Science (non) Fiction

Praise the Lord – that I made it through my presentation, certainly, but even more importantly, my mom just called and said that the lymph node biopsy from my aunt Kelly’s surgery last week showed no sign of cancerous spread from the primary site into the lymph nodes!!!!!! Yay!!!!! She had the surgery on the 18th, and she’s been home several days, and now my dad is up there to help her and the family out while both she and her husband (my uncle Tim) recover (he had a blot clot in his lung and one in his leg a couple weeks ago) – how great is my dad? Especially considering that it’s my mom’s brother and so Dad’s only related by marriage! hehehe I think he’ll be up there til at least next weekend to keep them comfie, including cooking them some fabulous meals while he’s there (he’s a great cook!). In the meantime, Matthew is doing a lot of the cooking at home for Mom, and apparently that’s going really well too – he likes to experiment a lot, but everything he’s ever made while I’m home is excellent! I think the men in my family got more cooking genes than did the women…

So my presentation went well, I think I handled the questions at the end fairly well, and since some of the data was really new, people had some really good ideas about where to go from here, so that’s helpful, and will hopefully help prepare me from the kinds of things I’ll have to deal with in my committee meeting next Wednesday (why did I think it was a good idea to put my committee meeting the week after my seminar?!?!). My boss seemed pleased, and it’s started me thinking about some new avenues we’ve not pursued yet…

Tomorrow is the graduate student forum at the undergrad campus – I was planning on taking most of the day off after the stress of the last week or two, but it’s only two hours over lunch, and I’m actually looking forward to the topics I’ve been assigned (Post-doctoral fellowships and Teaching at a liberal arts college – whoohoo!) – plus I might be able to see my college roomie Heather while I’m over there, since she works in the library nextdoor!

So I’ve got lots to celebrate, and I’m going to go home and go for a quick run I think before it gets too dark – I’ve got to keep increasing my mileage or I’ll never be ready for Charleston in April!!!! (I’m currently at 2 miles without stopping (and that’s with a few hills!) – whoohoo!)

Well, not quite PANIC yet, but my presentation is in a day and a half, and I just spent an hour going over my presentation with my boss – and while he seemed pleased with the overall layout, there were a lot of changes that we discussed me making, so I’m a little worried about getting everything done and getting comfortable with talking through it… I’ve added a lot of new data, or at least, new concepts, so I’m hoping to spend most of tomorrow going through things and getting comfortable with the whole presentation.

But I’m going to be so glad when it’s over, and I’m going to allow myself a day to relax before starting to worry about my committee meeting next Wednesday – which unfortunately will be even more stressful than this week’s presentation – lots more questions, lots more debate over experimental design, etc…

So, basically, prayer would be appreciated in the next week – I’ll be sooooo glad when Feb 2nd rolls around!

There are two great lies that I’ve heard
The day you eat of the fruit of that tree you will not surely die
And that Jesus Christ was white, middle class, republican
And if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like him

So I’ve been listening to Derek Webb’s new album, Mockingbird – and while there is a lot of controversy surrounding this album, even among some of his most loyal fans, I really like most of this album! There are lots of very convicting songs (which is what Derek does best!), and in particular, the song quoted above ‘A King and a Kingdom’ is really great – not that I completely agree with all of the sentiments expressed, but I love that he’s pointing out that there are other options for being a thoughtful, intelligent Christian without necessarily subscribing to every Republican idea and living in the suburbs – now there are plenty of people living that life who are living wonderful examples of the Christian life, ministering to those in need around them. But pointing out that that doesn’t have to be the ‘only’ way to be a Christian is really important.

And this is from another song on the album, ‘Rich Young Ruler’:

Cuz what you do to the least of these
My brothers you have done it to me
Cuz I want the things you just can’t give me
I want the things you just can’t give me

Now the song talks about selling your SUV and your house and giving the money to the poor (following the Rich Young Ruler story in Mark), but I believe Derek is using these as examples of the things that our culture holds dear, and therefore what God requires us to give up in order to follow him – so not that I necessarily need to sell my car, etc… but that I’m going to have to give up what’s difficult for me to give up, which might not be my SUV (I don’t have one) or my house (also don’t have one), but it might mean me giving up some of my time to do something that might put me outside my comfort zone, etc… It’s only the things that are difficult to give up that will mean anything, as those are the things that we risk putting above God in our lives.

Anyway, you should check out the new album – it’s pretty good, but quite different musically from his previous albums.

Well, I’ve been absent for a while – not much to say, not much time to say it… but I’m going to try this year to post maybe less often, but with more interesting things to say – we’ll see how that goes…

I didn’t really make formal new years resolutions this year (I don’t normally anyway), but my major informal resolution is to get fitter, specifically in time for the Cooper River Bridge 10K run, where I plan on running/walking come April 1st (also my 26th birthday!) – I think Mom and Matthew are also planning on walking/running too This is also the beach weekend for YAF, originally so people could walk/run in the race, but lots of people go just for fun too (like I did last year!) – all in all, it should be a great birthday weekend for 2006!

I’m in the middle of a very stressful time in school – I’ve got a departmental seminar to give in a week and a half (for the whole dept, faculty, students, etc) and then my committee is meeting the following Wednesday (Feb 1st), so I’m massively freaking out (at least internally) about not having finished enough to be where I am right now – this is my classmates’ and my first time giving a full 50-60 min seminar (last year was only a half seminar), so I’m worried about having enough data to talk about for that long… plus my committee meetings are always stressful, but they’re a necessary part of progressing through grad school, and they’re supposed to be helpful in guiding the progress of my research, as well as giving advice about post-grad stuff, but mostly they just scare me! The positives are that I have most of the paper to tell my committee about, plus I mentored a first-year grad student in the fall whose work contributed to my project, so I hope my committee will understand how much time that all took away from actual research sometimes… we’ll see…

OK, that’s enough for now!