My lab mate was helping me with my virtual paper outline, whose wave function has not yet collapsed. He says I am too pessimistic. I am not convinced my data is novel, or real, or useful to anyone. I think he only thinks it is because he doesn't know any better. I hate science. I hate research. Nothing is real . . . nobody really knows how anything works inside real cells. We try and think of clever ways of asking them but they are very secretive and tricky little buggers.

I am going to be a post-modern biologist. Most cell behaviors are context-dependent - depend on time, place, what other cells are doing, where they went to school, who their parents are. Like people. Everything is the same. It's all math. I wish I were better at math. I was seeing math in the trees today. Trees and vasculature . . . it's all the same.

I think it might be coffee time. I am in for the long haul tonight. If you're out there, imaginary readers, please send loving thoughts to my cells today. If you do, and I know you have done so, and my immunostaining works, I will acknowledge you in my "paper" if and when it ever goes through a slit and hits the phosphor screen.