Science (non) Fiction

OK, so I started watching A&E’s version of Pride and Prejudice last night – what else would I logically do at 11pm when I can’t get to sleep?!?! I borrowed the DVDs from a friends, but I have now decided that I think I would like to re-read the book before I watch it again – it’s been a really long time since I read it, and there’s quite a bit that didn’t make it even into the 6-hour A&E version, so I’m going to Borders this weekend to pick up a copy – can you believe, I don’t own a copy of P&P?!?! How is that possible?!?! Anyway, I was recalling what I like so much about Jane Austen’s characters – they’re real in a way that most literary characters aren’t, in that they have flaws, some of which they may be able to fix, but some of which are fairly fixed in their personality – they’re just so interesting to read about and see interact. And I also realized that as much as I like Mr. Darcy in P&P (for the life of me I can’t remember his first name – William? Charles?), I like Austen’s hero of “Emma”, Mr. Knightly – the older, intelligent, serious guy who loves Emma first as a little sister, but then develops deeper feelings for her – it’s a nice, if slightly less realistic (in the modern world), version of how I’d like a relationship to progress – he’s a real leader, not shy to correct Emma when he finds flaws, but he clearly does it out of love and a desire to see her character improved. I see those kinds of things happen in P&P also, but it’s more clear in Emma to me… However, Mr. Darcy is the dark, brooding kind that appeals to me, but I think that would get old after a little while, even if it were Colin Firth…hehehe! It’s also interesting to watch P&P after watching Bride and Prejudice – when I was watching B&P for the first time, I was thinking about P&P and comparing them – then watching P&P last night, I was thinking about B&P and what would happen next in terms of that movie – wierd… Thoughts, comments from people who have read/seen P&P and/or Emma?

On a sadder note, my summer student left today – they had their poster presentations and then we had a lunch with everybody in the program and now they’re gone!!!! sniff, sniff… Seriously though, this has been a great experience for me, especially since I do eventually want to teach college – but it has slowed everything else down, so I’m about ready to get geared back up for more research! He wrote me a nice thank you note and everything – even if we didn’t get a whole lot of positive data, I think it was a good experience for both of us – so good luck next year Doug! And Joseph!

I’ve got a ton of stuff to finish up today before I can leave – hopefully for dinner with Frances tonight before she leaves for CA tomorrow – sniff, sniff… and then helping Becky move tomorrow, before heading to Raleigh Sunday for the play and then seeing baby Aria after that – good, full weekend ahead!

I’m going to see my brother in a play this weekend – that hadn’t happened since he was in college – very excited! It’s a hysterical spoof on Shakespeare’s plays, with three actors playing all the dozens of different roles in the many plays they cover – I saw him do at least part of it during a summer theater stint he did in college, but this should be really good – much more rehearsed and in a real theater and everything – it’ll be good to see him back on stage – he’s quite good with comedy, if I say so myself! Also, other bonuses – should get to see my sis-in-law, who I haven’t seen in a long time – plus my parents are coming to the same show, so I’ll get to see them after their trip to WI – they’re back in NC now btw… I also hope to be able to stop in and see Alexa and the newest Carter – gotta call them though to make sure that’s ok with them – hehe!
Also, Frances is leaving the state this weekend – I’m not going to say for good, cause I have to believe she’ll be back in NC after a while – please Lord!!!!! Anyway, hope I can catch up with her for dinner tomorrow night – I’ll call you Frances!!!! It would be nice to say bye and hang out one more time before she leaves…sniff, sniff…
All right, I’m going to include the info for the show this weekend in case any of y’all are bored enough, um I mean interested in driving to Raleigh to see it – you can also check out Matt’s blog from the link on the sidebar to the right on this page – this is what’s posted there about the show right now:

Come and See
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)
by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield
Directed by Andrew Hayworth
Noelle Barnard… Caleb Custer… Matthew Rockel
July 30, August 4-6 at 8:00pm, July 31 at 2:00pm
At the Leggett Theatre,
Peace College, 15 E. Peace St., Raleigh, NC
Tickets – $10 for adults; $5 for students, seniors 65+,
active military personnel, and anyone with a good excuse.
Sorry, no credit cards accepted.For reservations call 919.602.8034.
Tickets also available at the door.

CRAZY DEALS
Name (correctly) five of Shakespeare’s plays and get half off the ticket
price!!

Perform one of Shakespeare’s monologues for everyone in the lobby and get
in free!!! (at least one minute please!)

Peace College students get in free without having to make idiots of
themselves.

Men in tights (especially pink ones) get in free!

This production is rated PG-13, due to content that may be inappropriate for small children or anyone who never rode the bus to school. No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service.

Just in case any of y’all were wondering what the adorable child looks like, here is a pic of little Aria Vally – hope to be able to see her in person very soon!

In other news, my sis-in-law is back at home (I think as of last night) – hope to see her soon, as it’s been too long since we’ve even talked – Matthew is doing a play at Peace College (a very funny Abridged version of Shakespeare with only three actors covering tons of Shakespear’es plays – hysterical!) so I hope to see them then at least…
Mom and Dad are in WI, actually visited with Mom’s dad this morning – can’t wait to hear how that went…and they’re driving back Wed I think, so they’ve still got a little time with the family up there – they said the wedding was fun – included several unusual things, like quotes from Monty Python (the one about ‘take thou the holy hand grenade of love’ or something like that), but that’s actually fairly normal for our extended family, so no big suprises there!

I’ve had a hankering (isn’t that a wierd word?) to watch Pride and Prejudice, I guess probably ever since I bought Bride and Prejudice – luckily a friend is letting my borrow the A&E version (the only GOOD version!) so I will hopefully to able to calm my Mr. Darcy craving in a little while – hehehe! And I’m starting to change my opinion on how bad the new version of P&P will be, the one coming out in Sept with Keira Knightley – I watched the trailer for it and it looks like it might be decent, although without Colin Firth, I don’t know… we’ll have to wait and see how it looks…
I’m off to get back to work – this is our last week with the summer students, so we’ve got a lot of stuff to wrap up before they leave!

Well, Alexa and Daniel are the proud parents of a little baby girl, and I hope I’ve got the name right – Aria Vally – she came at around 4:30pm yesterday (on her due date!) and weighed in at just under 7 pounds I believe – I’m sure she’s gorgeous, can’t wait to visit and see her for myself! Alexa is fine and actually called me 3 hours after she was born – they went home last night, so hopefully they’re getting all settled in as a little family of 3! Thea and I will hopefully be taking a trip to Durham to see everyone very soon…

That’s the big news – no big plans for this weekend yet But a restful time of reading, writing and movies will probably be in order!

Alexa went into labor this morning, so for all I know, little baby Carter may well be with his parents right now! Otherwise, I’m still praying for a speedy and (relatively) painless delivery for Alexa and for peace for her and Daniel as they start this very wonderful and yet scary part of their lives as first-time parents!!! There’s no way this baby won’t be the cutest thing around, and it wil get tons of love from all involved family and friends – can’t wait to go for a visit sometime very soon! And I can’t believe it’s coming on the due date – after all the stress of waiting and worrying, it’s right on time! haha

In other news, my parents are on their way to WI as we speak (or write…) – they’re going up for a few days for my cousin’s wedding on Sat I think – it will be stressful, with all the extended family around, but should be fun for them too – aside from the 18-hour one-way drive! And my sis-in-law is coming back home (near Fayetteville) after spending a part of the summer away at ECU working their summer theater program – I know Matthew will be glad to have her back full-time!

I will keep you posted on baby Carter news as I receive it!

This is cute – from a friend’s sister’s blog – love silly quizes!

Aladdin

Who’s Your Ideal Disney Guy?
brought to you by quizilla

The first book of the Chronicles of Narnia, better known as ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ – I’m re-reading them in anticipation of the movie being released this December of the first book – they’re much easier to read than I remember, but then, the last time I read most of them, I was about 8 or 9 – loved them then, still love them – but I’ll have to wait to get started on the next one, since my HARRY POTTER #6 just came in the mail from the nice people at Amazon.com – I’m going to try to go through it slowly, since the next one won’t come out for sooooo long, but who knows – I might finish it this weekend…

Along the lines of the Chronicles of Narnia though – I love the part towards the end when the kids are talking about Aslan (Christ in the analogy) and someone, I think one of the Beavers, says, ‘He’s not a tame Lion’ – and they talk a little more about how kind and gentle, and yet powerful and strong, He is – it’s such a great picture of Christ as the meek servant, but also the King of Kings – fabulous!

Better run finish up my lab work or I won’t even get to start Harry – hehehe!

Well, I don’t have all that much to say, but I’ve got more lyrics for you – I gave my dad Derek Webb’s CD ‘She must and shall go free’ for Father’s day, and I think (and hope!) he liked it – and it got me listening to it again, so I’m posting the words for Beloved – the melody (again) is half of what I like about the song, but like most of his stuff, the words are quite profound – about our dependence on Christ alone, even surrounded by a world that does not see the importance of Him – you should really check the CD out!

In other news, oh, actually, there’s no other news really! Alexa is still pregnant (no baby Carter yet!), Bible study is going mostly as normal, and work is, well, work… except that I did get an email from my boss today on his way out of town for a week and a half, saying that I should start writing the Results and Material and Methods sections to go along with the data we’re putting in a paper – it’s a collaboration between our lab and the lab I visited in Buffalo last April – so I will most likely not be first author, which sucks, but they’ve done a lot of the biochemical analysis of the protein that we’re studying, so what am I supposed to do…? Anyway, it’s stressful and exciting and overwhelming and crazy all at the same time – plus I’m supposed to get permission from my committee members in the next few weeks about progressing on to my 4th year, so that’s giving me a bit of a tough time… so I guess more is going on than I thought!

Anyway, I will be in town this weekend, so I will hopefully be able to catch up on some of this stuff, plus get started maybe on writing – we’ll see…

Enjoy the song!

Beloved(words and music by derek webb)
beloved these are dangerous times
because you are weightless like a leaf from the vine
and the wind has blown you all over town
because there is nothing holding you to the ground
so now you would rather be a slave again
than free from the law

(chorus)
beloved listen to me
don’t believe all that you see
and don’t you ever let anyone tell you
that there’s anything that you need
but me

beloved these are perilous days
when your culture is so set in it’s ways
that you will listen to salesmen and thieves
preaching other than the truth you’ve received
because they are telling lies
for they cannot circumcise your hearts

beloved there is nothing more
no more blessings and no more rewards
than the treasure of my body and blood
given freely to all daughters and sons

Hope this works – just got this from a friend who took a little video clip while we were watching the fireworks at the country club in Winston – it’s so cool!

http://cogitations.typepad.com/P1010032.MOV

Enjoy!

So I love Kelly Clarkson – she’s fabulous and fun and I’ve been playing this song a lot, but the one thing I dislike is the fact that she used the letter ‘U’ in the title of this song, rather than saying ‘Since you’ve been gone’ – bad grammar – grrrrr!

Anyway, it’s been a little while – but there’s not much to report so I don’t want to bore the (very few) people that actually read this!
Dad is now back in the States, safe and sound (YEAH!), with lots of intersting stories and pics from Kenya – and yes, they would make you drool Dawn, he saw giraffes and lions and wildebeasts and everything! It looks like they got a lot of work done while he was there, and the guy that went with him say he made a real impression on the people there – of course, you won’t hear Dad say that, he’s too modest – but he does love a good project! Mom’s got him working on several already now that he’s back – she’s still looking for a job – so I think they’re both trying to keep busy…

We had our ‘relationship’ talk last week and overall, it sparked some good dialogue, not necessarily at the talk itself, but even afterwards, other conversations have been started because of it – so that’s good – basically, I think we’ve all concluded that relationships are super hard, whether or not they involve romance, and that without God being involved, people would drive themselves crazy with worrying, obsessing, etc… even with God being involved sometimes – sigh… I sometimes envy my brother and his adorable wife for getting married so early, but I know that old problems are just traded in for newer problems that come with being married, but at least they have each other to share the problems… hmmmm…

Also, I’ve been reading more on reformed theology – figure I should know more about what I claim to believe, both in being a Christian, but also as a member of a reformed church – so I’m starting with some of Dad’s books he lent me on Calvinism and the 5 solas of reformed belief – most of his books (from seminary mostly) are way too far above what I can understand in theological studies, but we found a few ‘easier’ ones to start with – I’m trying to balance my somewhat voracious fiction reading habit with some non-fiction – we’ll see how long that continues… especially since I’m also reading (or rather re-reading) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (#5) in prep for #6 coming out this weekend – I know, it’s a guilty pleasure – I would never recommend them for young children, but they’re fun and super easy reading, which is nice after days of reading science journals and protocols! hehehe… On a more grown-up note, I just finished the newest Elizabeth Peters novel, which is the latest installment in her series about a family of Egyptologists (excavators) in the 1920/30s – they’re really fun to read, and given the author’s background in Egyptology, I’m hoping they’re also somewhat historically correct – the newest one is called ‘The Serpent in (or on?) on the Crown’ – very good reading!

Sorry this is turning so long – but several of my closest friends are all about to undergo some serious changes themselve – Alexa’s baby is due in less than two weeks (ack!), Thea will be moving to NY (Cornell) in August, and Frances will be moving across the country to CA in a month and eventually getting married next summer – I’m going to miss them (Thea and Frances, since Alexa is still here, but will be getting quite busy, I’m sure!) – we’ve all stayed pretty close through several years (I’ve known most of them since I was about 10 and we moved from WI to Charlotte) – it will be hard to maintain that closeness over the distance, but I’m going to try REALLY hard, ok?!?! Love you girls!

I’m out – gotta wrap this up to leave my volunteer shift for the night – pretty quiet night here in the Ronald McDonald Family Room at the Children’s hospital – that’s good, but it makes it a bit lonely/depressing at night – good time for reading though!