The final paper from my PhD work at UCLA was finally published last month. Our article was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) and can be accessed
here. There may be some accessibility issues for people who aren't logging in via an academic institution. It's nice to have the paper out there and finished, but it's a little anticlimactic as well. Everything happens so slowly - you revise the manuscript repeatedly, submit it, get lukewarm reviews, revise and re-submit, then it's provisionally accepted, you make more revisions, check the proofs for errors, check the revised proofs and then it FINALLY comes out. It seems like there's never a clear moment where it's "done". But it's a great relief to have it out there in a good journal.
I had quite a scary event yesterday - while walking Sheba I was struck by a slowly-moving car. The driver wasn't looking as she pulled out into traffic and the bumper struck my shins and knocked me over. Luckily, my only injury is a skinned knee. Things could have been much worse, for me or for Sheba. It was a good wake-up call to be more careful both when walking and driving. Another scary thing is that this happened in broad daylight on a very busy road and no other drivers stopped to see if everything was OK. I like to think that I would have stopped if I'd seen a pedestrian knocked over by a car, you know?
Instead of listening to the radio in the car, I usually listen to audiobooks. Unusual, but I've done this for over 10 years and really enjoy it. Strangely, two of my recent listens featured the historical figure "
Girolamo Savonarola". I'd never heard of this guy before, he was a religious figure in Florence in the late 1490's and was the driving force behind the "Bonfire of the Vanities" He was a major figure in the book "The Birth of Venus", which was apt because it is set in Florence in the late 1490's. But then when he showed up in a book set in modern-day Princeton University, it was quite a surprise. I thought that was really strange.
Last weekend I rented one of the "Rug Doctors" to clean my carpet, couch and loveseat. For those of you who haven't tried it, this thing was AMAZING. It took me about two hours to do my whole apartment (500 sq ft) and I felt like I had accomplished SO MUCH. The water that came out of this thing was so disgustingly dirty and my carpet was so wonderfully clean. Well worth the effort and cost. The total cost for the equipment and cleaning solutions was about $50.
Next week I'll be going to Iowa for two days. My department is up for a big funding opportunity and an evaluation team will be visiting. We decided that I should be there for the evaluation period. I'm hoping to secure some rental housing while I'm in town.
I've been watching the BBC "
Planet Earth" series from netflix. It's incredible, I would recommend it to anyone.
