Cranial Forecast: Sunny with foggy patches

We all have days when our head is in a fog that won’t dissipate: distraction, exhaustion or just a complete inability to clearly predict the consequences of our actions. No amount of caffeine cuts the fog some days, it just turns you into a shakey foghead.

The fog is annoying at best, and downright embarrassing at worst. Ok, there are worse things than a little embarrassment... but embarrassing moments can be bad enough. The embarrassment factor increases substantially depending on how dumb you think you looked and how many witnesses there were (and who the witnesses were in some cases). The dumb factor really embarrasses me. I hate those "Doh!" moments.

Case in point, once as a child on a camping field trip, I spit my gum out the bus window and the wind blew it back into my hair. I had to ride the rest of the way on the bus with gum in my hair as advertising of my dumb move! I was totally mortified and will never forget how dumb I felt.

Growing up didn’t spare me, in fact it got even worse. In this blog I've often referred my early twentyhood fog, and I wasn't kidding. One example? I used to set things on the roof of my car and forget it and drive off. Talk about advertising my own stupidity. I’ve set shoes, rental videos and a subway sandwich up there at one time or another. It wasn’t just me that noticed lettuce and luncheon meat tumbling down my back window! I also had to go into the video store and ask the clerk if anyone had turned in the videos I’d JUST rented. He gave me a puzzled look and asked, "Videos found in the parking lot? Yeah. How did they get there?" He was so obviously rubbing it in!

Over the years the fog has lifted somewhat... I went from "poor visibility" to "mostly sunny with foggy patches." I'm not 100% sure why either. Do I pay attention more, less wallowing in self-focusedness? Better diet? More exercise; for the body and the brain? Or maybe I've just learned the art of damage control.

So here's my theory... You can do your best to prevent or avoid stupid embarrassing moments, but they WILL happen. We’re all human and people aren’t judging us as harshly as we may think for it. Isn’t embarrassment really due to our preconceived notion of how life should go? All you can do is be as aware as your brain will let you be that day and then go with the flow. If you laugh at yourself, people will laugh at you too! I have trouble laughing at myself when I'm not trying to be funny, but I've definitely had a lot of practice and now it's easier. Just think, your friends will have entertaining stories to tell! As an added bonus, it develops character. (I could use a little less character, thanks.) ... But that old addage works, practice makes perfect. With each of these episodes you’ll get better at the damage control.

I challenge you to go out and practice being embarrassed, spill food on yourself at lunch, fall down in front of a crowd, chat with and accidentally spit on your boss today!!!

One more thing... Can I follow you around with a camera? Please?

Communication is key to harmonious relationships

My supervisor is like the boss in this Dilbert comic. Not that he knows us all that well, but he does close his eyes during my presentations. The first time it happened, he said he had a migraine and couldn't look at my slides for more than a few seconds at a time. Pffft! Riiight!!! Ok, I might believe that since I put a bright yellow background on the slides. Oops. Ah, the things you don't realize when you start out...

I recently gave a presentation about my research in a class that my boss teaches every year, and I give this same presentation every year. Normally, he's in the back of the class snoozing. This time he was away, so I was a bit relieved that I wouldn't see him catnap while trying to talk about my research to the class. It can be really disheartening.

That's why I was extremely taken aback when I noticed one of the TAs in the back of the class with her eyes closed!!! I couldn't believe it. To add insult to injury, she offered no apology or even any excuses for her behaviour afterwards. Nuthin.

So now every time I see her, I give her the finger. I don't think she's made the connection.

It was suggested that I could come to her presentation in that class next week and sleep loudly through it. However, I think the finger thing is workin' for me as she says hi to me EVEN LESS than she did before (she's a serial non-hi-sayer in the first place). So I figure she's pickin' up what I'm throwin' down here. She must be feeling the Mich-wrath.

But maybe the sleeping during her presentation idea has some merit after all. If I brought a pillow to class next week, it will come full circle on her. She'll have an 'ah ha' moment in front of the whole class when she looks up and sees my little head atop my pillow; happily napping away.

Then when she mentions it after class, I'll lose it on her. That will open the door to reparations. Then we could have a real sit-down chat about it. Because after all, I believe in being honest and straightforward about these things. It saves a lot of anxiety between people.

LET'S DANCE!!!

Check out the video I just made of us dancing (click on 'LET'S DANCE!!!' link above).

The picture quality sucks, but it's still fun to watch! I would have done a better job except my computer can't handle it. That is, it can't handle our dancing... Have a looksie yourself and find out how baad we are!

Ramblings on Research: Human Experimentation.

I don’t do animals... Human studies are (quite frankly) a pain in the arse... err, I mean long and complicated, but that’s what I enlisted for.

People ask me what it involved for my human guinea pigs... After my rambling explanation, their reaction is always: "How did you get people to sign up for THAT?" As if I was torturing them or something… Ok, it probably was somewhat torturous. Yep, I torture people for a living. But at least it's torture with informed consent... (Uh yeah, that sounded weird.)

When I'm asked what I do, I like to phrase it: "Human experimentation."

So back to how I get people to sign up for torture... I have no flippin' idea!!! But thank God they did because I wasn’t ethically allowed to pay them! That left me with little bribing power on my side.

Quite a few dropped out. It was bad news for me when that happened, especially if they quit after going through part of the study already. I wanted scream through the phone at a lady who, when she was apologizing for pulling a no-show twice already, told me that the fact she'd missed two appointments must mean it was "a sign" that she shouldn't be in the study. Everyone near me at that moment must have heard a THUD (my jaw hitting the floor). Seriously, how do you counter that one?

You’ve NEVER seen me be so sickeningly nice to people as I was to those who volunteered for my study. Sure, of course I was beyond appreciative of their time and effort, but I also REALLY needed them to tolerate the torture until the bitter end! I would've done cartwheels, backflips and even taken a pie in the face (or several, if that’s what it took... just let it cool a little first) in order to keep my participants participating! Hell, I would have stripped naked and streaked across QUAD in trade for their cooperation. Maybe not. I would’ve done a lot of things, but streaking...? Well ok, I'd do it, but only as a last resort. And only if I could wear body hose so it looked like I was naked, but with maximal minimization of the jiggle-age (kind of like Kirstie Alley in a bikini on Oprah the other day. Shit, I’d even go on Oprah in a bikini if I was allowed wear boob to toe blubber-taming hose… Um, but I'll need a few months notice too. Ha... ha... ha ha ha. Ahem).

Funny thing though, when we said good-bye after completing the last day of the study, they thanked me.

Wait. What the? Let me get this straight-- I just made you write down every single thing you ate for 2 weeks, eat my food for 6 days, hooked an I.V. to your arm and took blood every 2 hours for 6 hours while missing out on what you could've been doing instead on a Saturday…

... and YOU are thanking ME?

Oh no no NO people. THANK YOU.

Now if I could only just turn all that effort into three little letters... PhD. Lord this is taking a long time.

Ramblings on Research: Coping with data and spreadsheets

I have posted about statistics before (see Statistics Course from Hell). So I won't ramble on too much about that. However, I've just spent most of the day today on spreadsheets of data AGAIN. This time I was calculating AUC (area under the curve). This is about as spellbinding as it gets around here folks!!! My ass is as about as numb as my brain is getting here... Luckily I've got a new CD and the fridge to keep me from dying of boredom. Yeah ok, my ass isn't doing well in this situation at all...

So you take a person, you take their blood every two hours for 8 hours and then plot some of their clinical data results over time (i.e. cholesterol levels). From this you can calculate AUC, then I take that AUC and plug it into our stats program and voila! You can see if the computer validates your whole existence over the past few years or not.

Honk shew.

Then you can go out and get trashed on vino and dance to hip hop all night!!!! Yay! Some call it "stress management." (Yeah, I know you're probably thinking that I've developed quite the set of stellar coping skills...)

Ahem... Then the next day you meet with your supervisor and hope he doesn't detect the tired eyes, alky breath and of course that ultimate hangover hallmark- the always lovely 50 point drop in I.Q. It usually goes something like this:

Supervisor: Why were we meeting today?
You: Uh...
Supervisor: What have you been up to lately?
You: Uh... things.
Supervisor: How does the program calculate AUC?
You: Uh... I dunno.

You: Can I go now?

Ramblings on Research: If I was a Lab Rat

At a recent conference I learned that “rats don’t like the drink.” The speaker said that if you want to get rats to drink ethanol-laced water, you need to “convince them to drink it” by sweetening it. What, do they throw in a little grenadine? Perhaps a splash of cran?

Lord, if I were a poor little lab rat, I’d definitely prefer to be used for alcohol research and therefore hopefully wasted all the time. Marijuana research would be even better (cage a la hot box...). Although it better be one of those studies where the rats get as much yummy fattening food as possible too, because rats don’t have a 7-11 across from their cage.

You see, life might be somewhat tolerable in a cage getting poked, prodded and experimented on if at least I was completely plowed or half-baked...

Then, as I lay there sobering up from the alcohol testing the night before, my head about to explode and wishing I would DIE, perhaps that’s the day I’d actually get what I wished for.

Research on Alcohol Consumption

Click on image to enlarge.

This just in... The video footage from this study will be used in a new realty series called Canadian UPI. Stayed to tuned to your local listings...

The many paths to my ramblings...

Through my sitemeter, I can find out what people googled to end up at my blog. Most days I get quite the chuckle. Who are you people? Whatever, chances are if you were looking for these things, you probably didn't quite get what you want... but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need. (Oops, that was quite the cheese sandwich, dipped in cheese fondue and then smothered in cheese whiz.)

Anyways, here are a few examples from the last 100 hits:

paunch sexy

short hair "hitting on me" blue eyes

quasi-god

f snow pants enema

oprah's advice on men and relationship

garner andrews spence diamonds (must have been looking for: Garner vs. Sean)

"dating morals"

project awry

marathon pee squat

a vegetarian's poop

what happens at a stagette + blowjob

can i use preparation h suppositories continually

picture of a gunt

LONG SCHLONGS

"whiner"

"victor henao" -gaviria

PAP whiner

yeast "scratching myself"

footsies on crotch

smoking smells

Hair mullet jokes

dads rant

PhD Comics

10 Signs your Girlfriend has PMS

10. She comes home from the grocery store with an assortment of high fat/high sugar treats for herself. NONE for you. Touch her goodies and YOU DIE mothafocka.

9. Making any kind of decision about ANYTHING is impossible for her, and this incessant indecisiveness is bloody annoying to everyone involved... especially her. Ok maybe it annoys you more. No, it's really more aggravating to her. Or you. Oh GEEZ I have no idea WHO THE F IT'S WORSE FOR (and I don't give a crap either)!!!!!

8. She cries at what may seem TO YOU like nothing, but don't you dare infer that it's nothing! That old song, her nail breaking, the Oprah show... it's not nothing and it's not the PMS either dammit!

7. She has zits in sizes, shapes, numbers and/or places you never knew was humanly possible.

6. She's bloated up so much that she resembles a blow-up Buddha doll, and has to complain about and/or show you how big her belly is intermittently throughout the day. Then she heads back to the couch... with her giant-sized chocolate bar, bowl of ice cream topped with a brownie and chocolate sauce and her cup of hot chocolate.

5. She lies awake with a head full of lists. "To do." "Wish I'd done." "Why the hell did I do that?"

4. One minute she wants to rip your head off and the next she wants to rip your clothes off.

3. You get nasty texts/emails/phone calls from her, perhaps even death threats. She has to freak out on you about some (or every) aspect of the relationship (and her memory becomes incredibly long for these things as well, but you must have 'set it off' with something you did recently). The translation is actually very simple boys: I need some attention from you! (And it should be attention in the way she wants it, when she wants it, exactly as it plays out in her head or you're dead buddy. You just are.)

2. You notice her constantly swearing at or throwing inanimate objects. Tolerance level has become negative NIL. Her motto for dealing with most "situations" with objects has become: If it's stuck, force it. If it breaks, it needed fixing anyways. (Strangely enough, Murphy's Law tends to rear it's ugly head A LOT during this special time of month.)

1. Happy Bunny becomes a personal mission statement... Now go suck someplace else you moron.