The grant is finally done. "In Vivo Imaging of Hypoxic Cell Physiology" was sent off to the NIH today, in the form of a 3 inch thick stack of papers. That covers all the forms, resource descriptions, CVs of all collaborators, the research plan itself, and an appendix of related papers published by key personnel. If it gets funded, it'll give me $275k over the next two years to do some cool work on developing techniques for imaging cellular metabolism induced by exposure to low oxygen environments. Everyone tells me NIH grants are incredibly competitive, but i'm confident that i've put together a strong team and proposal. I'll find out in six months or so. In the meantime, i've got a lecture on 3D fluorescence tomography to prepare for Monday that i haven't even thought about yet. There goes my weekend. At least after that i'll be able to slow down a gear or so.

V noticed just before we went to LA a few weeks back that the Monterey Bay Aquarium had made an interesting new acquisition: a 4.5 foot, 60 pound, six month old great white shark. While we were unable to stop at the aquarium going to or from LA, we got sufficiently organized over the next week so that Naomi, Geoff, V, and i got an early breakfast last Saturday morning and drove down the coast to Monterey. Chompy, as we deemed her, swam nonchalantly around the million gallon Outer Bay tank, along with a number of other larger fish. She was certainly impressive, and we resolved to come back in a year or so to see how big she gets. Apparently this is the first time researchers have ever been able to get a great white to feed in captivity, so everyone is understandably excited. So much so that i thought the horde of people watching the tank might attack the next ignoramus who (knowingly or not) broke the "no flash photography" rule.

After touring the aquarium for a while, we left to have a Thai lunch down the street. While there, V and my housing adventure took an interesting turn. We got a call from our realtor Joe, who told us that the offer that was accepted for the house we'd bid on had fallen through, and that we'd been asked to resubmit our bid. We signed another set of papers that afternoon, which Joe presented to the seller for the second time on Monday. We thought it a good omen that we'd been asked to resubmit, indicating that there must be some interest in our offer. However, come Tuesday lunchtime we were told our bid had been turned down ... again. We learned that there were three bids initially, and only two in this second round. So i guess we now know what the sellers really thought of our offer. I'm waiting to get a call telling us the second bid had fallen through, so i can ponder over whether to a) tell them to f@$# off, or b) submit a new, significantly lower bid. So despite a few days of hope we're back to where we were a week and a half ago.

I've been in a video game renaissance since getting my Xbox "improved", and have joined a Netflix-esque game rental service called Gamefly. The first selection from my queue that i received was the hardcore racing game Burnout 3: Takedown, and what a great way to kick things off. Running your opponents into oncoming traffic or walls is fun enough, but when you combine it with a near-supersonic racer with excellent controls, it's addictive. My second rental was the futuristic first person shooter and adventure game Deus Ex: Invisible War, but i'm not so taken with that. I'm more excited to return it and get the new RPG X-Men Legends. I've also become embroiled in a new Mario Kart Double Dash campaign with Naomi and Geoff as well as old rivals Gary, Leah, and of course V. Naomi actually went out and bought a GameCube and Mario Kart for her and Geoff after a racing session with us last weekend. It suffices to say that no one has yet knocked me from my throne for any extended period of time. Whether that will be the case with FIFA and the SMFA, we'll have to see on October 16.

I got a new 250GB Lacie external hard drive at work yesterday, so today i'm basking in the mp3 goodness, content that i can continue expanding my online music collection unimpeded. Lately i've been obsessing over getting good cover scans for my mp3s. I've already got cover art for all of them, but i've been noticing that some of the images are of fairly low quality. Ted and his OCD.

I naturally had time before leaving for Monterey that Chelsea had soundly defeated Middlesbrough, if only by a score of 1-nil. Bwa ha ha. Despite our less than spectacular play in the English Premiership (although we are still as yet unbeaten and only 2 points behind leaders Arsenal), we've won our first two Champions League matches over Paris St. Germain by 3-nil and this week over current Cup holders FC Porto by 3-1. José Mourinho's new squad defeated his old soundly, with Damien Duff getting a start and Didier Drogba adding to his accelerating tally. As Matthew put it, one of these days Chelsea is going to bust 5 or 6 goals on someone in the Premiership and after that the team's confidence will skyrocket. At present we're outplaying our opposition but are having trouble converting our advantage in chances into a solid advantage on the scoresheet.