pogoism

Though this website is fairly anonymous, as a rule, I try not to blog about anything too personal. I’ve spent a lot of the last 2 months with the guy I’m dating, and as a result I haven’t blogged much.

A few weeks ago I went snowboarding. I’m still rubbish at it – I think I expect myself to be really good at it after a few goes, even though the instructors say that it took them years to even master the basics. Still doesn’t make me feel much better though. Anyway, this time I went a little better prepared – had proper gloves and new snowboarding pants (rather than the idiotic choice of jeans last time) which made the whole experience a lot more enjoyable. I did the First Timer lesson again, mainly because I went with people who had never been snowboarding at all before. I’m glad I did the lesson again, as we were taught different things than last time, and it made me feel a whole lot more confident – so much so that I went up the next slope (although, I only half way down before deciding that hefty medical bills from breaking various limbs wasn’t really worth it). Unfortunately, we went the day of the Superbowl, so I missed out on that whole part of the American experience, though we did manage to catch a bit of it when we went to eat in Tahoe City.

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Work for the past few weeks has been slow, with little tissue to work on for various reasons. Having been utterly bored of reading papers all day, I decided to learn some new techniques – that is, after all, why I’m here. So with the help of my colleagues I’m now fairly proficient in calcium imaging (my next project), immunohistochemistry and confocal microscopy. I’m pleased – this week felt like the first week where I’ve actually learnt some new things.

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Finally, as I’m sure it probably hadn’t escaped your notice, yesterday was Valentine’s Day.

The day started off a bit awkward, as I was reminded of my ex, who I’d dated for almost 2 years before coming to Reno. It’s hard being forced to break up with someone, because it never really feels like it’s over, especially when you feel like you might never get to meet someone like that person again. But anyway… I spent the day with Alonso, and after finding that a lot of restaurants shut early in Reno on the weekends, we went to Kyoto Restaurant. It was delicious – we had cooked soy beans (yum), a few sushi rolls (yum) and I had salmon teryaki (very yum) and green tea ice cream, all washed down with a bottle of sake. Then we went home to chill out for a bit, and headed out to Tronix. Now, I’ve been to some pretty horrid gay bars, but Tronix wins the prize of being the worst. It’s seedy, it’s dirty, it’s cheap – but yet I had a really fun night. When Tronix began to die down, Alonso and I headed across the road to Neutron, which is essentially a gay bar for Latinos. I’ve haven’t enjoyed myself so much in a club before – despite it being a gay bar it didn’t have that same pretentious, fake feel to it. We only intended to stay there for one song, but we stayed for much more than an hour, getting drawn in to dancing to the Mexican music (and the one American song, which cleared the dance floor in a way I’ve not seen before). At one point I found myself line dancing with 50 people, certainly a moment I won’t be forgetting in a hurry.