More Healthy Volunteer Stuff

A few days ago I had to find my way over to 66th and York for a research study at Rockefeller University. More specifically, this study was measuring my ability to smell certain pheromones.

It took forever to get there, first of all. I had to smell a small amount of liquid in two containers and choose which I thought smelled more strongly. I would put the label of that container under a scanner and the computer would tell me which set of containers to open next. I was super nervous because I could barely smell anything at all for most of them, and if you didn't pick a certain number of the 'right' containers you couldn't participate in the study. Luckily, I just barely met the criteria and will be coming back monthly. Yay, tax-free income...

I have found out the hard way that I cannot have caffeine at least six hours before going to bed. Great. It's 4:15 AM. At least I have semi-regular internet. And a headache. And I'm kind of hungry, but nothing looks tasty. I found out that I can't buy like, regular people food because I'll just finish it off in a day. So... there's pasta, oatmeal, those Laughing Cow cheese wedges in the cute wheel container, a tofu hunk, cream cheese, and frozen Asian stir fry vegetables in the kitchen. And powdered Jello. And a ton of cereal which I have not even touched in weeks since I gave up buying milk or yogurt.

But oh! I bought some strawberry jam at Trader Joe's on a whim and it is fantastic. I mix a spoonful of that into my oatmeal each morning and it makes me happy.

I've started anew on the 'Texas' Barbecue restaurants. There's a ton in Manhattan and I have recently finished mystery shopping them all, mwa ha ha. I just did the one in Brooklyn again tonight. There were significant improvements in all areas of the dining experience. I got the old standby, the pulled pork sandwich.

Gah, now I'm just rambling about food again.

Ummmm.... oh, here are some pictures from my most recent insomniac episode, where I accompanied Daniel to the subway station on 96th at 5:15 in the morning. Without anything better to do at that hour, I made my way to Central Park and took a few pictures of flowers and stuff. That is my modus operandi, indeed. Flowers are easy.