Moving in is great

I spent the majority of today at my fraternity house where I’ll be living this year.  There is a ton of work to be done to clean the house and make it liveable.  For a start, twenty something bags of trash were hauled away this morning.  Since then, I alone have filled four more with random crap taken out of the kitchen.  I believe I threw away two blenders, a toaster, a traffic cone, rugs, cups, buckets, pitchers, a tree stand, silverware, and many other items, some of which were likely functional but simply made of too much mass to be worth keeping.  It is as if all residents for the past ten years brought their own sets of dishes and mini appliances and spices, with none of them trusting the reliability or expiration date of anything in the house.  I’m not saying I blame them, I would likely have done the same thing, but the situation has definitely spiraled out of control.  In addition to kitchen work, I trimmed the hedges out front and helped clean the inside of the bar.  All this and we haven’t even tackled the basement yet…

school begins to show itself

I have failed to post for four days.  It’s not that I haven’t thought about posting, but when I did, it was one of those instances in which I say to myself, “Nah, I’ll feel more like doing that later.”  Apparently, not so much.

Anyway, it feels good to be back.  First things first, I’ll share a book recommendation that I’ve been meaning to write down for some time.  Stephen King’s, From A Buick 8, was an excellent novel I read this summer.  It follows the story of a supernatural car and it’s effect on various members of a Pennsylvania state police troop.  Oh, another book that I recommend is in a completely different genre.  The book, The Wizard of Loneliness, by John Nichols, is a heartwarming tale of a rebellious young boy’s time with his grandparents in Vermont.

I started my move back to school today by moving a ton of other people’s things out of my room in the fraternity house.  Apart from the pain in the ass of moving in, I’m really psyched to be living at the house this year with six other brothers.  It’ll certainly be a change from the dorms of Quincy house.  Things I look forward to 1)  Drinking when bored, 2)  Cooking my own meals 3)  A larger bed  4)  cable TV service  5)  Bro-ing out in general.  I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be a very good year.

Monthly checkup – Yay!

I went to see my nephrologist today.  I am supposed to visit monthly but actually hadn’t been since May.  His office is somewhat depressing and often behind schedule, but I have to admit, I actually like the guy.  It’s nice that he treats me like an adult and I can be honest with him.  When I went to Children’s for so many years the doctors were similarly top notch, but it was tough being considered a child after turning 17.  I have had to tell ukelele playing clowns to fuck off way too many times.  That was kind of a tangent, but definitely telling.  Imagine being an eighteen year old in a dialysis clinic filled with children in various stages of illness, all screaming, crying, laughing and talking to form a wretched cacaphony.  All I ever wanted to do was sleep, so when on top of all this chaos going on, the clowns showed up and wanted to play me a song, I can only say that I wished I could get out of bed so that I could stick that mini guitar where the sun don’t shine.  Anyways, the doctor’s appointment was uneventful.  Calcium, hemoglobin, parathyroid all in check.  Just a regular day for a dialysis patient.

post vacation blues

I was hanging out with Alex on the roof of my place in Boston yesterday, and the massive difference between the view here and in VH really struck me.  There – nothing in the distance except trees, water, and maybe a boat.  Here – large buildings, cars and many, many people.

Well, I have been back from VH for three days and I’ve yet to go to lab even though that has been my only goal.  I’m struggling to be excited about restarting the daily worry and self-doubt that comes with trying to piece together a thesis project.  All I really have to do is sit down and write, but it’s tough even doing that.  The questions I have to answer are:  1) Is conductin a good readout of the canonical Wnt signaling pathway and 2) Do in situ results from the literature match immunostaining results that I’ve done?  I totally understand that these questions are not what you want to be reading about, likewise I don’t want to write or think about them.  I know that when I do finally get going, it’ll seem interesting again and it won’t be an issue.  For now though, it is not easy.

Dialysis yesterday was decent.  My buddy Alex was here and Don was helping me with the treatment.  I fell asleep watching Twelve Monkeys, what a screwed up movie.  I couldn’t get the machine up to full speed because of high access pressure, which was very frustrating.  Usually it falls over the course of the treatment, allowing me to slowly inch up the speed to 500 ml/min, but that never happened.  It hovered between 235 and 245 the whole time and I maxed at 480 ml/min.  4% of the speed is certainly not a huge deal, but it’s a difference of 5 more minutes on the machine, and that’s no good.  Alex’s presence was nice, even though I slept for and hour while he was here.  I remember originally bitching that it sucked I couldn’t operate the machine alone, but I know now that it would be a very lonely time spending dialysis hours with no company whatsoever.

reflections on an excellent visit

I have learned in various classes that art has an amazing capacity to mirror life.  I believe this is true.  The events that transpired once the quadpod descended upon Vinalhaven were much like a particular type of art – specifically, the work of actor Jim Varney, who played Ernest P. Worrell in classics such as Ernest Goes to Jail, Ernest Goes to Africa and Ernest Goes to School.  If this weekend were to be scripted and filmed as a movie, it would be most appropriately be titled Quadpod Goes to Vinalhaven and would be made in the same style as the revered Ernest classics.  The opening scene would show the Quadpod, within moments of landing on the island, consuming burgers, a chicken, a bag of sunchips, a box of sugar wafers, donuts, potato salad and cheetos.  Hilarious adventures would include flipping and nearly sinking a much loved, handmade, wooden boat, thus sending innocent bystanders into frigid waters to attempt its rescue while its former pilot remained stranded on a mid-ocean rock.  Also included would be the nut crushing and nut revealing antics of one mischievous and uncooperative pair of jeans.  Underlying the cinematic tension would be the constant threat of an assault by Chronsus maximus, who in the end of the film would reveal his ugly presence during one fateful dialysis treatment.  When completed, some viewers will laugh, some will cry, but I guarantee this movie will come close to not being a total failure, as the main characters, in real life, constantly threaten to be.

Ah, to be back in Boston again.  A distinct contrast between Vinalhaven island and Boston – the people all over the place.  Whereas in Vinalhaven I can stand on the deck and not see a single other person anywhere, I was privy to a yelling match between a meter maid and some guy who got a ticket in front of my house within one minute of stepping outside this morning.