Science (non) Fiction

I’ll post a more thorough story of my past almost two weeks of traveling (which has been mostly, well let’s just say, less than fun), but I just wanted to let you know that I’m still alive

~ Frances and Jonathan are married! The wedding was lovely (HOT - San Francisco at 100+ heat with no A/C = unhappy wedding party), they took a short mini-honeymoon til they take their real one in the fall (Europe!). I’ll link to pictures once I get some (I didn’t take any, due mostly to the aforementioned ‘less than fun-ness’ of the trip) - I’m glad I was there to see them get married.

~ I HATE United Airlines! Every time I’ve flown with them in the past year, they’ve lost and/or damaged my luggage on at least one leg of my trip with them This time, I booked through USAirways, but they put me on United for my flight to/from MT, and what happened when I arrived Sunday night in Bozeman? That’s right, no luggage waiting for me Not only that, but the power had gone out at the (tiny) airport, so it took almost an hour to get anyone to report my missing bags to - grrrrr. They did finally bring my bags to the motel, but it was almost midnight and I was not happy. Poo on United!

~ I LOVE American Airlines - really nice people, you get a whole can of soda/juice when they serve beverages (and they recycle the cans - knew you’d appreciate that, Dawn), and they’ve been WAY better than United about customer service, which came in handy today since I missed my connection in Dallas due to my first flight from CA being about 25 minutes late - so I’m waiting in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport for a while, but at least it’s only a couple hours.

~ I have not seen large parts of the United States - I realized as I was flying over especially the southwest, that I haven’t really seen much of that part of the country, and I’d like to at some point. And why are some fields planted in a circle pattern? I swear, looking down from the airplane, it was like looking down at crop circles or something - very wierd.

More fully updated story coming soon - maybe once I recover a bit…

Whoohoo! Love the wireless internet at Charlotte Douglas Int’l Airport! I’ve got to leave for my gate in a minute, but maybe I’ll be able to check in once I get to Dallas/Fort Worth, since my layover there is about 2 hours. Being here reminds me that traveling during the week is much different than on the weekends - I’m surrounded by business people (mostly men) in the ‘corporate area’ (where the wireless is), instead of mostly families and vacationing couples. And the fun piano guy that was here on my last trip (to Orlando) is not playing today

I’m off!

I’m heading out from the Charlotte airport tomorrow, flying through Dallas/Fort Worth and ending up in San Francisco, CA. I’ll be there just in time for the wedding festivities to begin apparently, starting with ice skating, dinner and potentially bowling with the bridesmaids (my kind of ‘bachelorette party’ ) on Thursday. Manicures and pedicures with the girls on Friday, following by the rehearsal/dinner. Then hair appointments (after which I will hopefully not resemble the ‘Steel Magnolias’ character I looked like after the last wedding I had my hair done for :lol:) Saturday morning, before or after a wedding breakfast (have they always done these?), culminating in the wedding mass Saturday afternoon, following by a reception elsewhere (can’t remember where - hope someone is driving me…). I’ve been so blessed in the relationships of my closest friends - that is, I love all the guys my girlfriends have ended up with - and that makes the weddings so much easier, knowing that I can go into the wedding (and often participate as part of the wedding party) in full support of their relationship. And this wedding is no exception to that. (It was also be my first big Catholic wedding, which I’m very excited about!)

All of that to say that as of tomorrow I will be here:

To see these two wonderful people commit their lives to one another:

In this lovely church:

After all of that wedding craziness, I’ll be here for a week-long conference at Montana State University on bacterial biofilms (I’m psyched about it!):

I’m rooming with two other girls from the department here at this lovely establishment (which is walking distance from the university, or so I’m told):

The motel does have internet access, so I should be able to check in periodically - I thought we’d have time to go see Yellowstone National Park or something, but it looks like our time is pretty well taken up with conference stuff Hopefully I’ll be able to see something, like the Grand Tetons (which always makes me think of ‘That 70s Show’ and Kelso saying one of the girls had on a tube top and it was like ‘the Grand Tetons… in a tube top’ :lol:)

Maybe I’ll check in from the airports tomorrow - so no scary flying messages again from any of you engineers out there, ok?

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: I don’t like taking risks. At all. Not in terms of theme parks, or job choices, or relationships. I don’t like fast cars, or roller coasters, or doing anything where the outcome is uncertain. I like knowing what I can and can’t do, and how fast I can go. I’m ok with rules, I like them actually (well, most of the time). I’m happy in a world of black and white, where absolutes are the rule and not the exception. But that’s not the world we live in - our world is colored not only by black and white, but also many shades of gray in between.

And I’m not sure how I turned out this way - there was no childhood trauma where I took a huge risk and it had some horrible effect on my life (I don’t think so anyway, unless I’ve repressed it). I grew up in a very supportive home, where I was challenged to do my best, both academically and personally. But I’ve been very anti-risk taking for a while now, and I’m not sure if I should want to grow out of this phase, or how to go about doing it. I mean, I do think it has kept me from some bad stuff, like broken hearts and broken limbs. But how many more things have I given up by not taking those risks, by keeping my heart or body ‘extra safe’, but not letting someone in. So I quote here C. S. Lewis as I wrestle with this, his quote specifically talking about risks and love:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

that I’m losing my mind:

I’ve lost my car in the parking lot at work twice this week already - that’s right, 50% of the days worked this week have involved me hunting (often on several levels of the deck) for my car, dragging my gym bad and laptop along for the ride. This has given ride to several wierd looks from people walking to their cars, and much grumbling frustration on my part - what am I SO absentminded about this average, everyday stuff right now? (I did finally re-paint my fingernails, so now my thumbnail is not left out ) I think I need to start taking that stuff, what is it, gingko biloba? but what are the odds that I’ll remember to take it every day, do you think?

~ I think I’m going to Wet ‘n Wild Emerald Pointe in Greensboro this Friday - with the lab - so it counts as a workday! Yay for grad school and yay for short weeks

~ I’m seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest tonight (so no spoilers til then, please) - I’m very excited, despite the mixed reviews I’ve heard - if it’s good, I might drag my brother along to see it next week when I’m home (prepare yourself Macks!)

~ This is what graduate school is doing to me: I left the house this morning without my cell phone - and it was only once I got into the car that I realized I’d also left my right thumbnail unpainted (from painting my nails last night while watching Gilmore Girls - hehe) - luckily it’s a light pink/cream color, so I don’t think it’s too noticable, but still… eventually I’ll only be able to think about the physiological relevance of an in vitro model, and my brain will have no more room left to think about stuff like ‘did you make sure you painted ALL your nails?’ or ‘do your shoes match?’ - this is the real reason scientists are labelled ‘mad’.

~ I love getting good deals on shopping (about the only thing I always like about shopping) - I bought two pairs of shoes last week for $8 each (both of them are pink, but they’re very different, and very versatile for pink shoes ), and I found the shoes I’ll wear in Frances’s wedding next weekend for $14 (simple cream cross-over low-heel sandals) - score! I would hate to not be a girl - hehehe.

I’m bored volunteering tonight (at the Ronald McDonald Family Room at Baptist Hospital), so I’m making another list

21. When I get the hiccups, I’m almost guaranteed to get them at least 5 times that day - I’ve also woken up with the hiccups. And it takes drinking a heck of a lot of water all at one time to get rid of them (and no, scaring me DOES NOT HELP!).

22. Cell phone ringtones bug the heck out of me - especially when people won’t turn them off/down at appropriate times/places.

23. I screen phone calls like crazy - so if you can’t get a hold of me, it’s not just you, don’t worry if I don’t think I’ll have the time to devote to a full conversation, sometimes I’ll just wait to call you back…

24. I have days where just the sound of one of my coworker’s voices is enough to put me over the edge.

25. I have managed to keep my car clean and tidy for more than two weeks (after having someone else do a big interior cleaning) big success for me!

26. I know I shouldn’t, but I have favorite kids in the nursery at church - I can’t help it, some of them are sweeter than others, even at 1 year old!

27. I am a Gilmore Girls addict now (thanks Kari!) - season 4 is my current favorite (if only for the ‘Festival of Living Art’ episode… and one where both the girls break down… and the one where the great-grandmother dies… what can I say? I’m addicted )

28. I tend to be able to choose better for other people than I do for myself (clothes, furniture, etc).

29. I hate confrontation.

30. I get a lot more done before noon than I do in a comparable amount of time in the afternoon - which is odd, cause I’m not really a morning person in other respects.

Have you ever woken up from a dream absolutely convinced that what just happened in dreamland actually occured in real life? I have to say, I rarely remember my dreams (except the really, really bad/scary ones - those stick with me :shiver:), and for the most part I’m fine with that. But last night I had one of those amazing dreams, just real enough (but still fantasy) to make me feel like it was really happening. I’m fuzzy on the details, but it definitely involved dating a guy (who may or may not have been Colin Firth at times, and a guy I had a crush on at other times), and dinner out with friends (and said ‘morphing Colin guy’), and a pet bird (yeah, I don’t know what that means - anyone know some symbolism behind the bird?). Colin definitely thought I would love the bird - we were in his car at this point - and we definitely had this wierd tangent conversation about how his car used to be one color but suddenly it was silver, and he explained that they were like snap-on parts, so it was really easy to change colors (what the?) And you know how in dreams things that would seem catagorically strange in real life seem like no big deal? Yeah, that’s how the bird thing felt…

Plus, I woke up from this dream about 2 hours before I had to get up for church this morning, and I tried SO hard to get back into the dream, thinking about it, making up what would happen next, trying to find my way back to that surreal place I’d kill to be in in real life. Why is it that the bad dreams chase after me and won’t let me go, but the good ones are ever so elusive?

(and the Colin Firth thing may or may not be explained by either watching ‘Circle of Friends’ this weekend (in which he was a slimy bastard ) or from talking about him on the .net - who knows? :lol:)

I’ve done plenty of stupid things in the lab during my process of learning how to run things, where things are, etc… but it’s usually because I’ve never done whatever experiment before, or I’m trying to change things around to work something new in. This week, however, my big mistake had to do with simple math and remembering things I should be able to easily remember (which is a more embarassing kind of mistake to make, let’s face it). I was doing a Western blot, which is a process of separating proteins on a gel and then applying antibodies that bind to the one protein I want to find. Anyway, when I was applying the primary antibody (there’s a primary antibody that recognizes the protein, and then a secondary antibody that recognizes the primary antibody), I didn’t really think (apparently) and did a 1:10,000 dilution, which is a fairly typical way of doing them. However, what I failed to add into my calculations was that my primary antibody was already diluted 1:100, so I essentially did a 1:1,000,000 dilution. Which resulted in an essentially empty blot at the end of the day, and a very pissed-off me, not understanding what I’d done wrong yet. Fast forward to this morning, in the shower (which is where I have all my important revelations :lol:), I was thinking what I had to do when I got into work, and I all of a sudden realized what had happened and had a huge ‘d’uh’ moment. So I rectified the situation for today’s blot and, tada, it worked!!! Maybe not giving me the exact answer I was really looking for, but enough to know it worked and I can adjust from here

Also, in other work-related news, I got my semester-review from my boss, and while he’s still wanting me to take more ownership of my project (which is something I struggle with, and he’s aware of that), he’s been very pleased with my progress over the past few months, and says he’s seen an improvement in the things he mentioned to me last time - so yay! So I had a good review, and good results - great way to end the week and a good kick-off to a relaxing weekend!

So my marathon weekend is behind me, and even with as much of an introvert as I am, I was sad it’s over. Much fun was had, hanging out with friends, making new ones, taking horribly goofy pictures which I later regret… you know, the usual weekend with friends

Saturday started with some early time in the lab before heading to Charlotte for a quick shopping trip (I’m all set for the wedding now, Frances!), lunch at a German restaurant with my brother (assorted German sausages as appetizers, hehe), and picking up Adriene at the airport (our first time meeting) to take her back to Kari’s house for girls night in with BBQ and homemade hushpuppies (yay for southern deep-frying :lol:). We also wore lots of tacky, I mean, fun ‘flair‘ from Jamie’s care packages, drank maragaritas, lit sparklers, and watched the scary down-the-street neighbors fire up professional-level fireworks - good times.

Sunday was early after Saturday’s late night, but Sunday school was awesome (Ben is an amazing teacher - we’re working through Revelation and looking at patterns/symbolism of Christ’s return). Home to finish making my pasta salad and then headed back to Kari’s for Birthday/4th of July cookout - good food, good people (got to meet Scott, as he and Mike were at a baseball game the night before, hence girls night in), lots of laughs, and two very cute twin girls to keep us all entertained! Sunday again ended with fruity drinks (this time pina coladas, maragaritas and strawberry daquiris) and s’mores over Kari and Mike’s new fire pit

Monday was again more work in the morning/early afternoon (darn grad school), before preparing for KELLY CLARKSON - we picked up several people on our way to the concert, stopped at Target (for concert SNACKS) and Chick-fil-a and then finally got to the concert and found a great plot of grass - we had an excellent view and even though the opening band sucked (anyone ever heard of Rooney?), the concert was awesome! (Kari, Adriene, Scott, Dawn and Alisa all have/will soon have pictures of the whole weekend up) Lots of glowstick jewelry (courtesy of Jamie again :lol:), jumping up and down and crazy top-of-our-voices singing/screaming, like the crazed Kelly fans that we all are (well, except Adriene).

It was a late night driving back, and a very early morning the next day to take Adriene back to the airport in Charlotte, but it was a fun time to hang out with just the girls for a while and chat - I did come back home and take a quick nap and finish up some stuff in the lab before heading back to Greensboro for a baseball game (which we lost ) - and because of the freaky bad weather, they didn’t do the fireworks til late, so we left and I just caught some on the drive back to Winston (well, I think they were fireworks, they could have been lightning, given the storms I was driving through!).

A fabulous weekend, celebrating friends and freedom and fun times (how’s that for alliteration?) - even without big fireworks!