Conventions, novel releases, and surprise trips to Colorado have meant that I've gotten behind on my school, and am paying the price. I arrived home this week to a flurry of frantic activity: while I was off adventuring, the rest of the world had moved into the dread and terror that is Midterm Season. And the little part of that world that is my lab had shifted into We Have To Present Our Research HOW SOON? mode, so there was a lot of scrambling. On the plus side, there are now pictures of the research I've been doing for the last year.
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| Isn't it adorable?! |
So in between photographing urchin larvae and studying for statistics (at least that exam's over now--eeek, math), I am left with only one exam more before I need to start worrying about finals and posters for the grant.
And then it will be summer. Tolerant Housemate and I had a brief argument about summer yesterday: he insists on not considering it summer until June 21st. I insist on calling it summer now because I've had to resort to hiding in the 15ºC room in lab from the heat. Yay environmental rooms.
As for the novel? Well, if you go visit my website, you'll see that it's up at a variety of new and exciting places. If you've read it, do please leave a review! You shall make me a very happy author indeed.
And as more people read the book, I can start posting more about said book, such as how to use a fan in combat...
I've just sent in the first draft of Weather to the editor, and of course I'm now sitting down and realizing all the things I want to fix in it (and would be absolutely mortified for other people to find!). But that's not very useful so I've been doing homework to take my mind off of fretting.
And lab work. I spent most of this morning in the laboratory with a handlens and huge quantities of enormous bullfrog tadpoles, examining mouthparts and trying to determine the extent of bleaching to said mouthparts. The lab I work in is a lot of fun, as the professor who runs it will turn up every so often with a mess of salamanders or toads and there are turtles absolutely everywhere all the time. I started out working with insects in my first lab, and sea urchins in my second and it's a delight to meet actual vertebrates while doing research. I'm only handling dead critters at this point, though.
I had lab meeting soon after that, which was full of math but still interesting. I snuck out early when it hit the awkward silence stage as everyone stared at the paper and tried to think up comments about it or made a last minute attempt on the hummus before all of it disappeared. The lab meetings are very well provided for in the food department.
Then there was home and homework and last minute dinners because we'd expected to go shopping and get dinner out and then didn't (long story). So in the end, I distracted myself fairly well from worrying about whether my manuscript is a complete embarrassment.
Well, until now.
Stuff it, I'm going to go play video games.
