Science (non) Fiction

So I’ve got lots of good news that had accumulated over the past several weeks/months that I should share:

My good friends Alexa and Daniel are having baby number 2 this summer (she’s due within a week of her previous due date plus two years). She’s over the worst of the ‘morning sickness’ I think, and probably starting to show (I need to get over there to see for myself!). I’m so happy that Aria will have a little brother or sister soon!

A wonderful couple at my church, Ellie and Vern, have adopted a beautiful little baby girl, Annie-Catherine. She’s just over 2 weeks old and adorably precious and tiny and perfect. Ellie and Vern are just glowing they’re so happy, and I couldn’t be more thrilled for them! I’ve got to get in line to make them a meal or help out soon - gotta keep my membership vow

And most recently, our very own Adriene and Jeff have announced that they are expecting TWINS!!! I’m so insanely happy for them both, and praying for the healthiest possible pregnancy and babies. Such an incredible blessing from God!

There are others too - one of my cousins is expecting her second, and there are several families I know at church who are due any day or later on this year. So I offer my congratulations to you all, and my assurances that I will be praying for you and your growing families, that you will be surrounded by a loving community to help you raise them to love the Lord. Congratulations!

My brother came up last night to see The Secret Garden at Greensboro College, so I met him there and he came back and stayed with me last night. The show was really quite good, and I liked the music, even though I’d never heard most of the show before. It makes a lot of changes in the story (from what I remember of reading the book, which I need to go back and re-read now), but they’re usually for the sake of spreading out the story among the cast, it seemed. I seem to recall the book being largely about Mary and how she changed over the course of tending to the garden and helping with Coin’s recovery, whereas the musical made a much bigger deal about Archibald Craven’s loss of his wife Lily, and all the backstory on Mary’s family’s time in India was told in dream-like sequences that were quite well-done. I’ll have to keep Greensboro College in mind when thinking about arts events to try out in the future.

We slept in a little this morning (I had my big departmental seminar yesterday, so I felt justified in taking a little time off ) and went to the Celtic Cafe for lunch - very tasy Ireland-inspired meals, complete with soda bread. He’s now off to Raleigh to see another show (which some friends of his are performing in) and I’m back at work. It was fun to spend some time together, especially since he’ll be moving in the next several months, perhaps quite far away…

Speaking of my seminar, it went really well - I didn’t get nearly as worked up about this one as I have in the past, though I still did feel like throwing up right before Dan introduced me. I was presenting a lot of new data, which is awesome, but it also meant that I’d not presented it before and the first time is always a bit rough in spots, trying to communicate what I think is important without getting bogged down in all the details. But I think it well ok, and I got some interesting ideas to think about, plus the relief of that being my last departmental talk until I defend my thesis. Yikes.

Oh, and I’m over halfway through The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl - I’ll probably finish it this weekend. It was really slow going for the first 40-50 pages, but it really picked up and now I’m quite sucked in. I’ll save any further comments for once I finish the book.

(Sorry this post is so ADD, I feel like it’s jumping everywhere - it’s kinda all-encompassing for my life in the past week or so)

I finished Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go today and wrote briefly about it.. (I finished Speaking with the Angel and wrote about it there too, but didn’t have much to say) The book was amazingly enthralling, especially once I’d made it about 40-50 pages in - it was really, really hard to put down, mostly cause I really wanted to know what was really going on. The authour (who wrote Remains of the Day, which I’ve never read or seen the movie) was very good at keeping the suspense up, only letting us in on the barest details and keeping you always wanting more. I highly recommend it, but not for the faint of heart.

We’re back from Wintergreen - the conference was great, almost all the speakers were really good, and I learned a lot. Unfortunately, our lab manager broke her right wrist and left thumb while on the slopes during our free time snowboarding. So she spent a good bit of time at the ER, and was on some pain meds for most of our ride home (I drove us up and back). She’s had the surgery to put pins in her thumb, but I don’t know when she’ll be back to work, since she can’t even drive at this point, much less pipette anything. We’ll see…

Other random things about my life right now:

~ I got an awesome silicone cover for my cell phone - it’s pink

~ I’ve spent an hour on the elliptical machine at the YMCA the last three days - no soreness yet to report! Hope this will help get me ready for the run in Charleston.

~ My brother is talking about moving to Los Angeles - I hate that he’ll be on the other coast (HATE THIS PLAN, MACKS!), but I’m glad he’s getting an awesome fresh start hopefully breaking into doing what he loves for a living.

~ My seminar is next week - I could use some prayer.

~ I might get to see Steven Curtis Chapman in concert tomorrow night! Awesome!

Kari did this, and tagged anyone who hadn’t done it yet, so I’m giving it a try - listing 6 weird things about me:

1. I really, really like things to be even - not just pictures hanging on walls, but if something touches my left arm, I feel kinda ‘unbalanced’ until the same thing happens to my right arm. Similar things happen with certain walking patterns (even numbers of steps).

2. I am still scared of watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, from the first time I watched it when I was very young - there’s a scene with a scary man who locks the kids away in a basement room (I feel like he maybe has some candy to lure them in, but I can’t be sure). I refuse to watch it to this day. (Same goes for Pete’s Dragon - scary!).

3. Several people have had something similar to this on these lists, but here’s mine - I play along with music when I listen, as if I’m playing the piano along with the music. I used to do this a lot more than I do now (mostly cause I’m not playing piano now), and I periodically do something similar when I’m talking and I ‘type’ the words.

4. I prefer driving alone - not that I mind being in the car with people, but I love my ‘alone time’ in the car, listening to NPR or singing along to CDs. Unfortunately, I also have a tendency to get lost while alone, so having people in the car is sometimes a necessity

5. My knees and elbows hyperextend. I don’t think this is particularly weird, but everyone who sees it gets a little weirded out, so I figured I’d add it here.

6. There are some foods whose smells I like, but I don’t like the actual foods. Bacon and coffee both fall into this catagory - love the smells, but really don’t like the food/drink. I do like turkey bacon, but coffee is a no-go.

OK, anyone else who hasn’t gone this, go ahead and take off - comment here if you do!

I finished book #6 for the year this week - Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult. It was one of my favorites of her books so far, even if it is a difficult story at times, about a mother and young daughter and how their lives are turned upside down after a series of strange occurances lead them to believe that the daughter may be seeing and hearing directly from God. A very enjoyable and addictive story.

We’re off to Wintergreen VA this Sunday for the big conference - looking forward to it, especially now that I don’t have the stress of having to present, though that would have been interesting and a good chance to practice my talk. I’ve got the big seminar coming up in two weeks, and I’m so unprepared for it right now - I’ve got some new stuff to talk about, but I’m really unsure about how to fit it all in in a way that’s clear and convincing. Hopefully I’ll be able to focus after the conference is over and my Wed appt is in the past. Maybe I’ll even get a chance to hit the tubing slopes while we’re in VA.

This weekend I finished my 5th book of the year, Thirty-three Swoons by Martha Cooley. It was strange, but interesting - I found it hard to relate to the characters, but I found that was largely because I didn’t agree with some of their choices, not because they were unappealing or anything. But now I do want to find a book on the perfume industry (fiction or non-fiction) because that aspect of the novel was really intriguing. I started Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult last night, which is good so far - I think I’m going to try Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro next, cause reading the back of the book makes me very curious - I can take that one along on the trip to Wintergreen.

I’m having dinner tonight with my mom, who is up in Greensboro to see a client, so I’m driving over there before she heads back to Charlotte. And I’m meeting with some of the women at my church, cause I’m supposed to be helping plan the women’s ministry retreat/conference in March - I’m excited about being involved, but scared about a large time committment right now - we’ll see after tonight…

My friend Beth just started working part-time at this new place called Sociale, where you go in and can assemble entrees right there in their kitchen with help from their chefs, or you can just pick up stuff pre-assembled. I wanted to go to their opening Friday night when Beth started but was too tired (and no one to go with ) - hopefully I’ll be able to go sometime in the next few weeks when Beth is working again - you should check it out!

Things I’ve done this past week:

~ Went to a fabulous concert by Sandra McCracken (who opened for Scott Miller, who was quite entertaining), surrounded by friends.

~ Trekked up to the mountains of Virginia for a lab group retreat - lots of games, movies, reading, drinking and laughing. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any snow this year (it’s snowed the last two years we’ve had this retreat), but we still managed to have plenty of fun.

~ Breathed a biiiiiig sigh of relief.

~ Took a snow day at home, even though the roads turned out to be ok in the end.

~ Spent some quality time with my female classmates, hanging out and trading stories of crazy faculty and other students.

That’s pretty much how my week went - I’ve got a couple of superbowl parties to make an appearance at, and some work to do in the lab, plus getting ready for this year’s Midatlantic Microbial Pathogenesis Meeting which starts next Sunday in Wintergreen VA. I’m (thankfully, I think) not giving a talk after all (there were too many potential presenters from our dept), but I’ve spent the last couple days working on a poster, so we’ll see what critique Dan has when he looks at it over the weekend. I’m still working on Thirty-three Swoons which I’ll hopefully finish up this weekend, and then I’ve got another Jodi Picoult book that I’m looking forward to starting.
Have a great weekend everybody!