Science (non) Fiction

My maternal grandmother is in the hospital after open heart surgery to fix a partially blocked cardia artery and an occluded heart valve - she’s in the ICU for a couple days, then in the regular hospital for another week or so - she’s apparently doing fine, vital signs all good, but its still a little touchy, since she’s 83 (ish) and surgery at that age is never completely safe or predictable. So prayer for her health would be greatly appreciated - and that she would have plenty of support and care when she eventually leaves the hospital. Thanks!

That’s right, I’m re-reading Donald Miller’s Blue like jazz, mostly because I haven’t been able to get a hold of his new book yet (To own a dragon), so I’m reading BLJ to ‘take the edge off’ Anyway, as I’ve already stated on here a while ago, Donald Miller is fabulous - he expresses his thoughts about faith so realistically and honestly, that it can’t help but resonate with me. My favorite of his is Searching for God knows what, but I don’t have a copy of that anymore Well, I just read one of my fave parts of BLJ - he’s talking about relationships and dating and girls, and he talks about how a girl friend once gave him a copy of Pride and Prejudice with an inscription on the inside cover saying, ‘What is in this book is the heart of a woman.’ (which is, I think, overstating the importance of P&P, but not by much ). He then proceeds to say that he has never read it, since, in his words, “I am sure the heart of a woman is pure and lovely, but the first chapter of said heart is hopelessly boring. Nobody dies at all.” hehehe But this is what gets me - he keeps the book on his bookshelf so when girls come into the room, they see it and sigh, ‘you have P&P!’, he says, ‘yes, yes, I do’ - that cracks me up! Anyway, it’s one of the less serious parts of the book, but one of my favorite parts nonetheless… I like what he says about relationships, and about how the idea of being that honest with someone is what scares him about marriage/serious relationships - cause I can relate to that - real emotional intimacy is one of the scariest things to me about a marriage relationships, sharing stuff that I can keep covered up kinda well on my own, letting someone else see my ‘real life’, the way I am when no one else is looking - that’s the scary part of relationships for me. And that’s also part of the reason why building that kind of trust and honesty in other relationships (like in Bible study small group) seems so difficult but necessary for me in my life, as a way to ease into intimate relationships with people.

OK, so enough of Donald Miller - I had a chemical peel on Saturday at the spa downstairs from where mom works (and now as a result, my face looks like I’m molting - *shudder*), got to hang out with Matthew a bit over Fri/Sat (we worked out together - and he gave me some really good workout mixes!) and I’m now volunteering at the Family Room, where we finally have internet access, allowing me to update this in the copious downtime I have! Oh, and go check out Daniel’s blog (link at right) with new pictures of baby Aria!!!!!!!!

So I’m reading (actually listening to it on audiobook) Stephen Levitt’s book Freakonomics - he’s an economist who writes about questions that have interested him for a while, and they’re not typical ‘economist’ questions - he asks stuff like ‘what do sumo wrestlers and real estate agents have in common?’ and ‘do teachers cheat for their students?’ and ‘why did the crime rate drop so dramatically in the 1990s?’. Anyway, his answers are thought-provoking to say the least - some things are pretty clear-cut, like his example of school teachers in the Chicago public school system who were caught cheating on standardized tests to increase their student’s scores (and therefore any benefits/pay increases coming to them) - and he’s got a whole section on the KKK (including quite a bit of history of which I was not aware), and about how their methods of intimidation and terror have changed over the years (including a story about a guy who went under-cover with them for several years to learn more about their secrets) - and there’s a really interesting section on drug dealers who still live at home with their moms, about how the majority of people selling drugs on the street aren’t making enough to live on their own, much less get out of the poverty they’re in… but the amazing part is when he talks about the crime drop in the 90s, he links the drop in crime with the legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade (again, there’s some of this about which I was not completely aware), leading to much fewer births for women who are at the highest risk for raising children who will go on the become criminals (he says the education status, economic status and several other factors are the leading causes of children becoming criminals later in life) - so fewer births for those women means fewer criminals down the road, specificall children who would have ‘come of age’ in the 90s. This is fascinating to me (who knows why…) - and while I still think abortion is morally wrong, the concept is quite amazing, that legalizing abortion (and therefore making it available for those of lower-income/power rather than just those who could previously afford the illegal one - rich little girls) could have such a drastic effect on crime statistics. Now he does walk through the other causes of the crime rate decrease (gun control, better policing strategy/hiring, decreased drug market, etc) but he contends that the effect is still not fully explained without considering Roe v. Wade.
Anyway, you should check the book out - I’m thinking about getting a hard copy of it to look through so I can check out some of his references. I’m in the middle of a section on ‘what makes good parents?’ - also interesting, if slightly less controversial!
I’m heading home early today to see mom and dad and brother, but I’ll have to be back Sat night for some lab stuff and to be in church Sunday morning - better get things wrapped up so I can actually leave!

Well, that’s what I’m listening to on my iPod currently - its cycling through my songs in an apparently random manner… I love me some Meatloaf!

We’re off for a weekend retreat in the moutains of Southern VA this weekend - its actually just over the VA border, close to the Blue Ridge Parkway - we’ve got a ‘lodge’ (just a house I think) for about 13 of us from the labs that all study similar stuff in the department - I wasn’t really looking forward to it, but now I think it might be some good times! Plus we have a better chance of getting more snow up there than we do down here! (though Winston is supposed to get snow again tonight/tomorrow anyway…) - they almost got snowed in at the retreat last year (which I skipped cause I didn’t want to drive in the snow/ice) - hopefully that won’t happen this year, but I want to get enough to at least have a snowball fight or two! And I went to Sams last night with a friend who’s a member, and we got a ton of food for the weekend (10 lbs of pancake mix, anyone?!?!) - Sams has awesome produce right now, fyi…

My weekend plans with Matthew fell through last weekend - but I’m hoping he can either come up or I can get home next weekend - I miss everybody when I haven’t seen them in weeks!

Oh, and I ran 3 miles on Monday!!!! That’s the most I’ve done all at one time (well, except for a 30 second break to grab a drink of water) - but its still only half of the 10k, so I’ve got to keep going to get my endurance up… maybe I can get a little running in this weekend, assuming there’s any moderately flat ground around…

I’m finally through with my round of presentations!!!! My thesis committee meeting went decently well on Wednesday, and they’ve passed me on the next level, meaning that come August, I can progress to ‘fifth year’ status - whoa!!!!! How scary is that?!?! It’s so incredible that I’ve reached this point in my graduate school career - as a first year student struggling to make it through classes and choose a lab and learn technical basics and not make a fool of myself, I never really pictured myself this far along in school - it was too far out in the future to picture. Now that I’m here, it’s almost surreal, realizing that in another year or two, I could be finished with school and out in the ‘real world’ finding a job!

Now my work turns to getting some really impressive data in the next couple months, before I have to turn my focus to teaching a lecture at the end of March - which I’m a bit apprehensive about, but very excited at the same time! I mean, this is what I’m hoping to do for the rest of my career, so I’m hoping this will provide some really good experience and a chance to get better with teaching skills - plus a national conference at the end of May where I’ll present a poster of my recent work - a good place for networking and making contacts for future job searches!

All right, enough work/school related stuff - I’ve got a fun weekend planned - a girls afternoon tomorrow, then my brother is coming up to seen me Sat night and staying til Sunday sometime - yay! I haven’t really seen any of my family since the holidays, so it’ll be nice to catch up - we have a lot more fun together now that we’re both adults - I think we’re going to watch Rocky Horror Picture Show (the only time I’ve seen it before was with him too) and eat take-out and have fun! Good times! And I’m still not sure about what I’m doing for the superbowl - I’ve been invited to a couple parties, but we’ll have to see when Matthew has to leave and how dedicated I am to the game…