I'm bored...

Hi everyone... so I'm bored, in case you couldn't tell. And I am running out of things to do. I think it's about time to break out a Sudoku puzzle... :) I haven't had the time to do one in ages... but now, I think it will be making a comeback.

I finished the revisions on my review at about 9 this morning (and I started at 8). I knew it wouldn't take long... I just didn't realize it would be THAT quick!! Had I known better, I would have come in later to milk it through the day a bit more. Then again, it probably wouldn't have gone as quickly if I had come in later. Part of the reason that I was able to get through it quickly was because no one was here (except Ange) so people weren't bugging me and chatting with me while I was trying to work. And I was in a good BS'ing mode today... that is always important when you're trying to write!!! LOL Plus, I DID have a lot of the information that I needed to add already written in my dissertation. So I just copied it out and pasted it in the review and added a bit more detail. After all, it's not plagiarism when you copy yourself!!! LOL Besides, it is a virtual guarantee that no one will EVER actually read my dissertation... so I'm not too worried. Anyway, Dawn is going to read it tonight and give it back to me with any revisions tomorrow. We plan on re-submitting it on Friday at the latest. So that should be relatively painless. Let's hope so, at least!! I really want this review to get in this specific journal (AJP) just because ever since a group got a LOX paper into Nature (after attempting to steal my data) there is a lot more excitement about the protein. So I don't want this going to a crappy journal. I know it's not worthy of anything REALLY good... but it shouldn't be in a crappy nothing journal either. I know how good (or not so good) my work is and I know about where it belongs most of the time... and I've put it in lesser crappier journals when it needed to be there. But this is better than that. So we'll see what happens. I'm assuming I won't hear anything else until after I'm gone. That part is kind of a pain since I'll have to do revisions and such from my half-dying computer at home... but what can you do?

Speaking of which... so in the past few weeks, my computer at home has started to make a rattling noise. I have no idea what is causing it or anything else... Mark doesn't know either... but he believes that it is a sign of the impending death of my computer. I can't complain too much... that computer has been good to me. I got it my senior year of undergrad and then it was a rebuild of a friend's computer. So I certainly got my money's worth... it was cheap. :) And it made it through grad school and writing my dissertation, which is all I asked. So now it's on its last legs. Basically, my goal this week and next is to make sure that I have everything off of there and burned on to CD's so that in case it just decides to die, I have all of my information and documents. So that's the plan. Mark and I are currently discussing whether or not it's even worth it to bring the computer to the house or if I should just dump it in the move. He has two computers (a desktop and a laptop) and is willing to add an account for me on both so that I can use them as more than a Guest. (He's a computer guy... I don't actually expect to use his computers under his account... I'd be too worried about screwing something up anyway!) :) But I told him it was up to him to make the final decision since they are his computers, not mine. I fully intend on buying a laptop in the relative near future... but with the house and everything, I want to hold off until I'm sure about my finances and such. So we'll see. But yeah... that is the story on my computer. If it dies this summer before I move then you will notice a drastic stoppage in my blogging (and e-mail) since I won't have access to a computer except at school... and those computers are relatively crappy themselves. Plus, I won't have an office when I'm teaching part-time over the summer and I'm not a big fan of typing e-mails (or blogs) in the freaking mail room/copy room where the general computer is. That would suck. So let's hope that my computer can make it at least to the move... or else that would be sad. :( Poor guy... he's been a good computer. It's not his fault that someone else screwed him up and ended up causing me to have to delete everything on the hard drive and start over from scratch. People who don't understand computers should NOT try to diagnose them or "fix" them. But I digress...

Anyway, that is the excitement, or lack thereof, of my life right now. I have a girls night out planned with Jody, one of the girls at church. It's been a while since we've been able to do anything, mostly because of both of our crazy schedules. But things are finally slowing down a bit for each of us, so we're going out tonight. The plan is to grab dinner and then we'll see how we feel... we might hit the mall or go to a movie or something like that. Or we may just chat over coffee. Either way, I'm sure it will be fun. :)

And until then, I shall be off... I hope that all of you are having a wonderful day... even though it's royally crappy outside. Seriously... is it too much to ask for sunlight?? :P Ahh... the joys of Chicago weather, right? At least it's warm... I shouldn't complain too much!! It could be 30 and snowing! Ick!!

Oky doky pokies, I'm really going now... bye!! :)

Well perhaps if the reviewer READ the article...

So I am writing a review article of my work and the rest of the work in the field as kind of my final hurrah for my graduate career. So I got the editor's comments back today and the one major comment she had was that she was worried that the review was too focused and asked if I could expand the review to include my protein (LOX) in other cancer types. I was just like... huh?? The entire review is on the paradoxical roles of LOX in different cancer tissues!! 10 pages of different expression levels and function in tumor tissues! I didn't even know how to respond to that one. Dawn wondered if there was something in the abstract that led the editor to believe that I only looked at one tumor type. But throughout it we discuss "various cancer cells" and then specifically name all of the tumor types studied by different labs in the paper. So yeah... I don' t know. Either way, we're going to re-word the abstract a bit and I have to add a little paragraph about LOX in other diseases (which we were avoiding doing because it has already been extensively reviewed... but that was the other request from the editor). And then we'll re-submit it. I will have it done tomorrow... so it's not a huge deal... just slightly annoying. Oh well, what can you do? At least I made it past the first step! They didn't reject it outright. That's always a positive. :)

Oky doky pokies... I'm off for now... it's almost time to go home... YAY! :) Have a great one!!

Welcome to the new site!!

Hi everyone!! Well I told most of you that I would eventually get my butt moving and post a blog on a new, more secure/hidden, site. And I finally did it!! Aren't you proud of me?? More like you're thinking... it's about freaking time!! As Vicki said, just because I'm a doctor doesn't mean that I get to slack off with the blogging! But slack I have... so now I'm back. I'm not making any great promises of how often I'm going to write... but hopefully with my lighter summer schedule I will be a bit more prolific. So those of you who knew where my former blog was have probably noticed that I deleted it off of there. I figured that since I'm going to be a teacher, I didn't need my students reading my rants about lab, etc. Thus the reason that you will never see any personal information (such as my name, etc.) on here and I ask that any of you posting comments keep my name off of them. Otherwise, I might have to delete comments... and that wouldn't be fun!!

So let's see... the excitement in my life. So I bought a townhouse last week. Let me see if I can put a couple pictures in here...



So that is obviously a picture of the outside of the house... the next are pictures of the kitchen (that I love) and the living room.




So that's the house (well, a few rooms of it!)... once Mark and I move in and get settled we will certainly have a housewarming party of some sort! You know me and parties... and I haven't had one in a long time... nor have I had space to have one! So I'm excited... assuming that no more problems occur over drapes and other stupid things (a story in and of itself that I won't delve into right now). I really hope that I don't have to hear from my lawyer anytime in the near future... one can hope.

So what else? I have 9 more days of lab, counting today. YAY! I really don't know what to do these final days. I had a couple experiments to do, but I got both of them to work (finally!) last week... so yeah... so much for that! Now I guess I'll just sit here and blog since no one has anything else for me to do!!

I just got back from a lovely weekend in Phoenix with Mark. His company flew me out there for the weekend. We went to the Grand Canyon and have beautiful pictures of the canyon... but Mark has them. He claims that I'm going to get a CD of the pictures that I'll be able to have the next time I see him... I hope this isn't equal to his claims of scanning pictures for Scott... otherwise, Lord knows when I'll get those pics!! :) (Sorry, dear... I had to say it!) What else? We also saw The DaVinci Code, which was great. And I know it was a good movie because we just missed an earlier showing and had to go to a late showing. And I was dead tired and Mark had had to wake me up to even get me to the show. And I NEVER had a problem staying awake through the movie... so it obviously kept my attention and interest. Granted, I definitely loved the book and recommend it... but if a movie will get people to read, then I'm okay with that!! Otherwise, we were big bums and stayed around the pool and ate. It was great!! The only sucky part was my plane flights to and from Phoenix... stupid Chicago weather!! And that is my comment.

I wish I had something interesting to say, but I really don't. This is kind of a dud for my first blog... sorry kids! I promise to get better. :)

My big excitement for the week is to work on my syllabi for my summer classes. Nothing big needs to be changed... but I do want to switch around the order of a few lectures. I really don't like the way that the textbook is set up, so now that I've gone through it once, I know how I want to organize things. I think it will flow much better that way. I have to run to school and see if there's any information on my lab. Now you tell me if you think this is weird... so I e-mailed the lab coordinator (whose entire full-time job is setting up and coordinating labs) and asked her if the summer schedule was ready to go. She said no, but that if I wanted to do it, that would be fine. I just sat there reading her note and was like... now wait a minute... it's not like it's hard to set up the schedule... but seriously... that's her ONLY job!! And yet she's trying to pawn it off on me?! I was going to do it if I had been on the ball sooner... but I wasn't (home buying got in the way) so I'm going to have to run to school now to see if she's done it. Otherwise, I'll do it myself tonight. Joy of joys. Oh well... just interesting. Things that make me go hmmm...

Oh! Speaking of which... Kelly sent me this link that I just found hilarious... mostly because it brought back memories of songs and bad dances. So I highly recommend it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg

It's a long video... but it goes fast... and it's great for a laugh if you're having a long, bad day.

Anyway, I should probably do something productive since I AM at work... HAHA. I am going to start poking around this site and figuring out all of the nifty things I can do that I don't know about!! Hopefully my blogs will get more interesting as time goes on...

I hope you are all having wonderful days... don't work too hard!! :)