…when the guy you know with a truck is going home this weekend. And when the seats in your car don’t lay down.

I may very well be storing this damn deck (dismantled) in my room for a few days until Matt gets back with his truck and we can move it into storage. This thing has to be out of the sellers’ room this weekend, and we’re taking it down Friday afternoon. Hope Bridget doesn’t mind…

Damn, damn, damn this week sucks monkey balls.

So today I wrote on Luke with a marker. Or attempted to.

This resulted in a scuffle in which I found myself being sat on and attacked with a dry-erase marker. I shoulda gone more deliberately for the back of his knees, since I lacked the advantage of weight…

At any rate, when I was able to come up for air, my right wrist was rather bruised, and I had marker on my face and arm. Shortly after, I noticed that both wrists and hands (where I’d been grabbed, not where I’d been written on) were itching furiously and turning red and swollen. I had to wash all the way up my wrist and arm to stop it.

More than the bruised wrist (ow, ow), the damn allergic reaction will stop me from directly attacking again. Who the hell is allergic to people?

(But I will get my revenge…)

I got the damn research position.

“What research position?” you ask. The one I carefully avoided mentioning in the event that it didn’t work out, or there wasn’t enough money in the grant, or, or, or, anything.

But I fuggin’ got it. What money the NSF grant doesn’t allow (the money is being split between me and another student), the Chemistry Dept. (headed by my current chemistry prof, which may have gone some way in my favor) will provide such that I get the full salary stated on the NSF grant.

Oh my friggin’ god.

So, I will return to Charlotte the last weekend of May (for all the people asking) and immerse myself in analytical chemistry, which I need to know, but haven’t had the class yet. Dr. M knows an environmental chemist up at UNC I could correspond with, should I find myself in that region of the state. Which is highly likely, given that that is where a buddy of mine will be, and that their library apparently r0x0rs various types of s0x0rs. Or it should, for such a big-name school.

It’s a really good thing I’m alone right now, because I’d probably drive anyone who came into the Thorn office right now friggin’ nuts.

At the end of June (the last weekend, in fact), I will haul my ass back out to the Haute and settle in for a long stay–forty (plus) hours a week in lab, mad tweaking on this UV Vis app, and dividing my brain between two research projects. Optimally, I can get housing for $8 a night on-campus, but I missed the deadline and will have to plead my way in. Worse case, I’ll have to pay up to $250 a month plus utilities to stay off-campus with the female student I’ll be doing research with (on one of the projects…).

Insert the fact that I will undoubtedly be sucked into doing Thorn stuff (not that this is necessarily a bad thing), and I’ve got a busy summer. It creates a bit of a problem with getting a job for the month I’m home–who the hell hires someone for less than a month? That’s a month of no income, which leaves a nasty taste in my mouth. If I’m stingy as hell, the research money will more than make up for that, but that still hurts.

But oh my friggin’ god.

Evidence as to why I mos def need to be wearing some damn gloves in lab:

It’s hard to see, but it’s splattered across my palm and runs all over my fingertips. I’ve been told this will linger for several days, but isn’t hazardous. How entertaining.

Update: Thank goodness for pumice stones. I lost several layers of skin, but I also lost most of the stains.

This is a room I snuck a picture of during my deck-shopping today. This isn’t the deck we’re going to buy; we managed to find a couple of guys who said, “Well, if you take it down, you can just take it. We don’t really know how much it’s worth, anyway.”

Needless to say, we’re emailing them back tonight to cement things. We’re going to cannibalize Hillary’s current loft for two-by-fours to raise it (it’s lower to the ground than the one in the photo), making our only costs those for summer storage. And it’s really well made, probably by civil or mechanical engineering majors. Not that computer science/engineers or chemical engineers couldn’t have made it well, but there are certain assumptions one can feel comfortable making around here, and that’s one of ’em.

So now Michael‘s curiosity is hopefully appeased.