math has never been my strong point...

so i have not been able to figure out whether I should:

1. pay down my student loans which are locked in at 2.625% for the life of the loan;
   
2. keep my money in my ING savings account which is at 4.5%;
   
3. put more money into my 401(k); or
   
4. splurge on fixing up my apartment -- meaning getting a Toto toilet and the chairs I've been lusting after.

Does anyone who is more financially savvy than me have any helpful advice?

Observation

My workplace has instituted "diversity initiatives". I am not really sure what that means. But, I did notice that all of the contract attorneys sitting on my floor are mostly... non-white. In fact, they are almost all African or African-American, with the exception of one tarty female lawyer from England.

The contract attorneys all sit in windowless conference rooms or in "the bull pen" which is a long line of cubicles in the center of the floor, near the bathroom. I wonder if segregating the ethnically diverse attorneys from the rest of the firm is what they had in mind...

Skunk: a study of human adaptation

Friday night, I am sitting on my bed in my room. I have my laptop on my lap. Outside my bedroom, I hear dogs barking like crazy. Strange, but I don't feel like looking up from the screen so I just turn up the volume on my television, which is playing NCAA basketball.

My roomate, B, screams in the kitchen. Then I smell something odd in my room. I cannot identify it. It is horrible. It finally motivates me to get out into the hallway of the apartment. I see B, M, and T scrambling out of the kitchen.

"It is not a raccoon," says M. "It is a skunk!"

"That is what I meant," says B. "Oh my. I think I am going to pass out. The kitchen is complete contaminated."

Some dogs must have cornered a skunk outside the kitchen window. And the smell wafted through the apartment. B and I find as many candles as we can. We light them in hopes that it would burn off the skunk scent. In the meanwhile, all of us gather in the living room, the one room that seems to be the least effected. We laugh because it was truly a ridiculous situation.

C seems to be immune to the scent. She is a pathologist, and has encountered much worse in her life. She tells us stories, about the worst scents she had encountered in her medical career. We cringe and giggle as she stands in the foyer acting out the "nursing home" incident. "....think about it. If you smell the skunk that means the skunk molecules are touching the sensors in your nose." We cannot stop laughing

But then she says something profound. "Don't worry. We will soon become accustomed to the smell. We probably already absorbed it. Only everyone else is going to think we smell like skunk."

Maybe it is not profound to you, but I had just experienced a pretty horrible week at school and it was profound to me. You see earlier that week my advisor had pulled me and another student into his office. He claimed that our slow graduation rate was disappointing. He had to let our favorite postdoc go because he is obligated to pay for us and we were basically taking that money from him. I had spent the whole week feeling horrible about myself. I thought about being a failure; I doubted my ability to do science; I spent the whole week flagulating myself.

My advisor was my life's skunk smell. Over the years, he had spent much of his passive aggressive energy telling me I was not good enough. To his credit, it is his version of motivation and pressure. Perhaps, he knows no other way to manage people. But that is not the point. I had let his negativity permeate my thoughts. And I projected it to the people around me. They wondered why I was so hard on myself. If I kept thinking I was bad, I will start to screw up in self-fulfilling prophecy. I needed to break this cycle and instead of getting used to being pushed down, start to fight back.

So now I have to start lighting candles for my life. Start to get rid of this negative stuff. It will take a while (our apartment still has the faint odor of skunk), but with enough airing out it should work.

Stupid people

I admit not being a genius. I admit that when I took an IQ test when I was six years old, I did not perhaps "pass." I admit when I pick up the Wall Street Journal, I have to read the first line more than once to understand it. I'll admit to all of these things.

And so why is it that even if I am not so smart, that I am completely intolerant of stupidity? You would think I would be able to give people the break I have so often received. But no. When stupid people (or people just having an idiotic day) talk, I get a viceral reaction. The blood starts to pump to my head a little faster, and I feel my breath getting a little more shallow and quick. Normally, this happens to me during lectures or scientific discussions. Someone inevitably will say something, just to hear their own voice, wasting the time of everyone else, and contribute nothing. It makes me angry jsut thinking about it.

V often tells me to let it go. She also agrees that it is annoying, but she informs me that she has an automatic mute button. When someone says something stupid, the button goes on and she can think about all the other things in her life like what experiments she is planning, what is for dinner, what is she going to wear tomorrow etc..

Unfortunately, my mute button is faulty, which can be exemplified by Friday's Journal club. Journal club is one of my favorite activities. Basically, a student or postdoc will pick a scientific paper that seems new and interesting and present its findings. Over free pizza, the clincher for the whole event, we debate its merits, faults and try to get a big picture view of where that research may be heading.

Last Friday, a newer quiet well mannered graduate student presented a paper on lamins, their influence over nuclear shape and elasticity. It is a topic, I know nothing about. As she was presenting one of postdocs, N, starting harping on one of the experiments. N clearly misunderstood the experiment and when someone tried to explain it she kept saying, "I understand that, but ...." I felt the blood boil in my neck. I spoke. "No, N, you do not understand, because the definition of [insert scientific jargon here]. Let's move on." She, however, insisted she understood and kept at it for 5 more minutes. At this point, my excessive fist clenching and eye rolling was evident to those around me.

Then she did it again. She brought up some minute point that was irrelavant and could not stop picking at it. And what was worse, is that she began to confuse some the younger graduate students. I said something, but once again it fell on deaf ears. Why is it that stupid people can dominate a room? Why is it that stupid people can never get the point? Why are stupid people stupid? Why.....?

I know V is right, and at this rate I will stroke out at the age of 40. Eh. Oh well.

You get what you need

You can't always get what you want.

But if you try sometimes, you just might find,

You get what you need.

-Rolling Stones

Sometimes Mick does have a point. I am reminded of the time I went into Herrell's for ice cream. I like banana ice cream and it is one of the few places where the offer it free of nuts and chocolate chips. When I went in I got a stoned red headed boy who seemed to not understand anything I said. I asked for a cake cone and he kept on telling me the cone had nothing to do with the scoop size. Or I said banana and he replied, "cookies and cream." After paying and walking out of the store, I licked my ice cream only to discover I was given malted vanilla instead of banana. Ordinarily, I would have marched back in and demanded a new cone, but earlier that day I had a craving for Ovaltine and the malted vanilla was far more satisfying than the banana would have been.

On Monday, I had my annual physical. It is strange that I put this activity off for so long. I'll be the first to admit that I am a hypochondriac, who despite being crazy does get sick a lot. You would assume that combination would send me rushing to the the doctor's all the time. Luckily, I am a student with no real access to adequate health care. In the nightmare prototypical HMO called University Health Services, I have finally found a doctor with whom I feel comfortable. My doctor is a mild mannered overweight woman. She talks in a soft peppy voice as she asks me is there anyone beating me, what was my last sexual encounter, and if I had fasted for the night to take an accurate cholesterol test. I like her because at 8 am in the morning, she takes her time to do a thorough physical. She pokes and prods, does all kinds of labs, and is willing to answer all of my questions.

This year I was bold, and asked for a prescription for some Ambien. My insomnia has been a chronic problem. My high school and college roommates can attest to my late nights. In the past two years it has gotten out of control. I can only catch an hour of sleep here an hour there. And although Ambien is not a great solution as it increases my sleep to about 2 hours, it has been the best one so far. My soft talking doctor gave me a funny look and told me she did not feel like Ambien was for me. She instead prescribed me Temazapam (a benzo for you druggies out there). Of course, I was a little worried since this is what they use to tranquilize crazy people, but then again I am a little crazy so.....

Last night, I tried half of my new pill. This morning, I slept through my alarm. Although I still feel a little hungover, I think these pills are just what the doctor ordered ... literally.

Brazillian BBQ

Meat. There are a lot of reasons why we should not eat it. For instance: 1) If we all ate lower on the evolutionary food pyramid (lowest being self sustainable items like plants and algae, the highest being lions), we could feed the world many times over, and save enormous amounts of energy costs. 2) There is the ethical/moral dilemna if eating a senscient being (although other animals are not burdended by this problem; like lions) can be a good thing. 3) And their are health reasons that could convince people to avoid meat.

In the pro-meat column, I can only think of one reason to keep eating meat: 1) Ummm...tasty especially lion steaks.

Last night, V, E and I went to a brazillian barbecue joint to fulfill are carnal need to eat the flesh of once living creatures in high quantities. All you can eat places are not for the feignt of heart, so selection of who goes with you is key. First, don't invite vegetarians, this may seem obvious, but sometimes politeness can veer you off course. In that same category, do not invite anyone who is either on a diet or only eats small quantities of food at a time. You cannot let guilt get the in the was of your gluttony. Go with people who will prepare for the event, for example E was fasting, V ate a light brunch and I went running that morning.

At the restaurant the three of us wasted no time getting things started. There was a buffet that provided rice beans, veggies, and that brazillian specialty: sushi. On our table was a wooden stand. One side was painted green to indicate that the servers were to come to your table to serve you meat, and the other was red to say stop.

Needless to say the three of us stayed at our table eating for about 2 and a half hours. We sampled many mammals and a few chickens that tasted like mammals. We even ate jello, mammalian byproducts for dessert. MMMMMM... meat. Would have loved it more had they served lion steaks.