Something inspirational I have been meaning to post.

I get into these semi-sappy inspirational stories of people triumphing over difficulties in life. I know it's cliché but I can't help it. It gives me hope!

*SiGh* I am not suposed to feel happy right now... but you never feel unhappy when a nasty storm passes.

I simply do not know how people in relationships survive together. No joke here! I just can not comprehend it. How do two people who have strong opinions and feelings of their own stay together for 25 years, 50 years or longer without physically killing one another! If anyone out there would like to comment on this and tell me how it's done I would love to know. On the grand scale of relationships, I am a rookie. I need all the coaching I can get.

It's bizarre really. You can tell from the countdown timer on the right that Emily will be abroad in Wales, UK for the next 2 months. What's bizarre about this is that I don't necessarily feel like I miss her. Given the stress that we experienced in the time leading up to her departure (a bit too personal to discuss in further detail in this blog), it is amazing that one of us did not kill the other or just call the relationship quits. That is why I am so perplexed why relationships find a way to survive. Now that she is gone, the stress has dissipated and left a feeling of relief, a calm, a peacefulness. I hope the reader does not consider me a terrible boyfriend. Don't get me wrong, I do miss her a little, and that feeling will likely grow as time progresses. Right now however, this is how I feel.

I can't help but think that this must be what Meursault must have felt at the beginning of Albert Camus' novel "The Stranger". The novel starts with the death of his mother. Meursault never cries at the funeral ceremonies. He acted rather ambivalent towards the whole situation. People around him who saw this perceived it as the signature of a cold hearted emotionless man because he did not react in the way that society expected him to react. As a result, Meursault became a victim of his emotions and feelings. Internally, he was free to feel any way he wanted, free to cry or not to cry. Despite this freedom, he was judged based upon those feelings and actions.

I guess I am judging my self a little bit right now.

I could not resist the urge to warn you all of this DIRE THREAT!

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Drunk elephants kill six people

What kind of a world do we live in where the elephants are now getting drunk and going on murderous rampages... *tisk tisk*

DAAAAAAAAAMN... It could be a lot worse...

Don't get confused about my last few posts. I am not a cynical person who is constantly in a disenchanted state due to current events... I am only in that state sometimes (!). But that's what this blog is all about. Sometimes I will be posting things of a more personal nature, what have I been up to, etc. and other times I will rant and rave about what's pissing me off in the world.

But I do have hope now. Why? Last night I went out with Emily and her roommate Meredith and a few others to Acme's. I know I mentioned Acme's before in this blog. One of the best places in the city... where you can spend less than $5 and that will take care of cover charge, a couple of beers and a slice of NY style pizza the size of your head!

Meredith had a particularly stressful day working at the hospital (she's training to become a nurse) in which according to her for one reason or another all of her patients were covered in shit... literally! And that in turn required cleaning and so forth.

So the quote of the night, according to her was;

"Things could be a lot worse, there could be shit EVERYWHERE."

I think I am going to remind my self of that every time I am experiencing a tough time!

Al Gore v. U.K. High Court v. Alfred Nobel... and once again that queasy feeling is returning to my stomach.

OK, I am going to do something here that I did previously in my last blog post. I am going to take two pieces of information in the news and lay them next to each other and observe the effect. Now these pieces of information are not necessarily reported in the main-stream media but will be related in some way nonetheless.

1) Yesterday you probably heard about Al Gore and the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) splitting the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in spreading awareness regarding the threat of global warming. Gore has shifted his efforts from running for President to making the movie/book documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and promoting that information on a tour tour all over the world.

2) Now ironically, a few days before the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize award, there was a court ruling by a High Court in London (click here and here for more) stating that in order for "An Inconvenient Truth" to be shown to children in classrooms a disclaimer must be announced pointing out up to 11 flaws in the science and logic reported in the movie.

Hmmm... Right about now is when a nice queasy feeling sets into my stomach and I feel kind of... well... disgusted with the Nobel. It has lost its alure to me now that someone who has essentially delivered propaganda as irrefutable scientific fact is being rewarded. It disappoints me as a scientist because it is not ethical. I have watched "An Inconvenient Truth" and done a fair share of my own research on both sides of the debate. There are flaws in Gore's documentary, and he is exploiting people's ignorance in an attempt to make them accept his opinions as irrefutable fact.

Uggghhh... not even the inner rage can make the queasiness go away with this one!


***Little known fact: Alfred Nobel the founder of the Nobel Peace Prize made his fortune from the discovery of... wait for it... dynamite! That coupled with some other explosives made him a fortune as they were quickly put to use by miners and engineers and mainly by the military. That secured his reputation with the French who called him "The merchant of death" in a fake obituary which also stated "Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday." Well, turns out Al had a guilty conscience, and decided to leave his fortune to funding the Nobel Prizes to reward people who did things that had a bit more of a positive effect on society. (!!!)

A congressional double standard (again) regarding religion and the government... political corectness strikes again!

I was recently tipped off to this story this morning while listening to "The Glenn Beck" radio program. Yes, I reluctantly admit am a listener of talk radio in the mornings while I am working. I am only interested in this particular show because it is so interesting.

Here's what I learned today!

First off, it became public today that a 17 year old Ohio Eagle scout was given a flag certificate for a flag that was flown over the nation's capital to honor his grandfather. The certificate had the following statement:

"This flag was flown in honor of Marcel Larochelle, my grandfather, for his dedication and love of God, country and family."

However, when the young scout received the certificate, the word "God" was omitted because the U.S. Capital Architect feels that the word "God" is an inappropriate religious word for such certificates.

Now... at the same time this week, our congress decided to pass a resolution recognizing the Holy Month of Ramadan. ***At this point I must take a moment to laugh immaturely at the Moro Islamic Liberation Front... watch the movie "American Pie" and you will understand why it is impossible for me not to snicker at a group by the acronym MILF!***

I was happy to read further that 42 congressmen voted "present" and refused to vote yes or no. Unfortunately none of them were from NY.

What a double standard, wouldn't you say? It's kind of making me sick to my stomach. Or maybe that's just remnants of the cold I had this weekend.

And by the way... I watched every second of the Bills game last night. It was one of the best games I have ever watched. Buffalo lost but how could you not be impressed. The 32nd rated defense in the league intercepted Tony Romo 5 times (!) and really rattled the cage of the undefeated Cowboys. Even with a loss, every one of those players must have woke up this morning feeling pretty damn confident coming off of this game!

No matter what the state of your health, the race must still be run.

Ugggghhhh... I hate sinus infections. If you get them on occasion you will know what I am talking about. If you do not get them... you are very lucky!

I ended up coming down with one Thursday and it has pretty much drained much of the energy from me over the past few days. Despite that, I still felt compelled to run a 4k cross country race today, the Golden Flyer Invitational - Alumni/Open 4k.

Drugged up with a dose of Sudafed that allowed me to breathe yet left me with a distinctly unpleasant dry mouth despite drinking countless bottles of water, I threw my self into the race. It could have been worse. Brad (a former teammate of mine) decided to run the race with a hangover following a night of partying.

I posted a time of 18:25 (pace of 7:22). It was an unseasonably hot day with the sky clouding over during the race and finally letting loose a solid downpour in a thunderstorm just as our race wrapped up. Given my bodily condition, I am glad I simply finished the race!

A group of about 5 alums went out for food and reminiscing after the race. It was nice to get together with former teammates I have not seen in quite a while.

So now I am feeling pretty dead tired right now. Somehow I need to find the energy to work on writing a manuscript for my boss concerning my research. With any luck, I will be a published scientific author within the next 6 months! :-)

I'll write more when my bateries are recharged and my health is restored.

The everlasting battle of graduate school and how life is kicking my ass.

Yeah, so it has been a while since I have posted anything. That is not to say I have not wanted to write. The present moment in time is very busy and stressful. I am reminded of a famous quote by one Marge Simpson:

"Bart, don’t make fun of graduate students. They just made a terrible life decision."

Well, let me tell you a little bit about what I do.

At minimum I put in 10 hours a day, showing up at the lab at 8 AM and leaving no later than 6 PM, and just for good measure I put in another 5 hours or more of studying, reading, writing or cleaning up the lab on Saturday or in the evening when my energy permits. I am almost done with the boring menial task of taking classes. I am down to only one this quarter. I am one of the lucky ones who is receiving funding from an external grant for my research (thank you very much Bausch and Lomb). That money keeps me out of the teaching laboratories where I would have to deal with the juvenile complaints and excuses from undergrad chemistry students. Instead I spend my time in my research laboratory doing as many experiments as possible. Some give me the desired result while others continually mock me and require seemingly endless patience as I try try again. It's things like that which contribute to a low level of natural inner rage* I seem to carry with me throughout the day.

After I work, I try to fit in a good solid workout because I still have this residual addiction to running due to my days of running cross country and track. That also serves as a good and necessary release for the inner rage.

Now if I ever have time after that... I try to do some leisure reading. Oh yeah... and all that other stuff necessary for running one's life, like paying bills, laundry, grocery shopping (see September 23's post for an explanation of my disdain for such activities). Those activities actually contribute to the inner rage so that brings me back to square-one!

Oh, and on top of that I am taking on the monumental task of finding and applying for a job to launch my career as I do not plan on being a graduate student forever. It's not much of a lucrative position.

And... I do have a girlfriend whom I like to spend time with. The inner rage really bites me in the ass on this one. The lack of time and extra stress adds up lately to one strained relationship with two frustrated people involved. :-( Not all things are for blogging, so that's about as personal as I am going to get with that topic.

*Inner rage: This personal phenomena (whose name I attribute to Tim) is best summed up with the fact that at any given moment there is something on my mind that is really pissing me off and if brought to light in just the right way will set me off very nicely. A healthy level of inner rage is often what pushes me through the really difficult moments of any given day.