P.S. someone from the flat upstairs just went pounding down the stairs, saying in a very loud, very Gen Y accent, "I just want to get all of the property managers in New Haven together in a room, and like, just scold them!"

I heartily concur.

Merely psychosomatic... that boy needs therapy!

Wow, mom is right. Having a blog makes it MUCH easier to try and track down EVERYWHERE YOU'VE BEEN IN THE WORLD for the past ten years for a visa application.

Still not fun, though.

However, I have come to the conclusion that I should post more often.

Finally heard back from landlords. I sent an email to every address I could find on the webpage and someone FINALLY called me back. That is literally the first time that has happened since I first moved in. Usually no one answers the phone, and I leave messages into the void. Or no one replies to email, no matter how grouchy/carefully worded.

Anyway, the dude I talked to says he will only give me a lease till the end of May, June or July. Then I can find my own sublettor. "We can't leave a place in a prime location like that empty, and it is too much risk for us to then have to find someone else". Oh, okay then, please do let me take the risk instead, and charge me extra rent for it! Sounds great!

ummmm, no.

I haven't emailed them though, because I am having weird symptoms and I'm stressed I have tetanus. I know I almost certainly don't have tetanus, but I wish my neck and jaw muscles weren't so tight and my butt muscles would stop randomly twitching. It's almost certainly a combo of stress and psychosomatic symptoms, but still... no fun.

Anyway, I drafted an email but am loathe to send it because not sure what they will come back with. Technically lease ended on Monday. I've started the process of getting the sublet I looked at on Friday (for December 1st) but am looking at another tomorrow night. Guy from the first place sendtme a weird email explaining that there are tons of other people who want the place, so wouldn't feel too guilty about ditching on that as long as there's still lots of time till December for him to find someone else. Second place is miles away up in East Rock so much less convenient, but it's a studio apt, so no random Russian housemate. We shall see. This will all work out okay.... right???

Forgot the other thing that happened this week, which was cutting my leg open on a metal fire hose connector thing sticking out from the wall at Beinecke Plaza and bleeding all over everything, then crashing the new Yale President's inauguration to find a bathroom to clean it up. Luckily the bathroom in question had a lovely first aid kit and I had Rebecca with me (physicians come in handy), but it was fairly unpleasant. Then the next day Rebecca made me go get a tetanus shot and that took up half of the day. On the plus side, I'm protected from diptheria and whooping cough for ten years as a side effect...

In which everything seems to happen at once

Things are going faster and faster and I'm just trying to hang on and cope as best I can...

Had a grant due this week that took over my life (as they tend to do) and pushed everything else aside for a while. The stupid thing is that it's for Yale, which doesn't work out that great in the grand scheme of things, life-plan-wise. Still, I never get these things anyway so it is probably moot. What happened was, I applied for similar funding last year - or tried to - with someone in London. One of my referees did not submit their letter and I couldn't contact them, so in the end the grant never went in. Horrible situation. Anyway, I agonized all summer about approaching the London person again - I have one more shot at Canadian postdoctoral funding as they give you two years after finishing - and finally got up the courage to email her. Sadly, she couldn't take on another person in her lab at that point. (Or else she thought I was an idiot and was just being polite - hard to say). She suggested a former student of hers as a back-up supervisor. The former student was interested, and we got most of it written - and then her institution said the salary amount would not be enough to meet the minimum standard for postdocs! (Note: the salary award would be more than I make now. Apparently British institutions are far more generous).

So there I was, with a grant but no place to take it up - and it was due in a matter of weeks. I asked a colleague at Yale what to do and he offered to take me on if I got the grant - but then we ended up totally changing the entire thing a week beforehand, and then four days beforehand I had a sudden epiphany about methods and rewrote the whole works once again. So the original idea was not to waste an opportunity to submit an already-written grant even if the location of tenure wasn't the best - and then we ended up basically writing two new ones anyway. Whoops.

Then the latter part of the week was crazy because we ran bucketloads of participants, mostly kids with ADHD and Tourettes, including one this morning (Saturday). Tiring. It takes a WHOLE lot of energy to get a twitchy, jumpy, bored kid through a long and boring EEG task. (And a whole lot of stickers for bribery purposes). We had one little guy with Oppositional Defiant Disorder - that was fun - and today's was lovely but VERY hyperactive. I think the constant injunctions to sit still were actually torture for him.

 I did manage to squeeze in a visit to the seamstress on Chapel Street armed with Mom's/Grandma's wedding dress. I was hoping she could alter it to fit me, saving a lot of trouble looking for a dress. Alas, the fabric is too fragile to alter (and my hips and shoulders are too big not to alter).

"It's too bad your mom didn't take better care of her dress," she told me. "Oh well, the lace is still lovely. It would make a lovely christening gown for a little girl!"

(and I'm thinking, hold up lady, they haven't even managed to drag me to the altar yet!)

I could use the lace to make a veil and it would be awesome, but not sure if it's worth the destruction of the dress. The seamstress did point out a lot of spots where it's torn and stained, though... she didn't think it was really wearable even if I was Grandma-sized. Still, it's really disappointing. Definitely would have been happy to give the ol' girl one more wedding outing. (The dress, not Grandma).

So yeah, now I have to add "finding a wedding dress" to my to-do list. 

I also joined a mentoring program this week through Women in Science at Yale, just for the heck of it, and now have two Ph.D. students from Public Health to mentor. Not sure how much use I will be as I've taken an EXTREMELY non-traditional route, but it will be fun to try.

But the main crazy stressor this week was housing. This is a long and stupid story, as so many seem to be.

Basically, the (jerk) landlords sent me a letter in September claiming to not have received September rent. It was quite a mean letter full of eviction threats. I called and emailed (I had sent the cheque mid-August) and nobody ever replied, so eventually I went in person, with printed evidence that the cheque had been sent in hand. However, because I was worried about these eviction threats, I also sent another, replacement cheque (with REPLACEMENT in large letters on it).

I spoke to the accountant, who claimed never to have received the original cheque but who promised to destroy it if found.

I'm sure you can see where this is going.

Three days later - bam, two lots of rent taken out of my account, plus a bonus extra lot of October rent (which I sent early due to the accusations and threats from September). She blatantly put through the original, "lost" cheque.

I went back in to discuss and she said it would be applied to November. Then, in passing, she asked if I was renewing the lease (ends at the end of Oct), or was I leaving? Well, no, I said, you've just taken November rent. But I could sign a lease until the end of February. Oh, no, we don't do short leases or month-to-month.

But the lease I signed says that's what happens.

WE DON'T DO MONTH-TO-MONTH.

But I will check if you can do a short lease.

So I sent several emails to follow up and finally got one back saying I could sign a six-month lease. I wrote back to say I can't do that as I'm leaving in February. I asked if they'd be willing to do that.

No answer.

Follow-up email, no answer.

So now I'm left totally uncertain whether they will try to evict me in November (for which they took rent via cashing the cheque when they promised not to) since the lease is up, or what. If they hold firm to "six-month lease or nothing' I am kind of screwed. So... ALSO spent the week on Craiglist looking for short sublets. I found a Russian dude called Nikolay who is willing to sublet from Dec-Feb. The place is tiny and furnished, so I would have to spend November downsizing and packing. Still, I would be free of ridiculous landlords who won't pick up the phone or answer email. (Never rent from Pike International). That said, I am a bit worried they would try to hold the damage deposit hostage, despite the fact this is clearly illegal in CT. Argh!

So yeah. Opinions? Current plan is to try once more with Pike to get some sort of clarification on how firm this "six-month lease only" thing is. Then, if they won't tell me or refuse to let me stay till Feb, I guess Nikolay it is. I could live without another stupid move, but if I have to I will.

Currently holed up on the futon drinking the Walgreens version of LemSip/Neocitran and making cool stuff out of crochet. (Christmas presents, if I can bear to give them away!) Caught some sort of horrible swollen-throat thing, probably from the kiddies at work. Tis that time of year.

Think I am finally over my bout of crazy-brain anxiety, which is good, but bad because there was a lot I should have accomplished. I just felt paralyzed. Very annoying. Thanks for the supportive comments, by the way, which I couldn't read at the time because I was worried about what they would say. Crazy-brain. Anyway, the wedding is sort of on the way to being planned in that we're busy contact registrars, applying for visas etc. Judging by Pinterest most peoples' wedding planning is taken up by much more fun things (then again, apparently envelope liners are a thing - "a skilfully lined envelope hints at the elegant invitation within!" - so maybe not).

I did manage to get one paper submitted thanks to my rock-star buddy at Regina, who spotted me some data and let me do the write-up for the first-author slot. No word yet, but just to have something submitted is huge. No sign of anything out of the postdoc, and in fact feel actively blocked by supervisor everytime I try to do something, so that sucks. I have told him I'm leaving at least, AND got my US visa extended, so two huge stressful things are out of the way. Currently applying for postdoctoral funding (that I don't really want due to location, but you can't NOT apply) and trying frantically to dig something publishable out of the terrible collection of EEG data I've been handed.

Del was over to visit for a few weeks, which went a long way towards dissipating stress. We didn't actually get all that much done but he is a calming influence. Plus, I guess it's harder to be crazy-brain when you're not alone all the time. We had lots of adventures involving transit (it turns out that to go to the outlet mall in Clinton, you can take a train THERE but there are no RETURN trains. There are literally no return trains from Clinton to New Haven. None. It didn't show up on Google Maps but I figured, there's no way there's NO return trains ALL night from an entire town, right? Wrong. Welcome to America. We had to take a train the wrong direction for three stops, get off, wait an hour and then take a train back the right direction. And then Del left his bag/wallet in the pub just as the train pulled up and it all got very exciting for a second) and went to the Pez museum! Bet you didn't know the Pez museum is in Connecticut.

Actually we did quite a lot of stuff. I shall post some photos:

New York, stayed in awesome hotel, ate scary American food at Virgil's BBQ with Del's best friend Kate, who happened to be in town from Edinburgh (!)

(that is some sort of bourbon milkshake on the right, if I remember correctly).
Went to Top of the Rock finally, saw the musical Matilda with Del's friend Delphine, who ALSO happened to be in NYC from Oxford, went out for BBQ yet again... good times.

Then the next weekend we went to Cape Cod/Martha's Vineyard because it seemed a shame to briefly be an East Coast girl and not have gone. Saw Plymouth Rock. Giant rock with date carved on it. Americans very excited anyway. Also saw a big ship and messed around the harbour for a bit. 

Went to Hyannis on Cape Cod. Stayed in the Princess Suite, which was basically a 70s porn director's idea of what a classy motel room should look like. Got to watch a large American dude throw a giant tantrum in the lobby upon check-in: he had wanted to propose to his girlfriend and somehow got the impression from the website that this place was an upscale hotel. Ummm...

Nope.

So yeah, he was horrified and kept screaming, but as far as we could tell there was nothing actually WRONG with the room, it just... wasn't exactly classy/upscale. Funny but cringe-inducing. Saw him (alone) the next morning at breakfast down the street, confiding in the ladies at the next table his tale of woe!

Oh, and Del tried his first Slurpee at the most upscale Sev I've ever seen.

Oh yeah, this one was for Grace.

Always thinking of my dear sister.

Anyway, the next day we headed over to Martha's Vineyard - basically chasing the ferry schedule all over the Cape. With our usual sound planning we missed the one out of Hyannis (well, the cheap one anyway) and headed down the Cape - nope, missed that one too, better go to Woods Hole. In the end we got a way faster, cheaper ferry and a free parking spot, so all worked out quite well.

Twas gorgeous and the ice cream there was INSANE. Basically we just poked around the first town we came to and hung out on the beach - pretty sweet for September.

And since then I have basically been working working to catch up (and then being ill and undoing it all again). Anyway, tomorrow is Yale Day of Service, so going to go plant some trees or something in a community garden...

Crazy, I'm crazy for feeling so blue

So I have been in super crazy anxiety mode for the last few weeks. Very unpleasant, and also ironic because I am anxious because I have so much to do and am not accomplishing much (relatively speaking), but the anxiety makes it really hard to actually do anything useful. Bah. Been avoiding everyone (except Del) in case they stress me out more and trying to go to the gym. This week was feeling a bit better but still way behind - not by any objective deadline, just in my own mind. Hence I am at the lab on a Sunday night trying to get some stuff finished. (So far, so good!)

Went to Boston this weekend with labmate Stephanie and her husband Justin. Feel like I should have stayed and worked, but this was long-planned and didn't want to ditch out (so did Friday and Sunday lab nights instead...) One major highlight was meeting up with former WISEST big sister Jennie. Man that was great. I haven't seen her in AGES but she hasn't changed at all. Still trying to big-sister me, too. She's a neuroscience role model hanging at MIT messing with mice genetics. She's also been in an EIGHT-YEAR long distance relationship while doing her post-doc, making my five years look fairly shoddy. Still playing hockey, still super hard-core in everything she does. That made me really happy - definitely need to try and get back up to Boston more often. (Jennie says she will sneak me into the good MIT talks if I want!)

Apart from that, went on a duck tour - we got one of the original WWII ones! - which was pretty awesome, especially the river bit. Then we went to visit Stephanie's mom in Marshfield, stayed over and hit up the beach in the morning. I slathered my top half with sunscreen but forgot to do my legs, with predictable results...

Anyway, fingers crossed I will get enough things done this week to calm my brain and also forestall any catastrophes. Going to Ontario on the weekend to see Sandeep and Christine, which is super exciting but also stressful to figure out how to get to Newark etc. Sandeep and I are trying to write a paper, so should be productive as well as fun.

Another Essay from the Train

Another crazy journey, another blog post from the train. Trying to get back from Manchester this time. During my recent Month of Rejection, one of my rejections was from the Bangor University ERP Summer School. Naturally I had ulterior motives for hitting up that one, but there were very genuine reasons for wanting to go: I need some formal training in EEG at this point, I was pretty sure that smart and generous Bangorites would be able to offer some insight into the specific problems I am having with the data analysis Denis wants, and of course my poor CV could use some new entries.

But more of that later. Since I am on a train, it seems like a good idea to start with journey stories. The trip over was fine – annoying, as I had a layover in Washington Dulles and had just had surgery so was terrified of blood clots/DVT/strokes – but the nice man beside me ran the MRI unit somewhere in the North of England, so he was quite happy to let me out often during the flight to walk up and down the aisle in my fetching white surgery support stockings (lovely!)

The trip back, however, is still in progress. The first leg was pretty bad, as I was in the window with a socially awkward, smelly adolescent in the next seat. He spent the whole trip leaning into my mandated 1.5 cubic feet of personal space to crane his neck out the window at nothing (maybe he likes clouds). Finally I closed it to “sleep” (scared to actually sleep due to DVT) to stop him, which worked until I opened my eyes to find him IN MY SEAT opening the window shade himself. NOT COOL on a plane – one must guard one’s tiny area as best one can, and I know for a fact there was a window seat open further back so he clearly couldn’t be bothered to actually book one. Blah.

Anyway, got to Dulles, usual horrible ordeal through customs and whatnot, lugged my luggage to check it back in, went to the gate and emailed Del to moan about Window Boy. I looked up half an hour before the gate closed and noticed that suddenly it was indicating it was a flight to Cincinnati. Crap. So found the new gate, needless to say a million miles across the airport, and plonked myself down. But what’s this? Delayed? Yep. Delayed and delayed and delayed. Finally they just cancelled it. I joined what must have been a several hundred strong queue for the Customer Service (bucketloads of flights cancelled) and then it got interesting.

In short, I was making decisions based on inadequate information and kept making the wrong ones. They had rebooked me to the next morning to LaGuardia, but were not offering accommodation. So I got them to send me to Hartford that night instead. But after multiple calls, it turns out that there is no transit from Bradley Airport after midnight. My only option would be to book a car, at a time my brain thought it was 6am and had been awake for 24 hours. Once I discovered this I stood in the giant queue again to rebook and then again to find out what they did with my luggage. They claimed to have sent it to Baggage Area 5, which I found out after about an hour was a total lie. Finally (11.30pm) I gave in, took the airport “discount” and booked a Comfort Inn that promised shuttles upon demand. Needless to say that took hours, and so crawled into bed for five quick hours sleep before hopping up, finding out the 6am shuttle was missing, taking the 6.30 shuttle and getting back for the 8am flight. At which point I found out someone totally lied and my luggage had been on a 5pm flight to LaGuardia the night before.

Anyway, made it to LaGuardia, collected luggage (!!! Total win at this point) and got in line for the “every half hour” shuttle. Yep, more lies. After an hour the bus finally showed up, and we crawled towards Grand Central. At this point it really got surreal, and I realized that it’s not just me screwing up figuring out what best to do – life is really just trying to mess with me today. The bus driver tried to gun it across an intersection before the red hit, missed, got stuck in the intersection, suddenly an ambulance was trying to get through perpendicular to us, and the cops pulled us over for obstructing an emergency vehicle! So that took a while for Mr. Cop to diligently write out his ticket. So he lets us go, and – we don’t go. The bus is making crazy noises and it will jerk forward but not actually move, and we’re crawling jerkily backwards down the hill in midtown Manhattan. You can imagine how much the other traffic liked that. We were stuck for 20 minutes with the driver trying to engage the hydraulics (I assume) and they just wouldn’t go. There was mutiny among the angry Americans on the bus, who started shouting, “Let us off! We want a refund!” as we lurched another half-inch down the hill backwards. FINALLY, excruciatingly, the driver managed to catch both a bit of boost to the engine and a green light, and we inched up the hill and through Manhattan at a snail’s pace.

After that I ran for a train on my bad leg trailing luggage everywhere, and here we are!

Anyway, the summer school was really good. Got in totally exhausted due to the aforementioned fear of sleep, although I did get stuck at Manchester Airport for a few hours, so sort of napped there. Checked into the Frioedd site and had a nap there, then hit up the welcome reception and the free wine. Monday and Tuesday were lecture-based, so got some good tips about EEG with developmental populations. Monday after lunch, however, the girl sitting next to me asked me as we walked back to the Wheldon building for a painkiller. Of course I had my crazy American post-surgery ones, but I also have a ton of aspirin to thin my blood and ward off clots. So I handed her my pill bottle as we walked up the stairs (still painful for me, so I was distracted) and said, “Sure – the round ones are aspirin, have one of those.”

I think you can see where this is going.

We got upstairs and I said, “Did you get an aspirin?”

“I think so – I took one of the long ones.”

“Uhhh, I think those were my painkillers that the doc said to take half of when I really needed it.”

This girl was roughly half my size but it was a bit late to say anything at that point.

Long story short, she rushed out of the room shortly after and I got a message from A&E later that night. :/ I spent the night horrified I had accidentally poisoned someone. Luckily, it turned out she just had a bad reaction and all was well, although the next day’s class was awkward.

Anyway, between very merry dinners (including a departmental one with more free wine), a departmental ceilidh (Bangor throws the best ones) and many lunch-time meetings about EEG coherence, the week went extremely fast. It was exhausting as I was “on” from 7.30 till I collapsed into bed, either learning EEG analysis or trying to be a decent guest. Saville from fencing and my lovely Thandiwe were both kind enough to host me, which made the whole thing much more pleasant as well as more affordable!

After that mad week, we decided to push through and hit up a festival on the weekend. It’s called Ymuno and is tiny – 500 people in a farmer’s field in North Wales, one tent and lovely music and art. Lowri from the Masters course mentioned she was going and I couldn’t resist. The weather was incredible. However, camping in a field is not really conducive to the lie-ins I was hoping for!

Luckily Del had a plan up his sleeve – he brought all the necessities for camping and then booked us into a studio apartment for the last two days in Manchester! After things wrapped up on Sunday afternoon, we packed up the car, reshuffled everything to make room for a small Australian hitchhiker, and set off. Had a relaxing couple of days and on the last day, Gok Wan was filming Gok Live right outside our apartment! So that was pretty interesting. We joined the unofficial audience and got to see how a TV show is made. All in all, it was expensive and kind of a risk to go on the trip, but an amazing week in terms of useful learning, Del-seeing and fun - so totally worth it!