Ice, ice, baby.

So on The Eyes of Nye episode on transportation, Phoenix, Arizona is used as the textbook example of urban sprawl and car-reliance taken to catasterfuck proportions. Hell, they even showed gridlock on what looks like the 101 and the I-10, both situations I've found myself in many times. It was surreal. Maybe my car was down there at the time the pictures were taken. They also referred to the sprawl of North Scottsdale (not by name, but looking at the aerial footage that's what it was), which just makes me LOL given that I've been bitching about the exponential growth of Cookie-Cutter Suburbia Wannabe-Beverly Hills for ages. But I digress.

I loves me some Bill Nye. He was my childhood crush/hero and he still is.

At least the light rail is finally, FINALLY going to be put in? Wonder how many people will actually use it. It really only connects Mesa/Tempe to Downtown Phoenix and the airport right now. Fine for me. But really, insane heat + sprawl =/= more people biking and walking. It's just too damn fucking hot most of the year. This city should be growing UP, not OUT. Then public transportation would not have to run so hard and so long to catch up to the edges of the city, and more people might actually USE it. But I digress.

And seeing all the lush greenery and gray skies that is Seattle (where the show is based) reawakens my desire to go to graduate school somewhere like that. It looks like a perpetual perfect day for me, and I have yet to meet somebody who dislikes Seattle besides my mother, who can't stand rain. The more I hear about the University of Washington, the more attractive the idea sounds all-around. Still considering various UC schools, of course, foremost of which would be Berkeley, UCLA, and UCSD, though the latter two are edging up on too close to my native climate.

Especially when it's the damn end of September and still 105*F every fucking day. And especially when the apartment complex decides to prevent our air conditioning from going anywhere below 80*F because they want to save money, and I keep waking up in the middle of the night with that nasty scalp-sweat. Yes, I'm pissed about that. The only thing I'll miss about the desert climate is the desert storms.

The Indian rotation-graduate student (meaning she's with us only a few weeks; she's sampling out all the projects in SOLS) in my lab is usually very quiet and serious. She's essentially my benchmate. The other day after she buried her Western blot setup in ice (the thing runs hot), she looked straight at me and said, "Ice, ice, baby", in a very flat voice. It was surreal. I'm surprised I didn't laugh harder.

I leave for LA tomorrow evening. Then I'm driving up to ~fabulous~con with fabula_umbrae and Hillel on Friday.