Science (non) Fiction

I’m borrowing this from Sarah - hope she doesn’t mind

1. Egg nog or hot chocolate?

Hot chocolate definitely - I’ve never liked egg nog, I think it’s the idea of it that grosses me out more than anything. I’ve been liking my hot chocolate with peppermint lately - yum!

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?

Well, they get wrapped (unless it was something really big, then it was usually left out in the garage covered by a blanket - hehe) - our family still does a ‘Santa’ present, but it’s only been nominally Santa since my brother and I were pretty little - Santa’s never been a big part of our Christmas (I’m pretty sure I’ve heard my mom say that there was no way she was letting Santa get the credit for the best gift, so the ‘better’ gifts always came from my parents )

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?

I like white personally, but we’ve always had colored ones at home (on the tree, that is). I’m a fan of the big, retro colored ones for outside, cause I think they’re cute, but even outside, I like how much the white ones remind me of snow and frost.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?

nope - not one of our traditions - I did go to a party last year with some up, and it was funny watching people keep an eye on who was where in relation to the mistletoe

5. When do you put your decorations up?

Me personally, I put them up whenever I feel like it - my family has always done it around the start of Advent I think - sometime between Thanksgiving and Advent I guess.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish?

We don’t really have a big tradition for Christmas food, except that it’s often a replica of our Thanksgiving meal (we’ve done wierd stuff in the past for Christmas, like going to the beach for a week) - I remember a year when we had salmon for Christmas I think. Anyway, I really like the cornbread stuffing Dad and I have been making the last several years - I could give up the turkey and the pies and just have stuffing and be totally happy.

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child?

Probably the Christmases we spent with my dad’s parents before they died - we used to go there for most of the holiday (with a little time spent at my mom’s parents) - I used to brush Grandma’s hair and all the kids played in the basement and drank 7Up and tried to pretend we knew how to play pool on the pool table.
More recently, I love the Moravian love feasts we’ve been going to (probably since we moved to NC when I was 10) - you get to sing all the best Christmas carols, and drink hot chocolate and light candles - it’s awesome!

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?

I don’t really remember - Santa wasn’t huge in my family, so it was probably pretty early…

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?

Yup - we usually open one on Little Christmas Eve (night before Christmas Eve), one on Christmas Eve, and then the rest (usually only one or two more) on Christmas. I fight this every year, cause I’d rather save them and open them all on Christmas, but I get over-ruled every year Mom always liked to spread out the holiday stuff, so there wasn’t so much chaos and emphasis put on the glut of gifts on that day. We also did stocking on St. Nicholas Day in early December, so that spread out the gift-giving even farther.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree?

Dad puts the lights on first (which usually takes a while, even if he puts them all away carefully the year before), and then we all have at it, putting on our favorite/personal ornaments. For me, I have a small, pre-lit tree and some small ornaments for it, but I don’t really have any traditions for decorating it.

11. Snow! Love it or dread it?

Love, love, love it! Not such a big fan of the ice, but I love the snow! It’s the damn Yankee part of me coming out

12. Can you ice skate?

Sure - again, the northern part of me takes over! I grew up skating, often on very rough outdoor rinks, but it always takes a little while to get back into the swing of it.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?

hmmm. I don’t know - I know that my Grandma and Grandpa used to get me stuff for my American Girl doll, and those were the best Christmases - lately, mom will usually ask what I want, or when we’re out shopping, if I see something, she’ll buy it and tell me to forget about it - hehe.

14. What’s the most important thing about the holidays for you?

Time with family (either nuclear or extended), and remembering the importance of the incarnation of Christ - For Unto Us a Child is Born!

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert?

I like pumpkin pie ok, but I really like the Christmas cookies we make (well, except the yucky spritz cookies we used to make, not a fan of those) - peanut blossoms (’kiss cookies’), ribbon cookies, sugar roll-outs, etc.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?

I love traditions, but my family is not always so big on them - we usually do the Moravian Love Feast and I love that. Baking the cookies is always fun, and so is decorating the tree, but a lot of things have changed since Matthew and I are grown up…

17. What tops your tree?

A very old angel - we’ve had her on the top for as long as I can remember Christmases I think (though I feel like Mom may have bought a new one a year or two ago…). We used to fight over who got lifted up to put the Angel on top.

18. Which do you prefer, giving or receiving?

Giving - I love spending time finding the EXACT right gift for someone, and then watching them enjoy opening it (assuming they do enjoy it!). Of course, I love getting gifts, but it’s not quite as much fun.

19. What is your favorite Christmas song?

I’m with Sarah, I can’t really pick just one - Messiah (see entry below), In the bleak midwinter, I wonder as I wander, tons of cheesy 80s CCM music that I grew up associating with Christmas.

20. Candy canes! Yuck or yum?

Yum - not my favorite holiday candy, but I like them - and they come in so many flavors now! I like them on trees too.

I’m performing in the chorus of Handel’s magnificent oratorio Messiah this weekend (Dec 3rd at 3pm in Reynolds Auditorium, for those interested). The community group that sponsors didn’t perform it last year, but I’ve done it every other year I’ve been in Winston Salem since I started graduate school. And moreso this year than any of the years previously (mostly cause I haven’t been doing any choral singing for over a year now), I’m so grateful for this chance to sing a masterpiece with other people who love Messiah as much as I do, with really great soloists and instrumentalists who do the work justice in performance.

We’ve had our rehearsals this week with the guest conductor who’s come in from NYC (he’s the choral conductor for the NYC Opera), and it’s amazing how much physical work actually goes into singing something like this. I was exhausted after a 2.5 hour rehearsal last night, and in pretty much the same place tonight after another one. But there are times in the middle of rehearsal where you can catch these glimpses of the genius of Handel, things that no matter how many times you’ve sung it will suddenly catch you by surprise; the power of a lyric you hear in a different way, or the clarity of an ascending line from the sopranos that brings a deep emotional response.

And every year, I’m amazed at the poignancy of his description of Christ’s birth, and the vitriole and anguish expressed in the Passion section, and the joy found in the Resurrection. Handel’s choruses describing the trial and death of Jesus are full of text-painting, with chorusmembers representing at one point the angry mob calling for Christ’s crucifixion (’He trusted in God, let Him deliver Him’), and at another the whips during His beatings (’The chastisment of our peace was upon Him’). Our guest conductor this year describes Messiah as more opera than oratorio and I think I agree with him - singing it, you feel like you’re living in the middle of ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’, not just standing by watching it.

And it’s a good reminder as I kick off the busy holiday season, that beyond the ‘Jesus is the reason for the season’ platitudes, there is this: that Christ’s arrival on eath as a baby, while miraculous and glorious on its own, fits in the much larger scheme of God’s plan for redemption, and that His birth would mean little to us without his subsequent death on the cross. And that, friends, is what Messiah means to me.

I know I’ve been slack about posting lately, but things have been crazy busy leading up to Thanksgiving, trying to get things done in the lab and at home to take a few days off this week. And that was wonderfully successful, as I’ve been home since Tuesday night, which meant I got to spend a few hours with Dad at the OCC Processing Center that night before all the massive Thanksgiving prep yesterday. We fed about 75 people today for Thanksgiving dinner, all youth group kids down from PA or up from FL who are here giving up their Thanksgiving breaks to work at OCC processing shoeboxes this week. We had at our disposal 5 turkeys, 40 pounds of mashed potatoes (yes, we made them ALL!), 4 different kinds of stuffing, 2 green bean cassaroles, 4 corn puddings and various other assorted holiday foods. It was CRAZY! And let me tell you, even though those kids tucked in and ate a ton of food, we still have soooo much leftover. Yessssss.

Anyway, just wanted to say happy Thanksgiving to all of you - hope your holiday was filled with lots of good food, family, friends and fun, as mine was. I’m looking forward to recovering a bit tomorrow, but we’ll still be at the processing center at least part of the day tomorrow and some again on Saturday. It’s amazing to see how God can bring people together to get His message spread throughout the world with these little shoeboxes going to needy children everywhere.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Alexa and Daniel’s little girl Aria getting her groove thing on! Soooo cute!

So things are finally starting to turn around for me in lab - I’ve been having mucho trouble with one experiment especially, and it was giving me fits trying to get it to work. I finally backed WAY up and tried something really simple, and it gave me the answers I needed to actually do the experiment! yessss. So again, I go back to my admonition that graduate school is much less about innate intelligence, and WAY more about persistence. And I also was finally successful in getting another tough experiment to work, this one more about just doing it enough times that success was inevitable.

Other good things in my life currently:

Messiah rehearsals started this past Sunday afternoon, and our second rehearsal is tonight - it looks (and sounds) like it’s going to be an awesome year - we’ve got a big group, and even the sopranos are doing really well More on this coming later as I process the enormity of performing such an incredible piece of music, especially given the message of the music.

Beach trip this weekend! My Bible study group is going to Ocean Isle this weekend, to the same house we rented last year - if it’s anything like last year, it should be a really good time of hanging out with friends and getting to know some of the ‘newer’ people, plus it’s supposed to be in the 70s all weekend

New Gilmore Girls AND House MD epsisodes tonight!!!!! Honestly, they’re the two shows I’m most excited about each week in general, even if I’ll only be able to tape them and have to watch them sometime later…

Oh, and I voted today - with, I think, the entire population of Winston over the age of 65, which made my voting time much longer than necessary, but still worth it - apparently, I need to move to a younger, hipper area of town so I can vote with people my age (and speed) - hehe.

I promise there will eventually be more stimulating and though-provoking posts coming at some time in the future, but for now, I’m just playing catch-up on my life

My lab celebrated Halloween this past week, in true Woz lab fashion (well, I actually don’t know if you could call it fashion or not… hehe). Our theme this year was ‘Alice in Wonderland’ (past years have included ‘Peter Pan’, a softball team, and our best theme, ‘Wizard of Woz’), and I got talked into being Alice. We had a lot of fun as usual, going out to lunch on that day and getting a LOT of strange looks and laughs from the people in the restaurant. My costume was too big and not the most comfortable thing in the world, but it was fun as a group event. Evidence of this hilarious event (and yes, we are a bunch of dorks ):

(and the boss wasn’t in town, so we put a picture of his face on a stuffed mouse, so he could be the Doormouse - hehe)

Oh, and we had a halloween party a couple weeks ago, with a ’superhero’ theme - I was Jean Grey (XMen), though I pretty much just dressed in black and made an X necklace - but we had three XMen at the party, so we got this picture of the three of us (Wolverine, Jean Grey and Cyclops):

We had a spectacular bonfire a week or so ago up at our bible study leader’s house - roasted hot dogs, made s’mores and sang some worship songs - it was a really fun time to hang out with friends - chilly, but fun!

My little brother’s birthday is this week (Wednesday), and I think it might make me feel a bit older to have him turning 25 than it did when I turned 26 this year Go here and wish him happy birthday!

OK, I think that’s about it - we got the proofs for the paper last last week, and it was really surreal to see the pages the way they’ll look in the journal in the next couple months - Dan thinks it’ll be published in the December edition, but it’s already online as an ePub ahead of publication here

yay!