ABCs

OK, so I've been seeing this float around a bit, and I can't resist doing it.  Mostly because I have nothing else to write about but thesis-writing, and that's boring!  Here we go:


A. Age: 27…I’m still getting used to that!

B. Bed size: Queen, currently – when I move in with Brendan, we’ll have a king to share with the three kitties!

C. Chore you hate:  Cleaning the bathroom.  I definitely go too long between cleaning times…considering the rest of my house is usually clean, it’s surprising how gross my bathroom can get!

D. Dogs: I definitely want one, when we can handle it – but I love our three kitties a lot!

E. Essential start to your day: Breakfast, for sure.  I didn’t love breakfast food growing up, but now I can’t imagine not eating breakfast right when I wake up!

F. Favorite color: Probably red?  I dunno anymore – I like a lot of bright colors right now.

G. Gold or silver: Silver, most of the time.

H. Height: 5’6” – on a good day

I. Instruments you play: I was an avid recorder player back in the day (I know, I know, I’m a huge dork), and I played french horn in middle school.  I really wanted to be a drummer instead!

J. Job title: Lab slave.  Almost Ph.D. finisher.  Soon to be lab slave again – but with a slightly better position?

(yep, that's me)

K. Kids: None yet – some time in the future I want one or two, but we’re not going to be there any time soon.

L. Live: I’ve lived in four places in my life thus far – Minnesota, Boston, D.C., and Philly.  Going back to Boston!  (cue Augustana song here)

M. Mom’s name: Janise

N. Nicknames: When I was little, my hair had this awesome sticking-up thing going on.  It was the 80s, and my parents thought I looked like a punk rocker – hence the name “Punk.”  I’ve mostly grown out of it, but occasionally they still call me that – I don’t even notice, but my friends are always confused!

O. Overnight hospital stays: Only when I had my tonsils out when I was four.

P. Pet peeve: When people just don’t care.  I’m a bit OCD about everything – I just can’t relate to people who are so laid back they manage to not care about something important.

Q. Quote from a movie: As much as I do watch movies, I don’t remember most of them – so no favorite quotes!

R. Right or left handed: Right.

S. Siblings: None – I’m an only child.

T. Time you wake up:  Usually between 6 and 8 – depends on the day and how hard I worked the day before.

U. Underwear: is necessary.

V. Vegetables you dislike: Brussels sprouts.  I’ve tried to like them, but have only enjoyed them once!

W. What makes you run late: Reading too many blogs, and insisting on making a full breakfast every day.

X. X-Rays you’ve had: Ankle, when I twisted it when I was 8 or so.  A zillion x-rays of my left foot, when I broke it in 2007.

Y. Yummy food you make:  The stuff that’s unique(-ish) to me?  English muffins, coleslaw (my Mom’s recipe), really yummy burgers and meatloaf.  For dessert – chocolate chip cake from scratch, peanut butter brownies, and margarita bars.

Z. Zoo- favorite animal: Golden lion tamarin monkeys are the cutest.  I love giraffes and tapirs because they’re funny-looking, though!

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And there we have it - hope you enjoyed :)

Valentines Day in Pictures (and Words)

Brendan and I had a wonderful weekend - I have been crazy busy since January 1 even though we've gotten to have a few weekends together, and it was nice to have him visit me for a change.  It was really a very nice weekend, even with the little snafu we had on Saturday night (more in a sec).  Here is our Valentines Day weekend in pictures:

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After sticking around for a little lab work (boo for having to bring Brendan back to lab when he got in early!), we headed over to City Tap House for dinner.  It was a nice, laid-back meal, and we got to sample a few different beers by having their custom flight.  We were going to go to the movies Friday night, but it got a bit late when I had to go back to lab to finish up an experiment at 9pm.  Instead, we ate homemade chocolate cheesecake and watched King of Kong on Netflix instead.  It was actually quite interesting!

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Saturday morning, we went for lunch at a sushi place, then went on our own little chocolate tour of Philadelphia.  Instead of spending $90 for the two of us to go on a touristy tour, I got some ideas from the internet and we went on a little walking/chocolate-tasting tour.  The highlights:  Brown Betty Petite, Teuscher Chocolates, Marcie Blaine Artisanal Chocolates, and 4th Street Cookie Company.  My favorites were the sweet potato cupcake at Brown Betty and the truffles at Teuscher Chocolates (which should be perfection, at $3 a piece!).

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The big night out for Valentine's was dinner at Moshulu, which is a restaurant inside a restored historic grain-running boat.  The restaurant was beautiful inside, and it was very neat that we were on a boat - which mostly made up for the lack of particularly beautiful scenery out the window (concrete walkway, anyone?).  The best part was really the food - some of the best seafood I've ever tasted.  It's too bad we didn't take any pictures while we were all dressed up, but we had a lot of fun!

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There is a dearth of good movies out there, but we did both agree on wanting to see Black Swan.  It was a total mind trip - and a pretty decent movie.  I'm sure it will give me bad dreams for days!

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.....And here is where our evening takes a bit of a turn.  When we got out of the movie, we walked back to where the car was parked......and found no car.  There was a bit of scrambling and walking around a bit to make sure we hadn't forgotten where we parked, but we hadn't.  A call to 911 later, and we found out the car had been towed.  Turns out what we thought was a legit parking spot was actually a no-stopping zone.  Brendan handled everything like a champ and kept me calm - and the whole thing wasn't too terrible.  I hate Philly Parking Authority, though!  We refused to let them ruin our night, though, and enjoyed a bit of SNL and eggnog ice cream when we got home.

Sunday was stay-in day, and we had yummy heart-shaped red velvet pancakes for breakfast. We did go out to get heart-shaped pretzels, but other than that we had fun watching TV and making shrimp scampi for dinner.

All in all, a wonderful weekend.....even with the little adventure thrown in!

Mimu enjoys the Super Bowl

We enjoyed cocktail meatballs (actually, I used Mom's secret recipe, but it's pretty similar), BBQ chicken pie, chili cheese dip, and peanut butter M&M cookies.  We enjoyed the commercials and had some cuddle time on the couch, since I haven't been around lately.  We didn't really watch the game, so much......but we're happy the Packers won, since I can't stand the Steelers!  Even if it means rooting for the Packers while wearing my Vikings shirt.

And now it's time to work on figures until I fall asleep.  Oh, the joys of science.

Work work work

Oh Starbucks, how I love thee.

Not only can I get yummy oatmeal AND coffee in one place - this place also has magical powers to bring words out of my brain that were all jumbled up just moments before.  I have been very productive this morning!

I have definitely found that writing a paper is a much simpler task the second (or third?  Does my review count?) time around.  I'm sure that editing will be just as painful, but the starting point is a bit less......jumbled.  The only thing, though, is that I still have absolutely no ability to command myself to write - I just have to sit for a while, let things swirl around in my brain, and wait for them to all come streaming out at once.  Is that normal for people writing scientific papers?  I thought that was more of a creative writing thing....

Also, I'd like to thank my English teachers from grade school and college for making this whole thing a little easier.  If I didn't have a command of the English language to start with, I wouldn't be able to write coherently while drinking WAY too much coffee......or wine.....or while half-asleep in bed first thing in the morning.  Somehow, those times are the best for writing, for me.

Today is going to be a busy day - I've gotta get back to work!  Hope you all have a more restful weekend than I am going to :)

Crunch Time

This month will be a bit insane.

Although my thesis defense isn't until the end of April, and the official thesis isn't due until then, I need to get a draft to my PI by March 7 or so, so that he can take a look at it before my committee, who apparently (according to the department) need it 6 weeks early to look at it before the external reviewer.  This series of totally artificial deadlines, accompanied by the refusal of my data to look good at any point before January, means that I need to finish up a bunch of experiments, write (and hopefully submit) a paper, and put together my thesis in the next 4 1/2 weeks.

Yesterday, I spent the hours of 7-8am running, 8-10:30am writing my paper, and 10:30am-10pm at lab.  I spent a majority of that time with a giant bag of blood.  The rest of the time was spent doing 4 other day-long experiments simultaneously.  And stressing about how I haven't written nearly enough of my thesis.  And today I'll basically do all of that all over again - except instead of running, I'm spending the morning writing in bed.  Somehow being in bed makes the whole thing easier to handle :)

So what do I do when faced with an unfathomable amount of work?  I stop fathoming......and just keep working until I hopefully come out the other end of this month with a paper and a thesis.

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Confession

It's snowing here in Philadelphia, and I'd like to tell you that I'm huddled inside, working away at my thesis or some such thing.  But instead, I'm doing what I do every Tuesday night: baking cookies while watching The Biggest Loser. 

And randomly picking up weights during the parts where the trainers yell at the contestants, and doing some strength training because the trainers are scary.

Yep, while the cookies are baking.  Let's just say I'm a bit of a contradiction.

Mimu does it with me, too.  Well, except for the weights part.

On New Year's Resolutions

In my previous post, I talked about my goals for 2011.  It's going to be a big year - full of changes, mostly exciting ones - and I really want to set myself up for as happy a year as possible.  And because of this, I wanted to make my "resolutions" as simple as possible.

Now, you may think that sounds silly - shouldn't I want to make as many goals as possible so that I can achieve a lot this year?  But really, it's the opposite.  There is nothing wrong with New Year's resolutions - they are a good way to take stock of where you are at regular intervals, and think about where you'd like to be and how to get there.  But so many people fail at resolutions each year (think about all the gym memberships wasted by February!) because they set too many goals, don't think about a plan of action, and basically get overwhelmed and give up.  It's the same reason crash diets don't work in the long run - trying to overhaul your life overnight is not sustainable.

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I don't need crazy resolutions to make this year an exciting one - a year full of job and life changes, friends' weddings, families moving together, etc. should be very exciting all by itself.  The reason I set some goals for 2011 is to be able to make the most of this year.  In most of the stages of my life thus far, I've breezed past the things I should be enjoying - this time I want to slow down and cherish the exciting new things coming my way.  That's why most of my resolutions focus on enjoying things (like the move or defending my thesis), putting my energy into what I'm doing (like a new postdoc this summer and the beginning of Brendan's and my life as a live-in couple), and remaining calm when things don't go exactly as planned.

On that front, I have been doing really well with the remaining-calm thing so far!  I had a few incidents that required my extreme patience, and even required my mantras, but I stuck with this whole calm outlook and have felt much better for it.  I also want to recommit myself to doing yoga at least once a week - since I can go for free at Lululemon and have four more classes left on my pass for a hot yoga place, that should be simple enough, and it definitely helps me stay calm and introspective.

The only two goals I made this year that aren't just a savor-the-moment sort of thing are to get financially stable and to lose a bit of weight.  I can't work on the financial thing very much just yet, but I'm trying to be mindful of my spending so that I can save a bit more than I currently do.  But where I think I'm going to make some strides this spring is my fitness.

I have a few new fitness toys in my arsenal this year that I'm really excited about!  In addition to the TRX that I'm hoping to try out in the spring (I know there's a bit of a backup, but I think it should still be before my move!), I have some new shoes and a new piece of equipment:

Vibram Five Fingers KSO
Of course, by now everyone has a pair of these, so I'm just jumping on the bandwagon - but it's a good bandwagon to be on!  I got these from Brendan's parents, and I absolutely love them.  They are a bit weird at first, and they're going to take some breaking in, but I really enjoy running in them.  I wore them on a warm-up run/walk on the treadmill so far, and they felt light, streamlined, and comfortable.  I wouldn't recommend anyone wearing them for >1 mile of running or walking at first - I did a very slow run/walk for a mile, and my shins hurt for a few days.  I will be wearing these more and more as the snow/dirt combination that's on Philly's roads clears up.  Having new shoes and a new thing to learn about running should keep things exciting this year!

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Schwinn Magnetic Bike Trainer

So, a few years ago I bought a bike.  I had grand visions of biking outside, and getting in better shape from biking as well as running.  Unfortunately, the bike I bought was from Target, and it's just too heavy to be fast.  Without being able to improve on it, biking along the river trail and trying to avoid hundreds of pedestrians and runners is just torturous.  I'm pretty sure that it won't get any better when I move, either, because of the hills around Brendan's house - he and I may go on a leisurely ride every once in a while, but I probably won't be training for the Tour de France any time soon.

Enter the magnetic bike trainer.  This little thing holds the bike upright with the back tire on rollers, so that my bike can basically serve as a stationary bike.  That means that I can catch up on my shows while I'm working out - which certainly means that on days I don't feel like going down to the gym, I have no excuse to get in a few minutes of exercise!  I ordered one of these yesterday using trade-in credit from books at Amazon, along with an Amazon gift card and a check from Christmas.  I went with the Schwinn over the Bell because it's foldable and has three resistance settings.  Now, even though I got free Prime shipping (thank you for loving students, Amazon!), I still need to wait until the end of the month to use it, because I already brought the bike up to Brendan's and need to get it back.  Only a few more weeks, though - I can't wait!!


I think this year is going to be great, and even though I'm totally swamped with work right now, I'm really looking forward to the exciting changes ahead.  Hopefully my resolutions for 2011 will help me stay balanced and enjoy all the good things the year has to offer.  And hopefully with the help of my new fitness toys, I will end the year a bit lighter than I began it!

Coming soon: The last New Year's post, I promise - my food goals for the year!