Uninspired

As you can probably tell, I have been feeling rather uninspired lately. On all fronts. I am having a really hard time motivating myself to finish the dissertation and finally get the hell out of grad school. I find myself wasting an obscene amount of time doing absolutely nothing. I haven't even had anything good to blog about.

Here's the short version of what's been happening lately:

• Max had pinkeye over the weekend, and I've been fighting him to let me put drops in his eyes.
• I've been struggling to re-work the discussion section of the second chapter of my dissertation into something I can live with.
• I've been eBay-ing way too much.
• I painted a lot of faces (and the occasional arm and hand) at DISL's Discovery Day this past weekend.
• I've been making an effort to exercise. Period. Because I realized that aside from housecleaning and hefting Max around, I don't.
• The weather has been way too nice to be cooped up inside writing. I'm thinking I should take this party (meaning, me, my laptop, and a few papers) outside.

In other news, Max turned 15 months old today, which means another checkup soon. Also, he has finally started going to sleep on his own. I know, all the parenting books say you should lay babies down "drowsy but awake" from the time they're teeny tiny so they can learn to fall asleep on their own. But The Max? Has never been into that. Believe me, we tried. But he has always been the baby who screams bloody murder as soon as you move to lower him into the crib and continues to wail at the top of his lungs until he is picked up. It did not matter if I was right by his bed or if I was patting his back. Or if I was not in the room. He would just scream, and there's only so much non-stop screaming a person can stand. So we've been cuddling/rocking Max to sleep pretty much his whole life. Then he goes into his crib asleep.

But lately Max has been fighting the sleep thing. He's been squirming and struggling to get down and play after he has his bedtime cup of milk. So after a half hour of struggling and squirming and fussing the other night, I got frustrated and just put Max in his bed awake. Well, I told him goodnight and gave him a kiss, then put him in his bed and left the room. He didn't even cry, really. I could hear him moving around for a little while, and there was a little bit of whining that first night, but Max fell asleep maybe 10 minutes after I put him in his crib. So for the last few nights, we've been keeping his bedtime routine the same as it's always been, but instead of sitting down to cuddle/rock after his cup of milk, we do "goodnight"s and kisses, and Max goes in his crib. With no fuss whatsoever. We can hear him jumping in his bed for a few minutes, and then he's quiet. When I check on him before I go to bed, he's always snoozing away. So I'm loving that.

I am not loving that Max is waking up a zillion times a night (except last night, when he slept straight through from 8 p.m. to 6:10 a.m., which is still a bit too early). But at least he's staying in his bed instead of screaming bloody murder for as long as takes for me to take him to our bed.

Ah, well. It's time for me to get back to work. I'm also thinking about going for a jog at the park, so maybe I'll do that, too.

Focus, Just Focus

focusing is one thing i am having real trouble with lately. i (understandably, i think, especially to those who have spent any significant amount of time with max) can't get any work done when max is home with me, so i really depend on the three days a week that he is daycare to get the majority of my writing accomplished. unfortunately, it is also easier to do things like wash max's clothes, disinfect toys, and clean my house when he is at daycare. of course, i do those things on weekends when chad is home (or i make chad do them), but with max eating things off the floor all the time, slobbering all over his toys on a daily basis, and making a giant mess at mealtimes, household chores have to be done at least three or four times a week.

so with writing tasks and deadlines pressing down on me and having a zillion things to take care of around the house, i feel like i'm being pushed in a hundred different directions all at once. which is not conducive to good (or even mediocre) writing. with the editing left to do on my first chapter and having barely made any headway on the second, i am beginning to doubt my ability to have a solid draft of my dissertation ready to submit to the graduate school by march 26.

that is particularly problematic when i keep redoing stats in different ways to try to simplify my data. and when those extra stats only make things more complex. gah.

i've done some editing today, along with two loads of laundry and a load of dishes. i am about to go sweep and mop the living room and kitchen and then fold max's laundry. after that i need to turn the car seat around so that it faces forward (max doesn't have to face backward any more now that he's a year old and over 20 lbs). then it's off to pick the little guy up from daycare.

tomorrow i am going to take my laptop and go to the library to work after i drop max off. maybe i'll be able to focus better there.

Panic

as the impending end of my career as a grad student approaches, i am nagged by an ever-present buzz of panic in the back of my mind. being a student is all i know. it's all i have ever done. i have of course been working toward a goal - earning my doctorate. and i almost have it. in a few months, i will officially be a doctor. and suddenly that scares the crap out of me.

in a moment of blinding self-doubt that struck while i was waiting to meet with dr. v. to discuss a couple of ideas for grants, it occurred to me that i have absolutely NO IDEA what i'm doing. i haven't the faintest clue how to be an independent researcher. what i really want to study. how to find a job. how to impress prospective employers. or how to successfully procure the necessary funding for what i want to study. even now, those questions hook their claws into my brain and dig in, trying to induce a full blown panic attack.

as i was unsuccessfully struggling to go to sleep the other night, i hyperventilated a little and pondered what it means to be scientist. an ecologist. why i do what i do. why i want to do what i do. because if you can't answer those questions for yourself, how can you expect anyone else to take you seriously? thinking about why i want to do what i do forced me to take a step back and look at things objectively. and i realized that my biggest weakness as an ecologist is my tendency to get caught up in the details. to lose sight of the big picture. dr. v. says this all the time, but we scientists are inclined to do things because we can, not because we should and not because we think it's important. sadly, that is very true.

ecology is by definition the study of interactions among organisms and between organisms and their environment. i study chemical defenses in seagrasses, which fits right in with the most basic definition of ecology. but it bleeds over into a more specialized field of ecology (chemical ecology), and it's all too easy to get lost in the minutiae when dealing in chemical ecology. that is something that i desperately want to avoid. so i started thinking about the significance of chemical defenses, where they fit in the grand scheme of things, and that led me to have a sort of mini-epiphany: asking and answering questions is exactly the point of science. answering the big picture questions is the goal, and experimentation is the tool to help me achieve it. i just have to remind myself to take a step back every now and then to remember the big picture and ask myself if what i'm doing helps me piece together the puzzle.

so maybe i can do this. but the real world, the one in which i'm no longer a student, still scares the crap out of me.

Big Sigh of Relief

i FINALLY finished the first chapter of my dissertation yesterday, after many, many hours of constructing and editing tables and figures and attempting to condense as much data as possible. i still wound up with 18 tables and 12 figures in the first chapter alone. i'll have 4 chapters. thankfully, the first is the most data-intensive, so the next two shouldn't be nearly as daunting. the fourth is really sort of a mini-chapter on the project i did in maine a couple of summers ago, and it's pretty much done already, since i already had to write that up after we came back from maine.

in other news, max is STILL not over whatever he's had for the last couple of weeks. he ran a fever every single day for almost a week, and when the fever went away, i thought he was getting better. he started eating a little more (though he still mostly ate baby food), and he FINALLY started sleeping through the night again this week. but he's still gagging on nearly everything he puts in his mouth. except bananas. but he also pushes almost everything away when you try to get him to eat. yesterday he ate half a banana, half a container of yogurt, and 2 gerber graduates wagon wheels snacks (a full serving of those is 3 wheels). all day. i gave him the wagon wheels about half an hour before bed because he didn't touch his dinner. he wouldn't touch his lunch at daycare either, and he wouldn't even drink his juice, which he usually LOVES. he drank about half a cup of his formula. they've been having to give him baby food because he won't eat the hot lunches at daycare (he's been eating the cafeteria lunches at daycare for 5 or 6 weeks with no problem - until last week), but yesterday he wouldn't even eat baby food. max did an EXCELLENT job on his breakfast this morning, though, downing a full serving of rice & apple baby cereal and a jar of apples & pears. baby food is better than no food, even though we're trying to steer him toward table food. but he wouldn't eat lunch today. he took about 4 bites and drank some juice. i don't know what i'm gonna do with that kid.

i called the pediatrician yesterday, and they said he's probably got a tummy full of mucus from being so congested and stuff for two weeks, which makes him feel full. so he doesn't want to eat. and also probably makes everything taste bad. if he still isn't eating well this weekend, he'll have to go back and see the doc again. they said to push fluids to help clear the mucus out, so i've been trying to get max to drink as much as he will. i'm leaving a cup of water on the coffee table for him all the time, and he goes over and takes a few sips every now and then. i'm also giving him formula more often than usual, since he's not drinking as much of that in a sitting as he usually does. he's still only drinking about 16 oz. of formula a day. normal for him is 22-26 oz. a day. plus 4-6 oz. of diluted juice after lunch and a few ounces of water at breakfast and dinner.

i'm not sure if max's throat is still sore. he isn't crying all the time like he was last weekend, and he isn't trying to eat and then crying after a few bites (which is how he was acting when he first got sick). he's just not at all interested in eating. he's not crying much at all, really. he just pushes food away, and when he does take a bite of table food, or even baby snacks like puffs and Cheerios, he gags.

but anyway. other than not eating, max seems ok. he's still kind of snotty, i guess, and he wants to be held a lot more than usual. today he figured out what his stacking rings are for. his favorite thing to do with them has always been to topple the base over so all the rings fly off. then i put them back on. and he topples it over again. or he pulls the rings off one by one. but today he put two of them back on the base. well, he put one ring on, pulled it back off, and then put another ring on. i was so proud. then he got bored with it and started playing with a water bottle that still had a little water in it.

here's what max's christmas list SHOULD look like:

• empty bottles
• clothes hangers
• old tv remotes
• boxes
• old magazines
• dish towels

that's what he finds around the house and has a blast playing with. he spent a good half hour playing in the kitchen floor with a dish towel one day. he spun around in circles with it like a dog chasing its tail. he 'cleaned' the floor with it, crawling all over the place and wiping it around on the floor. he swung it around. and he thought it was the best thing ever. a dish towel.

instead here's a little taste of what max is getting for christmas

• a fisher-price laugh and learn my busy day activity table
• a vtech ride on toy
• some little frog bath squirties, which i actually think he'll love

i've made a list for the MIL, and it includes some no-frills basic toys like classic wooden blocks and baby musical instruments (like a cute little baby xylophone). max does play with his decked out lights and sounds learning toys, but i think he spends more time with the really basic stuff, like the stacking rings and plastic blocks in different shapes. oh, and a hockey puck. can't forget the hockey puck.

Writing on the Wall

wow, guys. i am completely overwhelmed. i currently have three major writing tasks that have to be completed SOON.

1. my dissertation. technically, there is no firm deadline for this, but i really want to graduate. soon.
2. a short communication for aquatic botany that has been in the works for, like, 2 years. let's get this over with already.
   
3. an entire proposal covering three years of research. which is essentially the equivalent of the prospectus for my ph.d. research. which took about a year to fine tune. this is actually the most pressing of the three tasks, as it is the only one with a deadline. and that deadline is less than a month away (november 3). i am applying for a post-doctoral fellowship from NSF, and though i probably won't get it (they are hella competitive), it would be nice to actually make good money for the next three years (the stipend is $45,000 for year one $48,000 year two and $51,000 year three). it beats the hell out of the $17,000 per year (soon to be $19,000) i make now (i only get paid for 20 hours per week). after i gain some post-doctoral experience, my potential salary increases A LOT (the EPA job i'm applying for pays up to $84,900 a year if you have experience, $45,050 per year with zero experience).
   

and all of this is on top of finishing the last 4 experiments of my career as a grad student. and preparing for our Big Hockey Trip. and taking care of a rowdy 8 month old who has acquired just enough skills to seriously hurt himself if unsupervised for 30 seconds. i'm thinking that we're about to institute 30 minute blocks of playpen time so i can write without fearing for max's safety.

On the Road Again

this past weekend marked the first time i have had to leave max overnight. it was tough. i had to make a trip to port st. joe to collect some sweet seagrass and some sea urchins for my last set of experiments (woo!). but since PSJ is ~5 hours away (leaving from DISL, it's only about 4-4.5 hours from mobile) it requires an overnight stay. without the max. again, it was tough. i barely slept at all saturday night. probably because chad had called me while i was on the road saying something like, "i need suggestions. he won't stop crying. he knows you're not here. he keeps looking at your chair." and that call came around max's usual bedtime. that was not at all what i wanted to hear. but chad did call back around 9:45 to tell me that he'd finally managed to get max to sleep. but it was apparently a rough ride.

actually, we all had a pretty rough ride saturday night. see, i had planned on loading up the truck at DISL with our lab's sweet summer intern, marissa, at 3:00 saturday afternoon and heading to the motel in mexico beach around 3:30. well, marissa and i got the truck loaded up, no problem, and we left the island at 3:30-ish as planned. but shortly after we left dauphin island we hit the rain. hard rain. but it was manageable (i.e., i could see the road and the cars in front of me, and i was in a massive ford f250 super duty, so the risk of hydroplaning was negligible).

and then came the traffic problems. first, the wallace tunnel heading out of mobile was beyond congested. traffic was at a near stand-still a couple of miles before the tunnel, probably a mile or so before you get to the sign warning of congestion ahead. but that's no big deal. i know the area, so i decided to drive around (through downtown mobile) and go through the bankhead tunnel and hit I-10 from the causeway. so that's what we did, no problem.

and then we got to pensacola. and interstate traffic was once again at a stand-still. it took us 40 minutes to get from the pine forest road exit to the hwy 29 exit, where there had been a monster of a head-on collision between two SUVs. all the while, the rain was pouring and the lightning was popping all around. it was not good times. and there was no easy way to drive around that one, especially since we couldn't tell where the problem was when we got stuck in traffic, and traffic lights were out on pine forest road.

but we finally got through, and once we were moving again it was ok. but we couldn't go very fast because of the pounding rain. the pounding rain that we were stuck in THE ENTIRE WAY. that's about 250 miles, people. we passed three accidents, complete with gawkers who prevented traffic from flowing smoothly even when the accidents were in the final phases of cleanup and were no longer blocking the road. this made a 4.5 hour trip turn into a 6 hour trip. oy.

but sunday was fine. we had great weather for our field work, and things went smoothly. the drive from the park in port st. joe (about 45 minutes farther than the motel in mexico beach) to dauphin island took the expected 5 hours despite off and on rain along the way. then i got home around 8:15 sunday night, and max was all snug in his bed asleep. but he woke up, like, 3 times in the middle of the night. it's pretty easy to get him back to sleep, though, so it really wasn't too bad.

today, i'm back at home, hanging out with max. tomorrow, marissa and i are heading over to perdido key for the morning then it's back to DISL to process some seagrass. that means a long day in day care for max, but it'll be ok, even if it does mean that we have to wake up at 5 a.m.

Another Hurdle Jumped

so the last big obstacle to getting my ph.d. is officially behind me (well, aside from actually writing and defending my dissertation). today i took the oral portion of my comprehensive exams, and i must say, it could have been far more traumatic than it actually was. i will admit that i did not know everything my committee members asked me (but who really gives a damn about plant signaling pathways that you don't actually work on, anyway?), but overall it went pretty well. and at the end they pretty much sang my praises and told me i could pretty much start writing my dissertation because they're pretty darned pleased with my progress thus far. i still have a fair bit of chemical/data analysis to do before i'll really be ready to get down to business with the dissertation writing, but it's good to know that my committee is ready and willing to see this thing finished and hand me my doctorate.

now to plow through that freezer full of samples...

Sugar is Good for My Blood Pressure, Yo

so here is what i have done today (because i know you just can't live without knowing). first, i got up and took a shower and did not eat breakfast. boo. that makes me cranky. but i was not allowed because of the glucose tolerance test i had to do today. then i worked on the powerpoint presentation that was my last written comps task. then i drank the surprisingly tolerable supersweet-sunkist-esque glucose drink and worked on the powerpoint some more (even though i was feeling a tiny bit queasy and head-achy from a combination of the supersweet glucose drink and the not eating anything since last night). then chad drove me to my doctor's appointment (because he's good like that) where they drew some blood (to test my glucose tolerance, you know), and then we went to my doctor's waiting area and well, we waited. and then the nurse called me in to check my weight and blood pressure. i've gained two pounds since last time, so no worries about not gaining weight like last time, and my blood pressure didn't entirely suck! woo hoo! it was only 136/72, which is still a lot higher than normal for me, but it's a far cry from the hypertensive madness it has been for a while. so i was pretty psyched. and the nurse who took my bp was like, "i guess all that sugar did you some good."

then we waited some more, but this time we did it in an exam room. then dr. g. came in and measured me and we listened to the baby's heartbeat and had a nice chat. she asked how much i weighed when i was born, and i told her (6 lbs, 8 ounces), and she said that's the best indicator of how big my baby will be when he is born. and then we talked about signing up for the various pre-baby classes offered by the hospital. surprisingly, i think chad really wants to take a couple of those. i think he's a bit freaked out about taking care of a baby with ZERO baby experience (which is his own fault - he's been around dylan before but never really took to the whole playing with the baby thing). so anyway, now i'm looking into the various baby prep classes. i'm leaning toward not taking a traditional childbirth preparation class because i think that it will freak me out instead of easing my mind. i REALLY do NOT want to see videos of actual births. i don't mind a little mystery. plus, i'm pretty sure they'll tell me what to do when the time comes, and i'm fine with that. we might take the newborn care class (mostly for chad - i'm pretty confident in my ability to take care of a baby) and the infant cpr class (again, for chad, since i'm already certified). dr. g. told us today that those classes are not really necessary, especially if you've had some baby experience. but like i said, i think chad really wants to take a couple.

so after the doctor (at which point i was pretty much starving), chad and i went for lunch at fazoli's and then went to target and bought zach's wedding present (our friend zach is getting married on saturday, did i forget to mention?). then we came home and i finally finished the powerpoint. which means that after a three day ordeal i am finally finished with my written comps! once again, woo hoo! i just hope i did ok and they don't kick me out of grad school. i wasn't really sure how to take it on monday when i got the questions from dr. v. and when i told him i was really nervous his reply was, "i don't know whether to be nervous for you." i think he said that because two of my committee members asked a bunch of questions about phenolic metabolism and plant signaling (which is heavily biochemistry-based) and seagrass internal anatomy (which i know pretty much nothing about - good thing that was open book), and we are heavily ecology-focused sorts of people (i.e., the big picture without all that pesky small-scale physiology).

now we have to figure out when i am going to do the oral component of my comps. hopefully, that won't be as traumatic as the written exam. and you know, hopefully i'll pass.

Hyperventilating a Little

oh geez - comps are right around the corner, guys. like, monday and tuesday. i am SO NOT READY YET, and i am freaking out. i have successfully finished reading the two textbooks that one of my committee members assigned, and i have read maybe 25% of the huge stack of journal articles that various other committee members assigned. so for the next 5 days i will be doing nothing but reading and thinking and hoping like hell that i don't fail my comps. if i do i will look stupid, and they should kick me out of the ph.d. program. which they won't even if i do fail, but still.

i was talking to dr. v. about comps yesterday (i had to get his spare laptop to take the exam), and he's going to give me the questions one at a time so no one can say i went home and looked up stuff between days one and two of the exam. he doesn't have the questions from all my committee members yet, but he said that from those he has seen, they "will require a lot of thought, but they don't seem to be off topic. no one asked anything like, 'how do you do know that jesus christ exists?'" so yeah, i'm scared. and i told dr. v. that. he assured me that i will be fine. but i am still not so sure.

Life for the Last Couple of Weeks

so it's been a while since i last wrote anything on here, and i think it's about time i let everyone know what i've been up to. well, for the most part i've been trying my hardest to get my stupid lab experiments set up - unsuccessfully. see, all the seagrass that i have lovingly cultured over the last couple of months is indeed dying and, thus, unusable. so tomorrow i'm off to perdido key AGAIN to collect some fresh turtlegrass. that is, if the guys from buffalo rock have come in and moved their snack machine from in front of the breaker box that controls the lights in the room i'm setting my experiments up in. if i can't turn the power on in that room, i can't set the experiment up yet. which sucks. but i also still have to go back to perdido key either saturday or sunday to collect more amphipods (one of the grazers for my experiments). the damn things keep dying on me, and i'm not catching as many on each collection day as i should be. so the world seems to be working against me as far as getting my lab experiments behind me.

i've also been procuring the books i have to read to prepare for my comprehensive exams, which i plan to take in late september or early october. those are, like, TEXT books i'm talking about, and i'm supposed to familiarize myself with the entire contents of two of them for one of my committee members. see, during comps each of my five committee members gets to ask me a series of questions that are in some way related to my work or the general field of marine science - a pretty daunting event. there is a written portion and an oral component to these exams, and they basically scare the poo out of me. for the other members of my committee, i will (hopefully) have to review 10-15 papers covering topics relevant to my work to ensure that i am familiar with the foundations of what i'm working on.

today, i am reviewing a paper that dr. v. sent me last week. i know some people who find it annoying to review papers for scientific journals, but i kind of enjoy it. dr. v. (and sometimes ken) sends me papers he gets to review that are relevant to my work, so i get the first glimpse of new publications. plus, i get to put in my two cents and make suggestions to the authors. i also have to work on entering some data and doing some statistics. but what i might do in addition to this is hit the mall and start checking out maternity clothes (even though i don't really need them yet).

i had my last check-up last wednesday, and everything is good with thetinytina. i think i'm supposed to start gaining more weight now. so far, i've only gained three pounds, but i can definitely feel the waistbands on my jeans tightening, especially when i sit down. i might go ahead and get one of these. i hear these belly bands are pretty sweet, not to mention handy. it just looks like a tank top underneath your shirt, but it functions to hold up unbuttoned pants (handy for when your jeans are a smidge too snug). i think in the next week or so i might need that. when i talked to my doc last week, she said around week 16 is when most first-time moms-to-be move up a size or two in their clothes but don't really need maternity clothes. i am currently in week 15 (i'll be 15 weeks tomorrow). so i'm starting to notice the changes, but to the untrained observer, i don't look pregnant yet. give it another month.

oh! i also set up my appointment last week for the next ultrasound. it will be happening on august 29 (when i will be 18 weeks pregnant, or about 4 1/3 months), and we'll get to find out if thetinytina is a boy or a girl! i'm excited. then i can start going crazy buying baby stuff. well, not too crazy since i want to wait and see what all we get at the baby shower that nessa and deva are planning on throwing before figuring out what we'll have to buy ourselves. but i can at least go crazy registering for stuff. i think we're going to keep all the big stiff gender-neutral (so if it's a girl, i don't want to get a pink stroller and car seat or anything, just in case we decide to have another kid at some point in the not-at-all-near future who might not turn out to be of the same gender as the first). so neutral colors for the car seat, stroller, play yard, etc. but bedding, toys, clothes, nursery decorations, etc. will definitely be tailored to a boy or girl. i really WANT to buy about a million things, but i'm exercising some major self-control over here (those who have been shopping with me know how i like to go on a big spending spree every now and again). i actually haven't bought ANY baby stuff yet. see, i can't buy just one little baby item. when i finally buy something, i'm going to want to buy several somethings, and i would really like to know the baby's gender when that happens. i mean, i COULD go ahead and buy some really basic stuff like a pack of white long-sleeve onesies (the kid WILL be born in the winter, after all) that will come in handy for either gender, and part of me really wants to do that just to have some baby stuff, but another (larger) part of me wants to know the baby's sex first. so, come the end of this month, i'll be buying lots of baby stuff. but don't worry. you can't have too many baby clothes, so anyone else who wants to buy tons of those should feel free.

but it would be bad if everyone i know decided to buy a stroller or a bouncy seat or a swing or a play pen, all of which are things that i plan to register for. i say this because chad's mom has already bought a crib (without consulting us first), which i thought was jumping the gun a bit. i felt sort of bad, but i told her that i'm looking for specific things in a crib, and if she was buying one for us, she should have mentioned it to us first. then i found out that she bought it from someone she knows and only paid $20 for it, so i don't feel so bad anymore. but i can now see that she's going to go nuts and just start buying things willy nilly, whether it's what we want or not. i really wish she would at least wait until we register for stuff. or ask me to go baby shopping with her. then she gets to buy whatever she wants and i get to make sure that what we get has the features we need. sometimes i'm a little indecisive and unsure of what i want, but when it comes to my kid (even though it's my first) i really want chad and me to be able to do things our way. which is why i plan on making him go baby shopping with me as soon as we find out the sex. we might not buy much, but i really want us to look at these things together and figure out what we both want. i mean, i've been looking at this stuff for weeks, but i want chad to have some input, too. i mean, it is his kid too.

Stupid Karma

so if you spend three years killing seagrass by infecting it with the wasting disease pathogen, does that automatically mean that you are destined to kill seagrass forever and ever? after five weeks of perfectly healthy and green seagrass in my culture tanks, it is starting to die. :( and i am sad. see, i need it alive for another two weeks. i have my suspicions as to what has gone so horribly awry - i think these stupid high july temperatures are starting to get to my grass. some of it still looks really green, but some shoots are just goners. pretty much all of the hated Halodule that i collected from PSJ is brown. most of the stuff from perdido key looks ok, though. i just hope i can salvage enough green shoots for my lab experiments, which i'll start in a couple of weeks. i'm keeping my fingers crossed.