Science (non) Fiction

This post is dedicated to all things girly, so you are now forewarned!

I’m babysitting this weekend (for the first time since, maybe, high school? a crazy long time anyway) - Wendi and Rich are getting married, and I’m going to be watching their pastor’s daughter (who is 4 years old) for the rehearsal dinner (I think) and all the wedding festivities on Saturday. I’m actually really excited, and I think it’s largely due to the fact that 4 year old girls are so much fun! I was going through some of my stuff last night to find anything I might want to bring, and I found at least 4 or 5 movies that I own (this is out of my whopping 20ish movie collection) that would have been appealing to me as a 4 year old (I’ve got Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, Anastasia, The Little Mermaid, plus Alice in Wonderland from a friend in preparation for our lab halloween theme). And I think I’m going to find some coloring books and other fun stuff for us to do, since we’ll be together for quite a while, and it’s not at a house where there are kids, so I don’t know how much fun stuff there will be for us to do So I’m all set for girly-girl fun! (let’s hope she’s ok with that - otherwise we’ll have to think of some other less-girly stuff to do)

I also thought I’d post a recipe I used this week (that fits under girly, right?) - I love baked spaghetti, but I’m never sure about how to get it right, so the pasta isn’t mushy or crunchy - this recipe is SUPER easy, but very tasty - I made a bit one to take over to a friend, but I used the leftover to make a tiny one for me to try, and it was yummy. Thanks to Heather for the recipe!

1 can diced tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce (we like Clasico Organic)
1 diced onion
1 diced green bell pepper
2 cloves garlic, chopped (or 1 tbsp minced garlic)
1 tsp Italian seasoning (or use Basil and Oregano)
1 tsp seasoning salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp sugar
1 lb ground beef
1 box spaghetti noodles
1 cup grated cheddar
1 cup grated Monterey Jack

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Meanwhile, in a stockpot, combine the tomatoes, tomato sauce, onions, peppers, garlic, and sugar. Bring to a boil, and then reduce the heat and let simmer, covered (the longer the better, but at least 10 minutes).

Meanwhile, brown the ground beef in a large skillet. Drain the meat, and add to the stockpot. Simmer at least 10 more minutes.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to the package directions.

Once the pasta is ready, cover the bottom of a 13 by 9 by 2-inch pan with sauce. Add a layer of pasta and then a little less than 1/2 of each cheese; repeat the layers, ending with the sauce. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes. Top the casserole with the remaining cheese, return it to the oven, and continue to cook until the cheese is melted and bubbly, about 5 more minutes.

Oh, and no word yet on the missing keys - apparently the furniture got all moved around as some of it was being moved out of the house, and still no one has seen the keys, so I’m planning on calling the dealership today to see about how expensive a replacement clicky thing is - one week of opening my doors with just the key is enough to convince me of the value of keyless entry

Furthering my love for all things Jim and Pam-related (from NBC’s awesome show, ‘The Office’), a friend pointed out this site, where awesome Office-related desktop displays can be found. If you’re a fan of the show (or even if you’re not!), you should check it out - this is what is currently on my desktop:

I stopped in at Becky’s last night to say hi to people on my way back from being in Charlotte for the weekend - ended up staying entirely too late, and when I went to look for my key, I couldn’t find it. Now normally, this isn’t a huge deal, cause there’s only a small numbers of places my keys can usually hide, as I have tons of keys, membership cards and pepperspray all on my keychain. But since I had the car in the shop this week, I’d separated the car key and clicker from the rest of my keys and hadn’t put them back together. So I walked into Becky’s house with just the car key and my (new) cell phone, and now the key is missing! We searched the entire downstairs for about 30 minutes (under the sofa, under the cushions, in the trash, everywhere) before finally giving up and Becky drove me to the lab, where I had to sneak into the hospital (no badge, cause everything, including my purse, was in the car) and use the spare key to get into the lab, where my only spare car key is located. Luckily, I found it, and could get back into my car and get the rest of my keys to get into my apartment. So I have to head over to Becky’s at some point and see if I can find my real set of keys someplace where we didn’t look before… I’m kinda hoping somebody who left before me took them without realizing it and will promptly call me to return them…

So add this to the list of ways graduate school is continuing to make me crazier than I was before I started (I think I already told you about losing my car again a couple weeks ago - seriously, I almost had to call security, cause I had no idea which level I was even parked on). There’s apparently a physical limit to how much information I can retain in my brain, and every time I push some more microbiology in there, some other important ‘life skills’ stuff falls out the other side - I don’t know how I’m going to be able to function as a PhD.

Borrowing (and modifying) Kari’s post format slightly, I present:

The Good

I’m home for the weekend, and thanks to great friends, I get to stay home the whole weekend, rather than rushing back late tonight to be at early service church for nursery duty (though I do miss my babies when I’m gone). But it’s nice to be at home and not feel the pressure to get back so early. We did a walk for the Parkinson’s Association this morning as a family, and got to have spur-of-the-moment lunch with a good friend in downtown Charlotte at Dish (right across the street from The Penguin for those of you who care, infamous .net meeting place before the OtR concert in May - and Matthew and I tried to get Mom to go for the fried pickles, but no dice ).
I also got a new cell phone - my calling plan was up, and although I actually renewed it in May, I used my discount to get a new Razr phone, which is quite different than my tiny little silver Samsung, but still nice - very thin, and I really like the Bluetooth ability, though I’m not used to the little earpiece (mine’s pink ).
And I just got back from seeing my brother on stage for the first time in a while - he was a pirate in ‘Peter Pan’ (the musical), but he also designed the lighting and helped out with a bunch of other stuff - good to see him back doing something he’s so freaking good at!
My knee is doing much better - after a slight relapse at the beginning of this week, it’s feeling pretty good now, I’m hoping I can get on a bike sometime soon, especially now that the weather is finally fall-like.
Oh, and after the let-down of last year, the Mozart Club of Winston Salem will be presenting Handel’s masterpiece ‘Messiah’ on Sunday December 3rd at 3pm in Reynolds Auditorium - rehearsals start on Nov. 5th, and I can’t wait!!!!

The Bad

My car started making this horrible noise Sunday morning on the way to church, and when I took it in Monday at lunch, it turns out my brakes needed work. Long story short, my car was in the shop almost two whole days, which I’d not counted on. Apparently my ‘relying on God and the people He provides’ lesson from the summer hadn’t sunk in yet, cause God definitely made sure I heard it again. Between several different friends and several different trips to the shop, I finally got my car back. So I guess this could go in the ‘good’ category, but, hey, I’m out quite a bit of money, so I’ll put it where I want! (all four sets of brakes had to be replaced)

The Strange

I saw a woman sitting in the parking lot of a shopping center this week. Now this would not be quite so odd, except that she was sitting in a lawn chair, next to her Buick sedan. And she was facing the interstate, which runs right next to this parking lot, several hundred feet across from where she was sitting. And she was just a tiny little older lady, not an engineering grad student counting cars or anything (which was my first thought, Daniel, after our conversation at dinner last week) - wierd, right?

So clearly, the good outweighs the bad or strange in my life right now - our halloween party last night was a blast (even if I did have to leave early to drive to Charlotte) - hopefully I can get some pics from people who actually took pictures and post them later on. Now I just have to figure out what to do about an Alice in Wonderland costume for lab dress-up…

One of my favorite moments from season four of Gilmore Girls:

Luke is in his apartment, listening to a self-help tape on ‘finding love’ or something.

Tape narrator: ‘Whose phone calls or visits are never unwanted or too long? Do you see her face? Who would you most like to have in your life to ward off moments of lonliness? Do you see her face? When you travel, who would make your travels more enjoyable? Do you see her face? When you’re in pain, who would you most like to comfort you? Do you see her face? When something wonderful happens in your life, a promotion at work, or a successful refinancing, who do you want to share the news with? Do you see her face? Whose face appears to you, my friend, whose face?’

Closing in on Luke, who has developed a startled look as the tape has gone on. There’s a significant pause, and then he just says, ‘Whoa’. It’s a fabulous picture of his sudden realization that Lorelei is the right person for him to be with, for all the right little reasons. Love. it.

I spent the night in Durham this past week with Alexa and Daniel (and baby Aria), so I wouldn’t have to leave Winston so incredibly early to get to the branch meeting in Raleigh the next day. I’ve known Alexa since I was about 11 or 12, and we were involved in a lot of the same activities growing up, including starting a girls ensemble in high school. I was a bridesmaid in their wedding 3 years ago, and they’ve been in the Raleigh area ever since. Their first child, Aria, was born last summer, and let me tell you, she is adorable! I forgot my camera when I stayed with them this week (I’m such a bad pseudo-aunt), but here is a recent picture from Daniel:

She so funny, and she’s starting to use actual words (she can say cat, and Dada, and cup, and several others). And when she wants to go on a walk outside, she tries to get you to put her shoes on, so she’ll turn around right in front of you and plop down in your lap with her shoes so you can put them on her Oh, and Alexa said she’s not aware that much about what’s on TV, but when they turn on ‘The Office’, she dances around the whole time the theme song is on - how cute is that?!?! And shows good taste too

HT to Charles

OK, so a lot has been going on lately, which is why this has been so woefully un-updated in recent weeks. After my crazy whirlwind summer, including all health crises that have been mostly resolved, I though moving into the fall would slow things down a bit - ha! (though, in other news, did I mention that I splashed a half-liter of boiling water all down my front-side a couple weeks ago in lab? cause I did - apparently I’m becoming accident-prone in my old age - so maybe I can’t blame my knee injury on Peter and the dancing completely :lol:)

However, things are moving forward finally - and, in the biggest news of the past few months, my first first-author paper was accepted last week into a very well-respected peer-reviewed science journal, and it will be published hopefully around the end of the year!!!! The feeling of relief was almost like a physical sensation of something being lifted off my shoulders, especially given how long this thing has felt to be dragging on and on. I’ve already started working on what will hopefully be formed into the basis for my next paper, which needs to be a lot more self-directed, so you could pray about that if you’d like - that I will take the initiative to try things, to suggest things before asking for advice, to brainstorm hypotheses before talking with my boss. That’s kinda the main thrust of a PhD program (becoming an independent researcher), but it’s a kinda slow lesson for me to be learning apparently.

And I’m having to start thinking about what’s really going to happen when I finish my thesis, cause when people ask when I’ll finish, and I say ‘hopefully sometime next year’, well, that’s coming up really fast! And while I feel like I’m ready to be finished with school, I also don’t know that I really feel ready to face the ‘real world’ (I know, I know, suck it up). I’m trying to figure out what my options are for getting some teaching experience while still in school (prayer for that would also be appreciated), or if I need to just wait til I graduate and then stick around and teach for a semester or two before I apply for a full-time teaching position somewhere. And the somewhere is kind of a sticking point as well - I’ve thought about going back to the mountains, or staying around the triad, or maybe heading over towards the triangle (I just spent several days there over the past few weeks, and other than the traffic, it’s really quite nice over there). I don’t know… but I’m going to have to be making some of those decisions soon, and it’s a bit overwhelming…

So there - that’s what’s swimming around in my head right now. We’re working through some really good stuff on prayer in Bible study, maybe I’ll sort through some of that here next time.

Nights cool enough to snuggle under a warm comforter to keep warm.

Discovering that your favorite pizza place now carries your favorite soda (Diet Dr. Pepper baby!).

Getting a compliment on a day when everything else is crappy.

Catching up with old friends after a long time.

Rediscovering your fall/winter wardrobe and being excited to wear things again.

I’ve been kinda slack about updating, but things have been a little bit busy lately - trying to catch up from all the time I missed in lab over the last couple months, catching up with what’s been going on in everybody’s lives while I was gone.

I spent the first part of this past weekend at home, celebrating mom’s birthday - her birthday was actually last weekend, but we did the big celebration this Saturday. Dad invited several friends over, and Matthew and I were both there - good food, nice to catch up with family friends. And Matthew and I gave Mom her birthday present. She and Matthew really wanted to see Spamalot when it comes through Charlotte in December, and we talked about doing it as a family, but Dad and I weren’t all that excited about it (I mean, I want to see it, but I don’t want that to be all of Christmas, you know?). So Matthew bought his tickets and we split Mom’s ticket, but we didn’t actually have the physical tickets, so I had to come up with a way to give them as a gift. So I bought 3 cans of Spam, wrapped them individually in tissue paper and printed out color copies of poster and ticket pictures of the show and put them in the bottom of a gift bag with the Spam on top. So she unwrapped the Spam first and was trying to figure things out - we had to cheer her on with coming up that it was ‘A LOT’ of Spam and then she stood up and shouted ‘SPAMALOT’! It was great! I had to leave early to head back to Winston so I could get to church the next morning.

Sunday was a fabulous, day-long music festival in Cary - we left after church and arrived just in time to see Caedmon’s Call start their set, which was awesome (and my first time seeing them in concert). There was so much going on, music on the main stage, smaller tent area for individual performers. We tried a Turkish/Mediterranean restuarant for lunch (after a lot of driving around looking for places that were familiar ), and then went back to hear Jason Harrod, Andrew Osenga, Over the Rhine (they did ‘I don’t wanna waste your time’ again!!!!!!), and Pierce Pettis (there were others, those were just the ones I was most excited about). It was HOT for the first several hours (around 80 in full sun), but then cooled down really well for the evening shows. We ended up leaving after a couple Indigo Girls songs (as we weren’t all that excited about them), and had a couple hours drive back. It was a great day with lots of good music and hanging out with friends - and it was a fundraiser for a non-profit that is helping to fight AIDS in Africa, so it was all for a good cause.

And now I’m back to a normal routine. We’re going to the fair on Wednesday (Bible study group), and I’ll be going to my first Wake Forest footbal game (I know, gasp!) this weekend against Clemson - GO DEACS!!!