Science (non) Fiction

So, it’s official. I have been granted my Doctor of Philosophy degree in Microbiology and Immunology from Wake Forest University! I am a real doctor, though not the kind that help people. I will officially be a December 2008 graduate (missed the August deadline by 2 weeks!), though I won’t walk in graduation and be hooded until May 2009. But the degree is finished, and it feels like an enormous weight has been lifted from my shoulders in the last 24 hours.

I will now be making some revisions of the thesis document, and finishing up some experiments, and breaking into my new role as professor. I want to thank those of you who have been such an incredible source of support and comfort over the past several years, who have listened to the complaining and freaking out and stressful conversations, who have prayed for me over the years and lightened the load. This experience would have been much less fun and incredibly more difficult without all of you. So thank you. Very much.

With the roomie defending her thesis this Monday, we decided to have a big blow-out party next Saturday the 23rd at 2pm. If you haven’t gotten an invitation and want to come, let me know and I’ll add you to the list! We’d love to see you there!

So. I have been delaying updating here until I could say something real. And I now can. I will be defending my PhD dissertation this coming Thursday August 14th at 2pm, starting with an open seminar (feel free to come if you’d like!) and then a closed session with my thesis committee. I don’t think I can accurately describe what it feels like to be here, finally at this point I’ve been striving for for 6 years. It’s been a long time coming, and yet sometimes seems to have flown by at warp speed. There’s a strong sense of inevitability now that it’s less than a week away, now that the countdown has begun. I’m also nervous, and proud, and amazed, and exhausted, and a million other things right now. I will be beyond happy to receive my PhD, but also I suspect will feel an intense sense of relief, that this time of constant questioning will be over.

As far as details go, I will be sticking around Winston Salem for this coming academic year. I’ll be working in the lab through the end of September to finish up a couple more papers before the boss leaves. But starting on August 18th, I’ll be teaching my first college class at a local liberal arts college, an introductory class for biology majors. I am very excited (and nervous) about this new opportunity, and the experience it will bring that will make me a more attractive candidate for a faculty position in the near future.

So. There you go. An update, finally. I will try to keep up better now that the big news is out, but given what September is looking like, that might be a tall order. We’ll see. I’ll be sure to let you know how things go this week. Unless the biochemistry kills me first.

I stole this from Kari, who was not exactly sure what this list is, but it has something to do with the National Endowment for the Arts’ Big Read program, though she couldn’t find this list on their website to verify that claim. Apparently the NEA estimates that the average adult has only read six of these books. At least, that is the statistic that is bandied about the internet. So, basically, this is a random unverified list with a random unverified statistic attached to it. But let’s see how I do anyway, shall we? (Hint: more than six.)

Here’s how it works:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Mark in red the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your blog

And I think I’ll stick with Kari on this one and not mark things red - I’ll note on the side if I loved it.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - One of my all time favorites.
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - I’ve read the first 1.5 books. I should finish.
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - I could re-read this every single year.
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - I think you probably know how I feel about these.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - I admit to never reading this yet.
6 The Bible - I read through the whole thing in a year sometime in college.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - Hate.Hate.Hate. Have tried too many times.
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - I enjoyed them, despite the controversy.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - I am not, in general, a fan of Dickens.

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - One of my favorites growing up.
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - I haven’t read it since high school.
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - I do love this book.
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot - I’ve started this one, but never finished.

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens - Again, not a huge fan of Dickens.
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - I always want to read this after I see the movie.
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - I wish I’d read it in time to see the movie.
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - Haven’t read it, don’t plan on it.
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - Love this growing up.
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - I want to re-read it as an adult.
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen - Another favorite.
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen - I love me some Jane.
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - The one I’ve re-read most often.
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - Hard to forget.
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - I doubt that I will ever try this one.
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving - One of my favorites from this current year.
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - I went through a Wilkie Collins phase.
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - The whole series.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - I have read some Hardy. I liked The Mayor of Casterbridge.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - Strange.
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding - I never had to read this one.
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan - Really powerful.

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - I’ve always wanted to read this.
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - This is tied with P&P for first place.
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - Again, I’ve tried several times and failed miserably.
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Do.not.like.

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - This one was ok.
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - Very good.
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac - Started it, hated it.
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - One of the few I enjoy. (maybe because of the musical - hehe)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - I grew up loving this.
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - The only one of his I really enjoy.
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - So depressing.
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - I’ve read parts in French too.
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - I love me some Dumas. (and the movie is good, too)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - Why have the whole collection and separate works on here?
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - I’ve actually never read any of his stuff, I think.
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - I have tried many times. One day I will succeed.

So that’s 43. Not bad, I guess. I do love book lists. And that several book club books made it on the list. How many have you read?

I know, it’s been forever.

I will do a real update soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to let anybody who is still reading this about a fun new website called NoiseTrade. It’s a website where musicians can get the word out about their music, and you can get cheap (or even free) music downloads! I’ve gotten lots of new music to try out, and found some artists that I really like already. It’s a great way to try out some new artists, and get the word out to your friends about musicians you already like. Check it out!

https://www.noisetrade.com/index.aspx

Just some good things happening in my life right now (or now-ish):

~ Good, deep conversations with friends about important (and some not-so-important) things

~ Knowing that going to see WICKED is only ONE MONTH AWAY!!!!! (SO excited!)

~ When experiments actually work correctly reproducibly, and move my work forward instead of backwards

~ The fact that LOST and How I Met Your Mother is back on TV regularly, and many of my other favorites will be back shortly (April 10th for The Office!)

~ Broadway musical soundtracks (Lately it’s been old favorites that I’m revisiting like Les Mis and Into the Woods, plus Wicked of course)

~ Long, fun voicemail messages from friends and family about cat’s brains or cute coworkers

~ The fact that my birthday is exactly two weeks away!

I will not post the accompanying crappy things that are going on, as the good things generally outweigh them right now.

So what’s going well in your life right now?

OK, I know it’s been forever since I’ve posted. I kept waiting and waiting and waiting til I had some solid answers about the future, but as it seems my life will stay in a state of semi-chaos for a while longer, I figure it’s time to catch y’all up with the goings-on.

First of all, in case you’ve forgotten, in my absence, what I look like:

And, even though I posted since then, I don’t think I’ve actually said that Rebecca and I have moved into a cute little house in Ardmore just over a mile from school and less than that from church:

We love it - it’s been really nice to be close to school again (not that I was that far before, but it’s still nice to be closer), and to have enough space to have people over regularly (despite having a couple issues with neighbors), and Dinah appreciates having more people to regularly love her.

Also, this has been my life recently:

I’ve been running gels like mad, trying to get things wrapped up so I can finish this thesis and graduate in the near future - for those counting, it will likely be either May or June, so stay tuned in for the last-minute thesis issues that I’m sure will be coming along shortly. I’m looking for jobs in the area, as I’d love to stay here, but I might end up looking farther afield, but still in the state at least. Let me know if you hear of any good teaching jobs (preferably small, liberal arts colleges, but I can be flexible).

The brother is still doing well out in Cali:

Well, he doesn’t look like he’s doing well there, but he just wasn’t pleased with all of my picture-taking at Christmas. He’s working at Sony, doing some writing, and looking for a good production job now that things are gearing back up after the strike. Dad got to fly out and visit him this past week, so I’m very jealous. Maybe when I have a real, grown-up job…

Mom is still adjusting to her new job and schedule - and she and Dad are having to make some tough decisions in the next little bit. I’m going home tonight to celebrate Dad’s belated birthday, so that will be good.

Hopefully I can keep this more updated than it’s been lately - entering the home stretch may make that difficult, but I will try.

Sorry I’ve been so absent lately. But to distract you from the pain caused by my lack of blogging, I present you with more excellent LOLcats.

moar funny pictures

moar funny pictures

moar funny pictures

moar funny pictures

moar funny pictures

moar funny pictures

moar funny pictures

moar funny pictures

and my current favorite:

moar funny pictures

I submit the following photo for your viewing pleasure. Mom brought back these shirts from her trip to Disney World last year (without us, I might add), and we finally got around to taking a picture of us in them this Christmas while Matthew was home from Cali for the holidays. Enjoy!

So here it is, the long-awaited book list for 2007, the whole point of me keeping track of what I read this past year. All in all, it was a really good year for me, reading-wise at least - having an idea ahead of time of what I wanted to read next really kept me moving and kept me from watching too much trashy tv or re-reading too many old favorites. I’ll list my favorites from this year at the bottom.

1. Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst
2. Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl
3. Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst
4. The Pact: A Love Story by Jodi Picoult
5. Thirty-three Swoons by Martha Cooley
6. Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult
7. Speaking with the Angel edited by Nick Hornby
8. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
9. The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
10. Mudhouse Sabbath by Lauren Winner
11. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards
12. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
13. Good Harbor by Anita Diamant
14. Everyone Else’s Girl by Megan Crane
15. The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillippa Gregory
16. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
17. Intuition by Allegra Goodman
18. On Agate Hill by Lee Smith
19. The Faith Club by Ranya Idliby, Suzanne Oliver and Priscilla Warner
20. Heat by Bill Buford
21. Innocent Traitor: A Novel of Lady Jane Grey by Alison Weir
22. The Last Girls by Lee Smith
23. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
24. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg (re-read)
25. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
26. The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregor
27. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by JK Rowling (re-read)
28. English as a Second Language by Megan Crane
29. Cooked: From the Streets to the Stove, from Cocaine to Foie Gras by Jeff Henderson
30. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling (re-read)
31. The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz
32. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
33. Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos
34. The Cater Street Hangman by Anne Perry
35. Unnatural Exposure by Patricia Cornwell
36. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling (re-read)
37. The Same Sweet Girls by Cassandra King
38. Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson
39. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling (re-read)
40. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling (re-read)
41. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by JK Rowling (re-read)
42. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling
43. Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
44. Possession by A.S. Byatt
45. The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman
46. The Subtle Knife by Phillip Pullman
47. Callander Square by Anne Perry
48. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
49. The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman
50. Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven by Fannie Flagg
51. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
52. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (re-read)
52. Father Melancholy’s Daughter by Gail Godwin.
54. Evensong by Gail Godwin
55. The Masque of the Black Tulip by Lauren Willig
56. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (re-read)
57. Patron Saint of Liars by Anne Patchett
58. The Deception of the Emerald Ring by Lauren Willig
59. Atonement by Ian McEwan
60. Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
61. Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson
62. The Alchemyst: Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott
63. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
64. Borrower of the Night by Elizabeth Peters
65. 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith
66. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
67. An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
68. The Copenhagen Connection by Elizabeth Peters
69. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
70. Feast of Love by Charles Baxter
71. Espresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith
72. Run by Ann Patchett
73. Digging to America by Anne Tyler
74. Looking for Alaska by John Green
75. The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler
76. Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett
77. Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson

All right, so favorites from this year:
1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling. Long anticipated conclusion to my favorite series, and well worth the wait.
2. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. Beautiful writing, intriguing story, this is what really kicked off my Patchett fandom.
3. Digging to America by Anne Tyler. Such an incredible story, and really well-told. I definitely cried at the end, which is awesomely moving.
4. 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith. I don’t know if this will end up being my favorite from the series, but I really enjoy the series as a whole - witty and ironic and full of life.
5. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I didn’t necessarily love reading this book, but it has definitely stayed with me longer than most books. Really powerful and well written.
6. Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos. Way better than I expected this to be, and much deeper than I thought it could be. One of the lighter favorite books.
7. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. I wasn’t sure which of his books to put on here, but this one is one that I will be more likely to re-read (as opposed to Kiterunner). A really beautiful and moving picture of life in Afghanistan.
8. Father Melancholy’s Daughter by Gail Godwin. I loved this prequel to Evensong, and I enjoyed being able to carry the story over into that second book - but I related more to Margaret in this one than in Evensong.
9. Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson. Such a fun book, full of dark humor and southern-isms and family idiosyncrasies.
10. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. One that I will definitely need to re-read again to fully understand, but it was still incredible the first time through.

There were a few disappointments, but overall it was a good list. I’m open to suggestions for what to read in 2008, and tell me what you read and enjoyed in 2007!

We used this Advent prayer in church a few weeks ago, and it struck me again with the paradox of Christ’s incarnation among us that we celebrate at this time of year.

Almighty God, who, having created all worlds and mankind, has profoundly pitied us; who has come to us that we might be saved, not of our merit, but of your unquenchable love; look on us who worship in comfort, in light and warmth, in health and prosperity, in pride and in presumption.

For, having all glory,

you became incarnate in the dishonor of a defeated line of kings;

having all riches,

you became incarnate in the poverty of the working class;

having all illumination,

you became incarnate in the darkness of night and obscurity;

having all wisdom,

you became incarnate in the confounding simplicity of a child;

having all life,

you became incarnate in the emptiness of a virgin’s womb;

having all power,

you became incarnate in the weakest form of human life - a male infant.

Help us to recognize our shame, our poverty, our darkness, our foolishness, our emptiness, our weakness, that we may know our need of you. And then … become incarnate in us. We pray through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.