Science (non) Fiction

Well, my adorable little Honda civic (picture is not mine, but it looks exactly like that) finally rolled over 99,999 miles a couple weeks ago – I guess it’s officially getting old now After my trip home for Easter, I’m now over 100,200 – I guess I need to take it in for a check-up? I’m fully anticipating keeping this car for several more years, and given Honda’s reputation for good long lives of their cars, I hope that won’t be too difficult

Oh, and here’s a picture of my odometer as it was getting ready to pass 99,999 (and yes, I did pull off the road to take this picture with my cell phone ):

1. I love the smell of coffee, but hate the taste (this applies to bacon too, actually)

2. I am addicted to Diet Dr. Pepper (though I do drink the caffeine-free kind more now)

3. I am obsessive about the music I listen to, I’ll listen to the same album over and over until I get tired of it (or annoy the heck out of my friends/coworkers )

4. I can get easily sucked in to cheesy reality tv (a la ‘Bridezillas’ or ‘America’s Next Top Model’)

5. I generally have a decent sense of direction, but there are places where I’ll always seem to get lost, no matter how many times I’ve been there (see: Greensboro)

6. I don’t like wine or beer, but I do like ‘girly’ drinks (but I generally prefer even them without alcohol…)

7. When watching tv/movie, I almost have to be doing something with my hands, or I get very distracted (crocheting, silly putty, etc)

8. I’d love to live in a big city sometime before I die, though I love small to mid-size towns

9. Grits are about the only ’southern’ food I’ve fully accepted (no sweet tea or biscuits/gravy please )

10. I collect nail polish, in all colors/varieties – I must have over 50 bottles in my ‘tub o’ polish’

My sweet brother got my a couple of the Indelible Grace CDs for my birthday, are they’re great – love the re-workings of old hymns with new melodies (which I’m not always a fan of) – plus a few of my favorite singers sing quite a t on the albums (Derek Webb, Sandra McCracken) and I now like Andrew Osenga because of this song (I’d never heard any of his stuff) – it’s quite poignant, and his voice is really clear, which makes a great combination!

When wounded sore, the stricken heart
Lies bleeding and unbound,
One only hand, a piercèd hand,
Can salve the sinner’s wound.

When sorrow swells the laden breast,
And tears of anguish flow,
One only heart, a broken heart,
Can feel the sinner’s woe.

Chorus
Lift up Thy bleeding hand, O Lord,
Unseal that cleansing tide;
We have no shelter from our sin
But in Thy wounded side.

When penitential grief has wept
O’er some foul dark spot,
One only stream, a stream of blood,
Can wash away the blot.

’Tis Jesus’ blood that washes white,
His hand that brings relief,
His heart that’s touched with all our joys,
And feels for all our grief.

I attended the wedding of a classmate this weekend in Durham (1.5 hour drive) – and I haven’t been to a wedding in a while actually… It was quite beautiful, outside, on a lakefront terrace, with the reception in a white tent a few feet away from the ceremony. And even though it had been raining earlier in the day, the sun actually came out right before the ceremony started, which actually made for a toasty time for the guests, even with the start at 5pm. Everyone looked beautiful, and the bride and groom looked so happy, and they did their own vows, which were really sweet (and the groom cried waaaaay more than the bride, ftr ). Our whole class attended (all 5 of us, plus one pregnant wife), and the bride’s labmates were all there, and as the bride had laughingly told us a couple months ago, we were about the only white people there. The reception was fun, I even got (dragged) up to dance, and the toasts were really sweet. And yummy food
Here are a couple pics from the wedding (courtesy of classmate Patrick, after my camera’s batteries were discovered to be dead )

So I was thinking when I was titling my last post… I almost always have a song playing in my head. I’m not just talking, ‘oh I’ve got that stupid song stuck in my head!’, it’s more like a running soundtrack playing in the background – sometime the same song over and over (especially after I’ve been listening to something obsessively), sometimes whatever song was playing when my radio alarm went off in the morning, and frequently in the lab, for some unknown reason, I jump to ‘Killing me softly’ (I love the song, but I don’t understand why it comes up so often ). Now I’ve been told that singing ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ can get any song unstuck from your head, but since the only words I know are ‘the girls from ipanema’, well, that’s not much help… plus, unless the song is really irritating, I don’t really mind the soundtrack of my life – it’d be kinda quiet without it I think

(I’ve been listening to Queen obsessively lately, hence the post title – it really has nothing to do with anything)

Every once in a while, I get a glimpse of the end of the line, the big finish, the grand finale of grad school known as graduation or hooding or thesis defense or getting the heck out of here… today I was talking with my boss at our regularly scheduled weekly meeting and as we were wrapping things up, he casually mentioned that I should, when I have a moment (:lol:), outline my second paper (now that the first one is solidly in the works), what I want to include, what experiments I need to do to show what I want to show, etc… oy! While you’re only really required to have one paper to graduate (a first authorship that is), its much more acceptable to the department (and your boss!) if you have several, or at least some in the works by the time you graduate. Now this brings me no closer to graduating in reality (as its just outlining what I NEED to show for a paper), but its really the first time Dan and I have ever broached the subject (even broadly) of my finishing my PhD work. And this on the day that the first year student who I mentored while she rotated through our lab came and talked to Dan today about her potential projects now that she’s officially chosen our lab for her thesis work! How crazy that I was in that exact same position, scared out of my mind about talking to Dan, just 3 years ago! Some days I feel like I’m right back there at the beginning, that I’ve barely progressed at all, that I’m still making messes everywhere and not understanding anything… and then someone will ask me something, and I’ll think, ‘I actually know the answer to that!’… and then I know that I’m getting closer, that I’m certainly not there yet, but I’m definitely getting closer…

He is risen indeed!

Alleluia!

I went to our Mauny Thursday service last night at Redeemer before heading home to Charlotte for Easter weekend – it was a really good, poignant service of ‘lessons and carols’, basically scripture readings alternated with songs/hymns. It was a tenebrae service, meaning that as the service progressed, the sanctuary was gradually darkened, and we then left in complete silence after saying the Apostles’ Creed (I guess to be able to leave with some type of hope, as the end of the service leaves you with Christ dead in the tomb). It was really well done, though I’m more used to Maundy Thursday services being about the Passover meal/Last Supper, and then Good Friday services being just about the crucifixation and burial, but I think Redeemer isn’t having a Good Friday service, so this was both rolled into one. We did have communion though, and it was kind of cool to do it then, at the point in the story where Christ and the disciples would have been breaking the bread and drinking the wine.

Hunter (pastor) talked about the cup especially when we did communion – it was amazing and I hadn’t really thought about things like this before – he said that Christ took our cup, the cup of sin and pain and distance from the Father, and he gave us his cup, the cup of peace and blessing and union with the Father, and that’s part of what we celebrate and remember when we eat communion. It was quite a revelation for me, right there in the middle of the service.

We sang some really great songs, including this one (O Sacred Head now Wounded) – it was right before the last reading and the bolded part was what really stood out to me, after the cup discussion – and reading the section in Isaiah 53:3-5 prophesying His punishment for our sins brought it all home.

O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown;
How pale Thou art with anguish, with sore abuse and scorn!
How does that visage languish, which once was bright as morn!

What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered, was all for sinners’ gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior! ’Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favor, vouchsafe to me Thy grace.

What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.

Isaiah 53:3-5

3 He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

I’ve been feeling very domestic lately – who knows why… I was reading Martha Stewart Living while working out in the fitness center this week (yes, I know, but they didn’t have anything else that I hadn’t already read earlier), and they had ‘ligher’ version of comfort foods as a special section, and I got a major hankering for macaroni and cheese – so I made the version from the magazine this night, and it was awesome, if I do say so myself! I can’t recall ever having made macaroni and cheese before – and it made tons, so I’ve had homemade lunch and some dinners for the whole week! And now tonight, I made a chocolate cake from scratch, with homemade chocolate frosting, for a housewarming party tomorrow – and though it’s a bit overcooked (hate my oven ), I think it’ll still be tasty enough – I also can’t remember the last time I made a cake from scratch – that’s kinda sad from someone who used to love to cook and bake… good news is, it wasn’t really all that much harder to make this one than it was to make the last cake I made from a mix, so maybe it’ll happen more often

In other news, the paper is almost ready – we finally got the updated version from our collaborators, and have made all the changes/additions we need to (I think) – it was a long day Friday with Dan coming to me every few minutes with something else that needed to be added, or that I’d forgotten about – and I’m soooooooo glad that this headaches is almost over! And, when I talked to Dan earlier, he asked about how I felt about authorship of the paper, which had been something I’ve been worrying about – and when I said that I felt like, given the representation of the data in the paper, that even though it pains me, Laurie (grad student up north) should be first author – but then he said, given how much of our work was necessary to get the rest of the figures (ie, we made the mutants and strains used throughout the paper), that we had more work, that the figures weren’t really representative of the amount of work – so I sai, well, ideally, if we could both be listed as co-authors (noted as ‘these authors contributed equally to this work’), that would be best – and he agreed (and said it’s what he wanted to suggest)! Yay! So I feel a lot better about it now, since most of my usable data is going into this paper – and I was worried I wouldn’t get enough credit out of it… so yay!

I’ve been thinking lately about my life, and how different it sometimes seems from those of the people around me – not because I think of it as something special, but just, different… anyway, if you know me at all, you know I love, love, love musicals – and I was thinking what my life would be like as a musical. Would there be songs in the lab like ‘Ode to science’ and ‘Love me, I’m infected’? Would people break out into song while shopping, complete with choreographed dances (a la West Side Story)? And would church services turn into rowdy revival-type scenes with the pastor doing that ‘talk-sing’ thing guys frequently do in musicals (‘we’ve surely got trouble)? Who would provide the comic relief? and where is the romantic interest?!?!
These thoughts were brought back into my mind yesterday while attending a high school production of ‘The Wiz’ with my friend Becky (why do I keep doing this to myself – high school productions are almost always SCARY!!!) – when we were driving down to the show (30 minutes away), we discussed the possibility of doing a musical this summer with our Bible study group – hehehe… we ran through the possibilities – we don’t have a whole lot of people in the group who can a) sing and b) sing in front of people, so we’re kinda limited in which musicals to choose from – and then there’s the content to consider (as I’m not doing the ‘Fantine’s fall into prostitution’ scene from Les Mis with my church group ) – so we really didn’t come up with any that we could theoretically do (as this is all mostly in theory anyway). However, this morning I woke up and thought, ‘What about Into the Woods?’ Great story (weaving together multiple fairy tales with the main players all becoming involved with each other), awesome music (Sondheim, baby!), and a large cast with the majority of the songs/dialogue spread out pretty evenly among the players – perfect! So look for that, coming in the summer of 2006, the YAF players in Into the Woods!