T-minus 1 hour, 48 minutes...

I've ordered two pieces of frosted yellow cake. Was that wrong? I only plan on eating one. I'm not sure how I'm going to smuggle the other one out of here. The only container I had were the tupperware container (empty! unused!) that I collect "specimens" in. Unfortunately, the RA (research asst) has just collected the empty, unused ones from my bathroom, reckoning that any shite I'll shit is the toilet's to keep.
Ah, I have my Methodist water thermos that I can empty and dry out. [cackling].

The timing couldn't be better

A lot of other people got Norwalk virus this weekend too. Unfortunately for them, they had to pay for the pleasure, while I was paid $6 an hour for the tasty bug. But I do this for science. My sacrifice makes it possible that one day, cruiso-o-philes will just take a Norwalk vaccine before they board a Royal Caribbean. Oh sure, the staff could just clean the ship really well with bleach and install more of those anti-bacterial hand pumps everywhere. The fact is, the passengers want to do nothing but frequent buffets, eat til they burst, shit constantly, not wash their hands, and head back to the buffet. Why should the cruiseline corporations fight it?
We all know that it's much more cost-effective and safer to invest in clinical trials and research towards a vaccine for Norwalk. I mean, why even do research into how to increase hand-washing compliance? It's not like there aren't industries that already have to deal with this problem. Other than in hospitals and research institutions like ours, where hand-washing is indoctrinated in us. I think you see my point. Cruiselines just need to drill it into their passengers' heads that they need to wash their fucking hands. Dirty bastards.

I really need to get out of medical isolation. Twenty more hours to go.

P.S. I'm well aware that those anti-bacterial hand sanitizers probably work better on bacteria and have little effect on viruses, which can live on doorknobs and table for weeks. But people don't wash their hands, especially when they're on vacations, (which is goddam icky) so you might as well put those things everywhere. As long as they DON'T have triclosan or antibiotics in them. That would just be idiotic.

Cheetos

I've been eating Cheetos so often that I've designated a towel hanging near my bed the "cheeto towel". It has fingerprint smudges of orange cheeto dust on it. Kinda gross, but then again, no one wants to see a mouse or keyboard with orange cheetoguck on it.

Top Five Jokes

This one is in a similar vein to Top Five Foods. These are the jokes that you don't mind hearing over again and even look forward to. For the purposes of gaining a wider audience, inside jokes don't count; the joke must be somewhat popularized.

The nature of this Top Five necessitates a lot of thought. So I'm giving you 2 of the Top Five Jokes. Naturally, I don't know where these land on the list, so I'm not numbering them.

- On Mad About You, the TV series, Paul Buchman's father has a recurring bit that I really like. Whenever he's knocking on Paul and Jamie's door or leaving a message on the answering machine, he says (in a charming soft New York Jewish accent), "Paul? Paul, are you there? It's me, [pause] your father. [pause] Burt. Burt Buchman." This was a running gag that I loved hearing every time.

- "Morning, Ralph." "Morning, Sam." I'm not sure where it first came from but I first saw it on Saturday morning cartoons on Looney Tunes. What's more, I really enjoy seeing that bit homaged in other shows. Of course, my favorite, and the only one I can really remember is on an episode ("Twins" episode) of Newsradio, between Jimmy James (Stephen Root) and Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman). Here's the Wikipedia entry, which is much more informative.

Joyce Millman apparently really like the Morning-Sam,Morning-Ralph bit from Newsradio as well and put some more thought into it than I did. Read her review.

- Sex and the City, episode 1, "The Baby Shower":
Charlotte has just found out that her ex-friend Lanie has stolen Charlotte's secret baby name.
SAMANTHA: What's going on?
CHARLOTTE: She stole my baby name!
SAMANTHA: You BITCH.
Of course, all the punctuation in the world doesn't do justice to how Samantha says this. Just go watch it. I'll try to find it.
(She takes Charlotte in arm protectively and storms out with her)

Amendment to Top Five Foods

This weekend has opened my eyes. Chocolate milk, which I wasn't sure deserved to be in the Top Five, is now getting the boot and getting replaced. If you've read previous blogs, you'd have seen this coming.
1. Grilled Cheese Sandwich with tomatoes
2. Caprese Salad with prosciutto and red bell peppers
3. Chocolate/yellow cake with chocolate/vanilla frosting
4. Chicken Marsala
5. Pineapple juice

Hour 43 of Medical Isolation...

By my calculations, I've made $258 so far by being in isolation here. It's just above minimum wage. That's not great, but then again, all I'm doing is sitting on my ass, watching Comedy Central, and blogging.

My body hurts from sitting around too much and not doing anything.

NOT SICK

So it's morning. I'm not sick. At 7am I overheard the nurses and Tony talking loudly at length about vomit and samples (feces). More specifically, they were quantifying them and trying to figure out how many they had.
"I've got three vomits and one 'sample'."
"No, that's two vomits. [Subject] vomited twice and poured one into two containers."
(Yes, if I was to vomit last night, I had to SAVE it in these tupperware containers. They look like margarine buckets.)
Then there was discussion about time stamps. Then weighing the "samples".
"Should I weigh the [fecal] samples?"
"No, wait, we haven't figured out where this one came from."
"I thought that was [Subject's]."
"Yes, but what's the timestamp?"
"Remember, it's the same as that one."
Call me crazy, but I would've thought it wouldn't matter when you weighed something. The discussion just kept going and going.

Anyways, the cool part is that it appeared that I was the only one who hadn't gotten sick. I began to dream about that fact.

They finally woke me up a couple hours later. It turns out only one of the four of us subjects got sick last night. That poor bastard. Anyways, Tony came in and told me that I was probably out of the woods, and that it was really unlikely that I was going to get sick at this point.

THIS IS SO FREAKING AWESOME!

Still not sick yet.

Loophole!

Um, is it bad that I've started eating whatever I want, cuz I know I'll probably throw it up later?

Hour 27 of Isolation...

The nursing staff, the doctors, and Tony have confirmed that Saturday early morning hours is the usual time that subjects become "symptomatic". Got a dreading feeling that we're not going to be so lucky, that the dose we've been given (4.8 plaques per something-or-other), is still above threshold, and that 6 lucky men and women are going to get their date with Norwalk two months from now for another round of testing at an even lower. If we are going to be symptomatic, then I've got about 6 hours, more or less, of well-being to enjoy. Maybe we won't get full-out sick. Maybe we'll just feel nauseous or maybe just a couple of hours of trots, like bad take-out. I just wish this weren't double-blind. One of us got the placebo. I don't know about the others but I wish I knew what my day was going to be like tomorrow.

Just watched another 3 or 4 hours of House. Isn't that the very definition of addiction? An addict counts how many Vicodin he's got left in his possession. I've been counting how many episodes I have left (four), and I've been evaluating my friends, trying to determine if any of them like me enough to go get me the other House Season 1 discs that I don't have, from Blockbuster.

Ah.

It turns out there are no extra discs at Blockbuster. This is it, the last of them.

At least I didn't describe the rest of the food.

Methodist Hospital has this dessert called Frosted Yellow Cake. It is exactly what it sounds like and it is addictive as hell. I ordered and ate TWO of them. I still can't believe I did that. I'm so full. And yet...I wish I had another slice right now. This is utterly mad. Frosted Yellow Cake is a perfect cube; the cake is cut so sharply and finely that you don't even see the tell-tale signs of shearing that you'd expect to see on a slice of cake. This beauty looks like it was excised with a scalpel. And the frosting is a uniform, surgically precise 6 mm thick layer of white. Lucky that your teeth and tongue are that sensitive to a change in resistance, otherwise you wouldn't appreciate the crunchier sugary layer that's sedimented above the gooier frosting layer. Altogether, Frosted Yellow Cake looks so perfect that you could have drawn it using a ruler and colored pencils.
And that's when I devour it. Aurmmmph!

Visitors

Yay! Bahareh and Daneen came to visit me! And they brought #1 on my top five foods (see earlier blog). Yummmmmm. I feel good and full and sedated now. Unfortunately, I have still more programming to do.
Bahareh, Daneen, and I gossiped and dished and yakked to my heart's content. They scoured my meal menu and marked the good and bad foods to order. Then they told me stuff about what their experience was when they did the study several months ago.
"Daneen text messaged me at 3am, saying that she was sick," Bahareh said. "Within fifteen minutes, I was too."
Daneen nodded. "Yeah, all [six] of us [in the study] got sick between 3 and 5am Saturday morning."
We talked about the anti-nausea pills the subjects get when they throw up. It's called Zofran.
"It took FOUR Zofran to stop feeling nauseous," said Daneen.
"Yeah, I only needed one," Bahareh said.
"We totally didn't expect to get sick because of the low dosage we were getting. I was like, What the fuck!" Daneen said.


It was so nice to have friends visit. I hope other friends come and bring me tidings of the outside world, and possibly food too. Maybe Monday.

Coffee's here

Not much to say cuz hard to type one handed

Being addicted to caffeine is like rimming a goddess. A little humiliating, but properly mind-blowing.

Still no coffee

Tony's here. But he hasn't made the coffee yet. "Give us some time," he says.
I chirp some perky who-needs-coffee?-not-me! response to him ("Okey dokey, no problemorooni!"). Meanwhile, I want to break down my isolation door, grab his bag of Starbucks coffee, hit him over the head to crack the beans a little, eat a handful, and lick the bean dust from under my fingernails. The nursing staff would look aghast at the contamination issues I've brought onto the unit, and curse me. "Now the cleaning staff has to disinfect!" one mumbles. "That's what I'm saying," the other says.

God dammit, I've got work to do! Cheetos and Nutella's is not going to crank up my engine!

I think this Dave Barry article about caffeine addiction sums up some of my sentiment.

Best line: "It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity."

Coffee

I can't think. I feel sluggish. Where's Tony with the coffee? I've already drank whatever that rubbish black water is that passes for coffee on this unit. It must be d e c a f. I s t i l l f e e l s l o w w.
S.O.S. Somebody bring me coffee, please, before I fade away.

My date with diarrhea

I'm nervous. "Tony" said that the earliest people get sick is Friday night. God, please let me have had the placebo. Please? Please?!
I've got a date with diarrhea. Here's hoping I get stood up.

vegetarians...

You know what's difficult about vegetarians? How are you supposed to treat them to dinner? Can't take 'em out for sushi, steak, or lobster. And this particular vegetarian doesn't eat eggs, so I can't bowl her over with creme brulee or tiramisu. As someone wise once said, "You don't make friends with salad."
Anyways, there's only 2 options: some killer vegetarian Indian food or Mexican.
Anybody know any good Indian food places in Houston?

Food's here!

I kept myself busy doing Matlab programming until now. The food doesn't look bad. I'd compare it to airline food, but I can't remember the last time I had any. Lots of starchy stuff in the styrofoam box. Mashed potatoes, a roll with butter. Green beans (where is the pepper?). There's lone grape tomato and sprig of lettuce. What's up with that? I assume it's for decorative purposes, but why stand on ceremony at this point? Is there a deathly ill SARS patient just hangin on for dear life? One fond look at the tomato, and it's "My heart shall go on!" ?

There's some patient down the hall howling in pain. I don't know his story. Is it wrong to hope the patient is the president ? Now hearing his howls actually makes me happy.


With all this starchy food, I'm going to be no good at getting work done later. Sigh. Oh look, I have cake too.

Just took the Norwalk virus

The study coordinator "Tony" brought me and the three other subjects into a common room. There, he and the 3 doctors overseeing the study administered the Norwalk water to us with a lot of ceremony. Apparently, to administer the virus, the subjects have to have been fasting (have an empty stomach) and then take sodium bicarbonate to neutralize stomach acid, otherwise the virus won't take. So there was a lot of ritualization and timing involved in taking of the virus. They lined us up on one side of the room, execution-style, in front of a table that had four sets of cups on it. Tony squirted sodium bicarbonate into four cups of water. He gave us the signal and we all drank the sodium bicarbonate water. It tasted a little bitter and medicinal. The ritualism of it all, the fact that there were 3 doctors in the room taking things very seriously, and nurses circling like satellites: that's when it happened. I was started to panic. I felt like throwing up, and I knew if I indulged my panic, I could make it happen. But I just kept breathing. I knew the panic was due to the gravity of the situation and everyone's seriousness. But I got it under control by starting up some small talk with everyone and getting my mind off of what was happening. Finally, one doctor looked at his watch and gave Tony the signal when 2 minutes had passed. Then Tony had us all drink the "poopy water" (as Vanya dubbed it) simultaneously. Then the doctor timed for 5 minutes, at which point we all simultaneously took two sodium bicarbonate pills.
In retrospect, I realize that it was the bicarb water that did the trick. Our senses are very sensitive to that kind of stimuli, namely bitterness. We've evolved such that we equate bitterness with toxin. Had we been given regular water, panic might not have been triggered. Where there's fire, there was a spark. But I worked through it, so big friggin' kudos for me.

One interesting torture device they're using: We can't eat for another 2 hours. I've been fasting since noon! dammit.

I have wireless!!!

I don't have to deal with dial-up. This is awesome. There is a God.

The 96-Hour Blogathon

This weekend I will be participating in a research study that requires me to stay at a hospital in medical isolation for four days. Starting Thursday evening, I will be isolated to a hospital room until Monday evening. Please come visit me! You'll technically have to wear a gown and gloves, but it's no biggie.

Here's how I plan to amuse myself for 96 hours:

1. Do labwork on my computer (program coding on Matlab)
2. Work on Dr. Pwactical's analysis if necessary (God, please, please let this rubbish with the fluffy haired P.I. end once and for all be over)
3. Bring my biostatistics book and study
4. 'House' Season 1 DVD, courtesy of Netflix
5. Google Chat (I'll have dial-up in my hospital room).
6. Blog myself silly
7. Call people I haven't talked to in a while
8. Listen to music
9. Entertain visitors in my pajamas



Can anyone else think of stuff I should bring?

Top Five Foods...

...even when they're bad, they're good.
Criteria: these are foods/drinks I consistently order and/or crave. These aren't opportunistic foods; I seek these out with PURPOSE.

1. Grilled Cheese Sandwich with tomatoes
2. Caprese Salad with prosciutto and red bell peppers
3. Chocolate milk
4. Chicken Marsala
5. Pineapple juice
(alternate) Nutella

Suck it up, lock it up, PUBLISH!

I've learned my lesson. I've been bratty and indignant about doing extra work. The fact is, I'm going to be dealing with bastards all throughout my career. So I need to just suck it up, deal with it, and score a research publication on this.
Bastard-handling is a valuable skill, plumps up the C.V.

Awesome news!

I've officially joined a lab!!! I'm sooo happy!!!!!

Stats Exam

I got a 92 on the stats exam! And I crammed for this exam! I'm never studying ahead of time again.

Orange Creamsicle

The shuttle today smelled like orange creamsicle. Made me crave a flintstone push-up.

Soul Sucker

I have a meeting tomorrow with Dr. Pwactical. He's one of the researchers I took a course with and I hate his guts. The bastard actually gave me an incomplete. I did all the work I was supposed to do. I have absolutely no idea how this meeting is going to go. I imagine we'll discuss what other work I need to do in order to earn a pass in the tutorial rotation. It might not even be that much work. Worst case scenario will be having to re-analyze data until I get actual results, and if that happens, I know I'll come home angry, frustrated, and in tears.

I'm really excited about the work I'm doing right now in my current lab. But I'm so dreading the meeting tomorrow with Dr. Pwactical that it's actually sucking the motivation out of me entirely, even for the projects I am excited for.

If anyone reads this before 3:00pm tomorrow, please pray for me.

The Nacho Libre song

a.k.a. Mr. Loco's "I am I am (Religious Man)"

This song is available for download on Myspace.

It's inspiring. It makes you feel good that no matter how gawky you are, you could have a day of greatness.

Sowing the seeds.

I sowed some seeds right now. I'm that wide awake; I'm gardening. I planted large-leaf basil, rosemary, and lemon basil. According to the package, it should take 5-10 days for seedlings to emerge. Can't wait!

Fucking Adenosine Modulators

This isn't fair. It is one-thirty in the goddamn morning, and I'm wide awake. And why is that? Because I was fool enough to drink four ounces of Dr. Pepper at 6 o'clock this evening.

This isn't fair.

I hate this shit. Fucking adenosine modulators. So here are my rules so far for caffeinated beverages:
No coffee after 4pm.
No sodas after 6pm (possibly earlier).
No tea after 10am. This one is a real bitch. There's something sticky in tea's caffeine or theophylline molecule such that I'm wide awake and staring at the ceiling fan at 2am, more than a dozen hours post-consumption.

I know this is just something I have to deal with, but still.
Fucking A, man.

Dwight Schruth Bobble Head

Look what Praz got me! I love it! I can't wait to take it to work tomorrow. Everyone will be sooooo jealous.

My awesome friend

My badass friend has been working her ASS off to finish college, in spite of a lot of complications in her life. This past semester, Rice Cake made the Dean's List! I'm so proud of you! You have come so far, and you totally inspire me.

December 15: Rice Cake's Graduation Day

Gunter glieben glauten globen...

The history of the phrase.

Google Holiday Logos

Google Holiday Logos
Very cool compilation of all the different Google logos a.k.a. "doodles" that Google.com has used over the years.

A friend thought you might like this product at CafePress.com!

Hi Shtler!

A friend asked us to send you this email along with the following note:

You can view the product by visiting:

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/tf.aspx?tf=258413

Thank you!

Vanilla Almondon't

I just had the Odwalla Super Protein Vanilla Al'Mondo Soymilk drink. It was AWWWWful. God, it was so terrible. It's supersweetened to the point that I grimaced and contorted my head away from it, the way you do when you take a hard drink or taste bad milk.
Seriously, it's bad. Stay far far away from it.

Apparently, very quickly...

Looks like you can consume princess cake in large quantities. The award for this goes to Proleta, having polished off 80% of her cake in less than 24 hours.


Fatty.

This girl drives up my pageview counter...

In other words, the only girl I'm totally confident is actually reading this blog.
Love you!

Happy Hour at Bryan O'Neills:
 
 
  

Obsessed with this song...

Bought 2 Princess Cakes...

Nora, Vanya, Proleta, and I went to Ikea yesterday solely to buy their princess cake. Except that we bought other stuff too, of course. I'm pretty proud of myself; I only spent $20 (excluding the cake).
Proleta bought 2 princess cakes. C'mon, how fast can you possibly eat these things?

Today I had a cheese sandwich.

The purpose of this blog is to partly keep-in-touch with people and partly as my own diary. In other words, if I have a kickin cheese sandwich, I don't give a flying fuck if you think that's boring.

How to use MMS on your T-Mobile phone

I figured out how to post pictures from my cell phone. I'll probably post every cute pair of shoes I see, God help you all.

Anyway, T-mobile FAQ/Help site is difficult to navigate and you probably won't find what you need. I found the T-Mobile Wireless Data Configuratorwhich will allow you to update the settings on your phone so that you can use MMS.

moving between tabs on mozilla

Oh man I just figured out how to move between tabs on Mozilla Firefox. It didn't even occur to me to check the help file.

Next Tab
Ctrl+Tab
Ctrl+Page Down
Previous Tab
Ctrl+Shift+Tab
Ctrl+Page Up
Select Tab (1 to 9)
CtrlCmdAltOpt+(1 to 9)

fucking nutella

The nutella strawberries aren't that great. Instead of the nutella hardening into a crisp hard shell on the strawberry, it's now gooey.








It looks fine until you try to pull one off the dish.

Nutella-covered Strawberries

http://www.recipegoldmine.com/nutella/nutella76.html

Okay, so as a massive thank you gift to Vanya for tutoring me in statistics, Matlab, and life, I've decided to make her a combination of her two favorite foods:
- Chocolate-covered strawberries
- Nutella

I found this recipe for Nutella-covered strawberries.


First of all, I don't own a double boiler. Who does? I rigged this thing on the right. I had read online that to rig a double boiler you need to have something supporting the "inner boiler" so it doesn't contact the bottom of the "outer boiler". But it's not really necessary; the water buoys up the inner boiler.


Heat settings: You're supposed to keep the stove on a low setting, but Nutella starts out pretty thick and gloopy and resistant to melting. I got impatient and added heavy whipping cream before the nutella liquified. That's when it got all strange, clumpy, grainy looking, although it tasted fine. I suppose this is all about keeping the taste okay and the consistency smooth. It was at this point that I kicked up the temperature a notch. At this setting, the nutella aroma was detectable when you stood over it.

But eventually it all blended together nicely. The nutella eventually gets darker; you can see the color difference. Make sure the strawberries are dry; when they're wet, the nutella doesn't adhere.

I'll post the pictures of what the nutella-dipped strawberries look like tomorrow morning after a night in the fridge.

By the way, Vanya, if you see this before I give you the strawberries tomorrow, kudos to you for checking my blog.

Princess Cake

I just ate the last bite of one of the most addictive desserts. Princess Cake (or Prinsesstarta, as the Swedes say) which I only recently discovered...at Ikea. I don't get out much apparently. Nora's probably reading this and shaking her head in pity. But the Princess Cake rocks the heezy. Apparently iVillage has a good recipe.

This website is great: www.lovescool.com
Whoever this is logs all the best dessert places in New York City. Praz, are you reading this? We need to go to all these places.

SWEET PLACES
Balthazar
MarieBelle
Capogiro Gelato
Magnolia Bakery
Minamoto Kitchoan
Amai Tea & Bake
Jin Patisserie

naked.

I ate hot soup topless. That probably wasn't a good idea. But I came out unscathed, so no harm done.

Funky Brewster

Today I saw a girl at Chipotle wearing a side ponytail. Not good, Funky Brewster. Not good.

Vanya and me studying for stats...