fuck you, insomnia

can't sleep. as usual, much on my mind. let me share:

pretty good weekend. snowed all day friday, so my trek to/from the gym was more fun than usual. then jonas called to invite me out drinking. yes, please! to CM's with jonas, sierra, sma, and sloppy. had a delicious turkey burger, and they have the best salads: nice field greens with some sort of creamy yet vinegary dressing. yum yum yum.

saturday: slept in 'til 10:30 without feeling guilty. to lab! where i worked for a solid 6 hours. enrique was there; said the modeling work i was doing could be a chapter in my thesis. cool!

then: prep for the st. patty's day party i agreed to host not 24 hours before. first step of prep: lay on couch and watch basketball. then dinner, shower, a modicum of cleaning up, and stashing the valuables.

first guest arrived 9:15. a well-attended although not crazy event. i discovered that i am comparatively good at car bombs -- i threatened masculinity. some beer pongs, kings. i got drunk enough to have fun, not so drunk i passed out, puked, or hooked up with someone i didn't want to (although not for lack of trying on some guy's part). go me!

sunday AM: quick tidying of the empty beer cans, then off to The Pantry for breakfast, where i had eggs florentine -- my new favorite dish there. eggs, creamy sauce, enough green stuff that i feel somewhat healthy, comes with: homefries (sooooo greasy and sooooo good) and fruit! heaven on a plate after a night of drinking.

then a heavy dose of TV-watching and sitting on the couch with shannon before winter league. got a donut and coffee on the way. tasty, but not the best for playing on. in fact, did not play well. numerous throw-aways, and at least one catch i should have caught. oh well. we still won. more than the wisconsin men's basketball team can say.

sunday night: ate and ate and ate some more. i get really hungry when i'm hung over for some reason. weird. along with this eating, i did more sitting and watching TV. a stupid law and order marathon was on bravo. couldn't tear myself away, especially since there is barely 2 seconds of credits at the end before they begin the next episode, and you're hooked into watching another hour to figure out whodunit.

my teeth hurt. i don't know why. it's sort of like all of them, so i don't think it's a cavity. it's one of those things i hope will just go away but hasn't.

car is still in the shop. took it in wednesday because it was smelling like gas in the interior. intuition says this is bad, and turns out, intuition is right this time. of course, todd siad he'd call once he'd taken a look at it, but by friday at 5 i still hadn't heard anything. oh well, didn't really need a car this weekend anyway. i just hope it's not something expensive.

trip to DC coming together. bought a ticket back. will stay with shannon at her parent's sunday night. still trying to get in touch with dianne. also need to touch base with hammer. can't bring myself to buy plane ticket to fly down wednesday. i should just do it. gawd.

yeah, my life isn't terribly exciting right now. that's OK. couple a beers on the weekend with friends and a little ultimate here and there is all i need to be happy :)

aaaaaaaAAAAAAAHHHHHge

my old roommate, whom i loved living with and who loved living with me, said that he never experienced "aahge" (not sure of the spelling) while living with me. "aahge" is best described as a combination of feelings that cause you to feel rage and that make you want to yell "AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!" aaahhh! + rage = aaahge.

i am feeling aaahhhge tonight, and i'm not sure why. i think i want someone to tell me what to do. tell me if i should do more experiments for my paper or just continue writing with what i have. tell me what i should do about ultimate this upcoming season -- who to play with, how to train, what tournaments to go to, etc. tell me how to get to Fools Fest and who i should try to see while down there. tell me if i'm cut out to be a professor, or if i should give up and start looking for a nice 9-to-5 job now. tell me if i'm deluding myself thinking that there is such a thing as a "9-to-5" job. tell me if i'm ever going to meet that someone special, and if so, when and where to look for him. tell me what to eat, when, and in what quantities. i don't want to worry, make decisions, and i definitely don't want to worry about making the wrong decisions.

there is always shit to do, and sometimes it feels manageable and other times it feels out of control. right now, it feels out of control. i had like 10 things on my to-do list today. and i did one (1) of them. sigh. they all feel urgent, too. and there were more, others. gah.

i'm aaahge-ing (yes, it can be used in verb form as well) over edwin, too. saw him and sierra briefly today; they were leaving as i was coming from the apartment. they'd been out throwing in the nice weather. got to chatting about winter league...our team's strategy...which is basically edwin huck to bryan and vice versa, repeat. i'd picked up on that in our last game. and it frustrated me, when it wasn't working. because i am usually backed by 10 yards and so (a) am really open underneath and (b) can't get upon deep easily. so i feel ineffective when all edwin does is look for the deep shot. but what can i say to him? i feel like hucking it gives him control and feeds his ego, but really my complaint is that i'm not participating enough when they rely on that strategy. so then it comes down to my ego vs. his. although i think i may have an argument that it's not using the other members of the team effectively, and that when it's not on, it's very frustrating and a waste of our energy. we'll see how tomorrow's game goes...

hmmm, what else? i am still sad about edwin and sierra. i know i should be happy for both of them, and i am on some level. but it really just makes me sad. like, where is my "person" -- the one i'll spend every waking hour with? it all makes me feel lonely, ugly, unlovable. blah. and jealous. i hate being jealous, but i am. i'm jealous of their companionship, their happiness. happy, i should be happy for them. happy happy happy!

grrrr. oh, and i can't sleep. again. i know it's early, but i'm still sick and so uber-tired, and i tried to go to bed early (at 9). but couldn't fall asleep to got up to express my AHHHHHHge.

bal-tee-more

actually, it's pronounced "bahlmohr" in the local tongue. and they call you hon. i'm glad i was told that my first night in town, otherwise i would have gotten offended a couple of times and might have gotten kicked out of bars for slapping the server.

yes. so. i was in Baltimore for the 2007 Biophysical Society meeting. good times. general impressions of baltimore: MUCH nicer than i expected. i'm sure there were bad parts of town i didn't see, but nearly any city has those. inner harbor was very nice -- cute shops, picturesque docks, clean. hampton neighborhood city-esque but nice. fells point had a lot of character. overall, felt very livable.

side note: customer service was atrociously slow. they were for the most part polite and friendly, but dear god, could they possibly take any longer to put coffee into a paper cup? and bush buttons on a screen to take my order? perhaps if they talked a bit faster that would help expedite the service-process. oh well.

went down Friday night (took the Acela Express), stayed with Bill Mill and Sam Wood, who just bought a house (!) and have a mutt-dog named Beckett. they seem very happy. Sam is still finding her groove in residency but is told that the first year is hard. Bill works at a company that sells used books on Amazon. Dan Mill and some UCONN frisbee boys stopped by en route to spring break on Tybee Island.

saturday. walked around downtown baltimore. inner harbor: very pretty. oriole park at camden yards: very cool. talks all day. met some scientists from the motility field. sunday: gave my poster! a very long day. was too nervous to eat lunch. a lot of people stopped by. mostly good responses. poster competition: nerve-wracking, didn't make second round, oh well. had dee-licious crab cakes at legal seafood. and wine.

monday: the best day of my life? ok, maybe just of my scientific career. enrique pointed allen minton out to me. i work up the nerve to go up to him later, to ask him about my results. he invites me to dinner! then, later that night, at the party in oriole park (what a venue for a party!), hanging out with enrique, josh weigner, and dave sept, they see adrian parsegian walk by. dave knows him so runs after him and brings him over. another very nice scary smart guy. i have his drink tickets. ended up going to after-party bar with french-speaking peeps: martinal and pedro (who is actually portugese but speaks fluent french -- i'm not picky. french is french is french).

tuesday: second-to-last day of conference. went out to dinner with EDLC and co., dave, mike ostap and people from his lab. enrique takes us to this cool hole-in-the-wall called friends in fells point. dee-lish. then to another hole-in-wall bar to play pool. beers so cheap! ended night in adrian's hotel room, talking science and drinking bourbon.

wednesday: lunch with laura nikstad! she's engaged (!) getting married aug 4. leaving grad school to go to a science ed master program at perdue, where her fiance is in an MFA program. good to see her. train back to new haven.

left feeling very excited about my project and good about myself as a scientist. hmmm. we'll see if it has any lasting effects...