Alright, I haven't touched this thing since January. Early January. It's been a while, I know.

So recently, I got an email from my lovely domain service saying that seventy-some odd dollars have been deducted from my Discover card which signifies the third year anniversary of borrowing hard drive space from Dot5. I'd say the past six months of service wasn't exactly well spent.

So, why the long break? For the most part, laziness. I mean real lazy. The class of lazy being the same as trying to drink a glass of water while still laying down. It never works. It hasn't worked the last five or so times and it probably never will. You always end up soaked, sitting up, and looking around hoping nobody saw that. That lazy. The second reason for not updating is that there are a couple of jerks in this city who do not really need to know what I've been up to. The third reason is that things have been pretty busy around here. Being a doctoral candidate in a field you weren't really interested in until you were forced to enter it takes up a lot of your time, believe me. The fourth reason is that I have a newfound respect for television and the mindnumbing glory that it beams onto my face. The fifth reason is that I've been having friends over at my place often. Ok, not often, but a lot. Some may say it would even be too much, but I digress. It's all good.

I've also stopped checking on the MySpace. It has lost its luster for me especially since with every login, I'm greeted by a mountain of spam consisting of random naked chicks. I get enough spam in my regular email accounts, I just don't want to deal with this extra crap.

I've totally restructured and revamped my philosophy on how I make and keep friends. I've given up trying to be friends with everybody I meet. I've somehow managed to run under that notion during my entire existence in Seattle. However, things are different here. Lo and behold, to my surprise, there are people whom I just can't stand, want to get along, or understand. Oh man, one type that really pisses me off is the junior-psychotherapist type. They try to milk the frustrations, thoughts and feelings out of you without much feedback, like a one way street. The worst part is that it makes you wonder what they do with that information. It's crazy frustrating. I could go on and on about cockblockers, compulsive liars, condescendents, ad nauseum. Ya know, people I never really ran into in Seattle. ::sigh::

Enough about that. I'm sure I could go on for pages.


This week I needed to go over to the administrative building on campus for my annual health assessment. Basically, all they really need to do is take your weight, blood pressure and perform a PPD (Purified Protein Derivative) test for tuberculosis. First of all, I'm TB free, just to get that out of the way. I've managed to gain ten pounds since last year. Yep, ten pounds. I know it's definitely not muscle mass. Bollocks.. The more concerning part of the assessment was that I've developed hypertension since last year. My first test resulted in 130/90. Ten points above the border of 'normal' on both sides. So, I was slapped with a retest and due back in two days. So over the next two days I layed off the caffeine, drank plenty of water and stayed away from the salty snacks. The retest got me back to the borderline of normal, 120/80. But, it was only from taking to extreme things I don't normally do. So the real reason why this especially raises concern for me is that hypertension runs in my family. I guess it's been creeping up on me and finally caught up. I've also haven't been doing much to suppress it. So yeah, I've been ignoring it and now it's become a problem.

I suppose I should take care of two birds (yeah the weight thing, not the TB thing) with one stone and start running again . I used to love running until I got into a car accident back in 2004. Now I can barely jog a mile before my back starts killing me. I guess I just need to pace myself and/or bite through the pain.


One source of the hypertension is most likely this insane class I took this last semester. I'll leave out the guilty professor's name of the description not out of respect, but out of the suspicion that he Google searches his name habitually to maybe find somebody saying something nice about him. Anyway, this was a presentation class with seven of us students on board. Each of us had to present a total of three times. So after each one of us had a chance to present, the professor told us in a mass email that we all deserved a B-. I wouldn't mind so much if I was given a B- personally, but the fact that the entire class was lumped together in an omnigrade really pissed me off. Not only was that lazy, but it's unprofessional, irresponsible, and unfair. It was really clear that individual presentations varied in style and quality, but if you dish out bad grades and fail to tell individuals what went wrong and how to improve then you fail as a teacher. Did I forget to mention that in grad school, a cumulative grade below a 'B' means academic probation? So yeah. he was pretty much telling all of us that we don't belong in graduate school. Also, these presentations aren't walks in the park. I've spent at least 30 hours working on the first presentation from digging up reviews, primary papers, putting together slides and rehearsing. I presume others in the class had put about the same amount of effort on their presentations since they were just about equally crushed with the 'B-' mass email. Yeah, we were pissed. If this man went missing suddenly, we'd have at least seven suspects in the crime. Our presentations were spaced two weeks apart and for most of us, we could barely spend any time in the lab doing real experiments. It was suck and is probably a source of my hypertension.

Anyway, until next time whenever that may be.

Back to the TV.

music: Modest Mouse - Parting of the Sensory
Well, Someday you will die somehow,
And something's going to steal your carbon...

Hey Rich, I am glad to see that you've put something up on your website....i keep checking it around once a month! I am really sorry about the lab thing, and really really sorry about the people you've had to deal with/ put up with....every time I watch 24, I fondly think of the times we all watched it! FYI- all Krispy Kremes are closed in AZ due to lack of enough sales:(...why dont you come down here for a visit and maybe a hike down the grand canyon might cheer you up! My work here is going ok....as usual nothing is working....i finally got myself a car! its an awesome feeling....
-Pavi - 070727 - 1442EST

pavithragopalan@gmail.com