle reader. I emerge from my chrysalis of blogging seclusion to bring you this tid-bit:

Every once in a while I have a striking epiphany (usually completely inconsequential to anyone but me).

I just finished reading an editorial by Ann Coulter (that vituperative vagina--or as I prefer: "the venomous cunt") about Senator Craig's Bathroomgate.

Coulter is a gay camp figure on par with Bette Davis or Divine.

There you have it, my words of wisdom, brought down like biblical fire from a mountaintop.