It's Winter

I haven't given up on this. I was just lazy last quarter. However, so much has happened since my last post. I'm sure most of you know I'm playing hockey on the UCSD ice hockey team. That was most of my life outside of school last quarter and its quite fun (and sometimes painful too). My roommates are also great, which has made being at the house that much more enjoyable. I also turned 22 since my last post.

My Christmas break has been lots of fun so far. I've seen my family, gone out with friends... a lot, had some wine, had some more wine... that's been most of it. One highlight had to be the record-setting 13 hours of my life. Rachel and I successfully, meaning neither of us fell asleep, watch all 5 Harry Potter's in a row. We started around 3pm and finished close to 4am. According to IMDB it's 749 minutes for all five. There was only one brief food break too. Becca joined us for the third movie. Everyone else missed out. We even had a had a drinking theme (that we didnt drink to) for each movie.

The January Mammoth trip was also a good one this year. Though it ended up being just Katie and I who went, we had a great time. The drive up was good, and the first 2 days on the mountain were nice, even though the snow kinda sucked. But then Thursday night the blizzard rolled in. So, we had to put chains on in heavy snow (we tried the night before but it failed) and then we drove to the mountain to get some powder runs in. It was crazy up there. It was a blizzard for sure.. white out conditions with most of the mountain closed. On the drive home we were escorted down sherwin grade by a CHP and had the chains on until about 10-15 min before Bishop. Thankfully 395 wasn't closed. And when the snow stopped, it was rainy/windy the rest of the drive. It was fun.

It's like a Drug...

Hockey. Lately I've been going through hockey withdrawal. UCSD hockey tryouts are Oct 2nd. Lets hope I get a little bit of ice time between now and then. (I also suffer from snow withdrawal.)

In the Lab

So here's what I have actually been doing all summer: Cognitive Neuroscience!! The first week was boring as hell, but its gotten better since. I worked with rats everyday until monday (they died for science). We did a maternal deprivation study, where we filmed the pups and dam (mother rat) interaction and maternal behavior following periods of pup/dam isolations. I filmed, defined behavior, scored the behavior on a computer, interpreted, graphed, found significance... for all the mother and 8 pups. Then we did some odor habituation tests on the pups over the next couple days. Odor habituation is learning. We compared the maternal deprivation, sham, and HI (brain damaged) data and found significance. Yay!! That's basically what I have been up to this summer.

What Work

I watch videos of rats and record certain behaviors all day (except for lunch). Exciting...

Neuro-what?!

I've just spent the past 2 weeks in Novato visiting friends. This was my summer vacation. It consisted of golf, drinking, golf, a pool party, games, poker, watching movies, the gnome dance!! and watching fireworks from a boat on the bay on the 4th. And sleep. On Monday the work part of my summer will begin. I got the research position at USC. I will start out doing neurobehavioral analysis and progress to an animal model of maternal deprivation for neonates. (sounds pretty cool) Anyways, once that gets started hopefully I can post some cooler stuff. Until then.. its flippin hot here.

Post Finals

One year down, one to go. Finals were better than expected and my GPA went up .035 (yeah!!).

Bleh

I hate finals.