This Ophidiophobe's Rant

So, yesterday there was that horribly scary news article about the escaped snake. Egyptian Cobra. Bronx zoo. Still missing. And, oh, by the way, venom glands still in place.

Today, the zoo followed up with some more details. The cobra is highly venomous (what a surprise!), female, and an "adolescent". Wait ... what? I can do this type of math! You're telling me there's a snake on the loose. Then you say she's female (a.k.a., high E.Q.) AND in that stage of her life when her "feelings" are driving her crazy!? Even if we assume she's a particularly rational and sensible specimen, we cannot deny that she's probably swinging back and forth from mild prosecution mania ("Nobody loves me!") to raging teenager-isms ("I hate you! I hate you all!!"). To add to this mix, she's also -- literally -- poisonous.

O-kay... .

While the reptile keepers are trying hard to convince everybody that she'll turn up eventually (when she starts getting hungry enough to eat a Summer, apparently), I am panicking in Chicago, seven hundred miles away. It's so easy for a little creature to hitch a ride to wherever she wants to be! I'm having trouble stretching my legs out under the desk, I keep feeling my skin prickle under my trousers, and I cannot walk past (or under) anything without a sharp look for odd "swinging twigs". I keep my legs tucked up and under me whenever possible, look over my shoulder all the time, and watch out for sudden unexplained movements out of the corner of my eye. It's amazing how many sudden unexplained movements occur in an "everyday" day! I just cannot wait until they find the snake (hopefully nowhere close to me or mine). I know it's just one more snake loose in the city, but hey, if they find her, there will be one less emotionally disturbed, homeless teenager with ammunition on the streets, right?!

Update on March 31st 2011: The snake has been recaptured, after six days on the loose. I'm not saying anything, lest it's "too soon".

Plodding along... .

This, I am sorry to say, is going to be another one of those (rare) filler posts. I had so many ideas for posts but, in time, they have all evaporated away with the stress of completion. I'm guessing that the following few months will yield more filler posts ... and although I dislike just about "keeping my hand in", I think that's all I can manage for now.

I should say I have started writing in earnest, but, really (and most unfortunately), I haven't. I have what My Advisor thinks is a fairly solid outline, and I have bits and pieces of writing, but nothing that you would yet call a dissertation. (And, just for the record, I hate having to write those background chapters. It's not like they help anybody, myself included.) On the other hand, though, I do have a nearly complete presentation that is for my dissertation defense talk.

What I have been doing in the past few weeks is starting to tie up loose ends, polishing up all the projects I have worked on so they can be taken smoothly forward by others after me. I have also started working a little on 'building a world' outside of the University, to which I can belong once I leave this place. My Advisor has been incredibly supportive and helpful in this respect, and I really am grateful! Although a large part of me is looking forward to finishing and leaving, a little bit of me is focusing on the emotions attending the act of "moving on". I feel a sort of wrench having to leave this lab, and I am starting to gradually reconfigure my connections with the people in it. Fortunately, I don't have to deal with similar feelings involving anything outside the lab. A few people, yes. But it is (hopefully) going to be easier to keep up with them as individuals once I leave.

Wow. I'm talking like I'm leaving tomorrow! I really ought to get back to writing my dissertation first, or I'll just be here ... forever. Goodbye!