Rhan's dan

I’m still recovering from last week, which held about 25 hours of TAing, plus my regular lab schedule (with minion, who’s pretty close to graduating to henchman at this point) the rest of the week. The brain-rotting of intensive scientific doldrums was partially alleviated by coming out of the weekend on a strong note, having seen Hamlet twice out in Forest Park. That was probably the best Ophelia I’ll see. Honestly, the entire cast was incredible, and Hamlet himself…well, I’m no longer so bitter about missing Dr. Who and Jude Law.

We (being a lab rat, a psychologist, an operatic Frenchman, and a swim coach/nurse – you know,  the cool people) also stacked the front row of the free seats at the Muny for Beauty & the Beast Wednesday night. We spent the interim cracking jokes about subways, Elvis, and Anton Chekov’s poetry. An excellent night.

However, below is a conversation from day 1 of my TAship. I admire that these guys made it from here to prepping for teaching the courses in 5 days. Still, you may see why I’m still sleepwalking.

It was a long week.

Annotation Day 1

Click the image for a readable version. This is also up on Autoclave in a slightly higher-resolution.

Aw, SWEET! DC just went and created a comic exchange page on Tumblr, so you can now see both our comics in one place. I will of course continue to post mine here, but since DC is the one training to do comics for a living, I’m going to pimp both our new site, Autoclave, and DC’s professional site, which contains some pretty swank art.

There is, in fact, a story behind the name of Autoclave. It was born one night last semester when I’d just come back from an afternoon in the barrier facility and DC and I were sitting around the table, chilling. It went something like this:

“Man, so Paris was telling me today that the walk-in autoclave gets up to, like, 273ºF on the sterilization runs. I’d hate to get stuck in there.”

“That’s pretty hardcore.”

“Hah, that would be an awesome name for a metal band.”

“Heh, yeah, one of the Norwegian metalcore ones.  AUTOCLAAAAAAAVE!” *pumps the llama hand*

“Dude, if we ever make a band…”

Or something like that, anyway. Our first song was going to be 273 Degrees. And now, we haven’t a band, but we do have a comparably meaningful artistic statement budding on the net. Check it out and enjoy.

Here’s your Wednesday update a little early for a change. This guy is from earlier in the year, but I haven’t finished yet. I think the parking lot I’ve drawn in behind him could stand to change dimensions before being inked. As for why his name is Felix…well, I wish I could provide a logical explanation. It just is. At the time when I drew it, I modeled his face and eyes off mine – we researchers often look a little ragged – but the whole is divergent from the components.

Felix

This week I’ve been TAing a genomics workshop, which has been quite an interesting experience. According to my professor-students, I’m supposed to join their ranks someday – certainly not sure they’re exercising their best judgment there, especially since some of them were a little flustered at dinner when they found out I like theatre and linguistics. I get the feeling that if I’d pulled out my sketchbook over dessert, things would have gotten interesting. We talked politics instead.

Teapot

Just making good on my promise to post amusing interludes in exchange with my cartoonist ex-roomie.  This introductory episode comes from a conversation my roommate and I had while I was unpacking the kitchen. The actual quote was “in what I find,” but this fit a bit better.

As I understand the agreement, we’ll each be posting every other week, Brotherhood 2.0 style. So, look for one from DC next week (I’ll link it), and some updates on me and my minion after that.

Posts will return when the internet does. In theory, that will be this evening when I return from lab. In practice, it may be longer.