“Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday”

Hey everyone! How are things going?
Things are hectic and disorganized as usual but I find every moment amusing even those that are stressful. Such is the life of a college student taking 18 credits, and about to take 19 in her next semester. Thursday is my day to register and there is something satisfying about signing up for your last semester of undergraduate program. I think it’s the fact that the end is near and well earned that makes it feel so good. Here is my planned schedule:

Ecology with Lab (3cr)
General Microbiology with Lab (4cr)
Endocrinology (3cr)
Directed Research working with Arabidopsis thaliana and identifying possible suppressor genes (3cr)
Japanese Theater (3cr)
Samurai Slashers: A Look at Japanese Period Film (3cr)

The last two are for my Asian Languages and Literature minor. I thought that there would be something more exciting to take relating to Japanese but alas this semester sucks for classes. I’m sure I will do fine in those classes. I just have to make sure I check with my adviser to ensure that I GET my minor. Otherwise there will be a verrrrrry pissed azn.
I definitely expect to be unbelievably busy, stressed, and insane next semester. I mean… I’m taking 3 science courses, with directed research (in which I write a 10-14 page paper, of course in the format of a scientific article) and two extra cultural classes! I’m definitely insane. Definitely. My life rocks.

In other random news, there is apparently massive drama going on at my work at Lane Bryant. I was asked to hang out and listen to my coworkers after work on Sunday night and was even treated to some nachos by my friend Liz. We all generally complained about certain arrogant attitudes expressed by certain people and other screwed up things. I expressed my worries about the store being reduced in size this coming spring and who would be laid off. While we were discussing all this we had to listen to awful karaoke (apparently Canteena now has karaoke Sunday nights). AND we kept having these weird guys going by staring at us with a “wtf are you doing in here?” look on their faces. It was disturbing the girls and I just laughed. We also had a crappy waitress. It was awful. She took our order, messed it up, didn’t deliver the food and didn’t give us silverware. So here we were staring at our food without any utensils. Thank god nachos only requires hands, but the others couldn’t really use their hands nor wanted to. She had an attitude too; the epitome of awful customer service. We left a $1 tip per bill.

I just find genetics to be fascinating ♫♪~

Well it has been quite a while hasn’t it? Not a lot has happened but I feel like writing.
Things have been pretty hectic lately but things have started to calm down a bit. I find myself occupied every night with some kind of studying. This week and next are my calm weeks. Only a few tests & quizzes that shouldn’t be too much trouble.

So Halloween was great! I threw a party where Andre very graciously allowed me to have it over at his place. My parents would go crazy if I had over at my place! Besides his place is much bigger and cooler. So Friday (10/30) Jill, Andre, and I worked together to get all the lovely decorations up. It was pretty sweet looking. We had streamers, red and purple lights, random party accessories, balloons with permanent marker art on them, and more. We were watching random haunting shows and Andre pretty much died from how awful they were. Hahahaha! Jill loved her balloon art.

Halloween day, Anung came over early that afternoon. I unfortunately realized that I had a Japanese essay due Monday and would not have time other than Saturday afternoon. So I was working on that for a good 30-60 minutes when she came. I didn’t want to do that since we barely get time together any more but i had to (except I found out Monday that I was mistaken about the due date and finished the essay one week ahead of time. Freaking lame!).
After that we got some more groceries and headed for the mall. I am sooooo poor after buying everything for the party that I really couldn’t afford anything. Anung bought me lunch, thank god! We went to MOA and hooooooooly cow it was packed! Lots of little kids dressed up, most of them looking annoyed or humiliated in some sort of way. We picked my friend Liz up who awesomely bought all the booze for the night!
We headed to Andre afterwords and got dressed and started cooking. I had apple cider which was very much liked all around. Andre and I were vampires, Liz was a dead Alice from Wonderland, Anung a necromancer, Jill and Ryan were zombies, Mike was a graveyard ghost, Dan was a something undead, etc. It was great. I should have gotten a big group picture. Damn.
We watched re-animator which ended up being like a MST3000 (Mystery Science Theater 3000) event. Good times with a weird old horror movie classic. Then we had dancing and social time. Totally forgot about the bobbing for apples and mummy wrap/TPing.
Overall it was good. I think everyone liked it (hopefully). It was a lot of fun and I’m glad I put it together.

As a random side note, I absolutely love genetics and how amazingly interesting it is. I cannot help but get giddy with all the unique mechanisms and how crazy our bodies are at preserving life. I definitely love learning stuff from my Developmental Biology and Genetics Lab. It’s really fun working with Drosophlia. They are creepy when you’re using a dissecting microscope and they kinda twitch and squirm. Also it’s disgusting when you accidentally behead one of them.

In other news I have started my new “internship” with Dr. Neil and Kerry. I was supposed to work with double mutants based on Dr. Lynn’s notes but they ended up being too confusing and riddled so I was given another small project for the time being. I am working with cytokinins and how they affect SPINDLY (also called spy agent which affects gibberillin activity). I basically have gotten an overview of my project and start planting Friday. Yay! I still need to research some stuff about this project so things are still a little muddled.
I definitely appreciate Dr. Neil and Kerry’s patience when it comes to explaining everything about Spy agent and how it works. It’s definitely interesting.

That’s it for now. Maybe I’ll post some pictures from the Halloween Party but most of them are posted on Facebook. Leave a side comment if you want me to post some pictures.

Just Taking One Day at a Time

Well my life has been very hectic and full of confusion. How you ask? Let me explain in (surprise!) a blog-like-way:

I have a few things lately that have been a rather puzzlement in my tiny little head.
(1) Why is it hard for me to accept my limitations and realize that I am no longer nor was really important? I seem to have this idea engraved into my head that I am right and should be the center of attention. I really need to cease this. I am not a person that others should bend over backwards to be by my side and I (likewise) should not let others walk over me. I feel that the real root of this problem can be accomplished with personal contemplation but sometimes I need to write things out in order to understand.
(2) When the HELL did I start thinking that everyone is a complete bitch/bastard towards me? Or maybe the individuals that I have interacted with just… coincidentally were upset and responded in a slightly negative way? I don’t know, but either way I am sick of people talking to me like I am the biggest idiot that roamed the Earth. I ask simple questions… give me NICE simple answers.
(3) In what direction am I going and when did I start moving? I feel like this semester has been a blur of motion. Mostly college related activities and studying but I still manage to have a couple hours of freedom every now and then. The few times that I am free I usually prefer to spend it writing in my blog. I have had moments where I go shopping or meeting friends but I just feel like I haven’t had a quiet, empty, moment of complete nothing-ness. (I feel that my brain deserves one).

Well those are just some of the confusing things that are happening to me right now. I just found out that I am now officially an intern in Dr. Neil’s lab. I’m going to have my own project working with double mutants. I am to meet with him tomorrow for more details. This week is crazy (similarly to other weeks) but I am particularly excited for Saturday. I just need to make sure I finish immediate homework by Friday since I will probably do nothing this weekend.

Halloween! ♫♪♫

I’m having a Halloween party! Woooo! Would anyone care to join? I set up a facebook event too so please check to see if you got an invite and please respond! I would like to get a head count of how many people approximately will be able to make it so please let me know! ♥

So far this week has been awesome and some unexpected pleasantries have happened! Well I hope they don’t turn on me since I do enjoy pleasantness! I am hoping to carve my pumpkins this weekend! Woo hoo! My mom wanted me to do a couple dog etches (cause she’s ridiculous and wants Halloween to be cute) and I have my very own pumpkin so that I can carve whatever I want.

Just a short post today! Hopefully I’ll have some time later to write something of much more substantial value!

Well I should be asleep…

OH MY GOD! The last weekend was AWFUL!

Soooo… it turns out that my body didn’t agree with 6 hours of sleep in 2 days in a row along with a sinus cold. And yeah… I ended up getting verrrrry sick. Thursday morning I didn’t feel well at all. I just wanted to drive back home and just sleep, but with so much going on I took some tylenol cold medicine and went to class. And NO I didn’t sneeze, cough, or even breathe in anyone’s direction. I played the solitude-is-the-best-thing-ever game all day. And for the most part I felt fine… but then the medicine wore off. By evening I had a temperature of 102.2 degrees while I was taking a genetics quiz, as well as 3 different experiments. I kept telling my lab partners that I was gonna die and that I wanted to get the hell outta there.
What sucks is the fact that I tried to buy some more medicine but every place i looked there was nothing! Wtf U of M?! You fail me! So I forced myself to get into my car and although i shouldn’t have driven home I did. And survived.
I proceeded to walk into the door saw the horrified look on my mother’s face, grabbed the medicine, dragged myself upstairs, and was then dead to the world. Until 1am when I realized this was not going to go away by some simple miracle. So I emailed some professors and went back to bed, still with fever and dizzy as hell.

I don’t really remember Friday all that well, which gives you a prospective as to how alive I really was. I remember texting a few people telling them I was sick and blah blah, but other than that I honestly don’t think I did anything. I must have slept the whole day or something. Anyway, Saturday morning is when I woke up feeling a HELL of a lot better and more myself. (Guess what my agenda was?) Yep, you got it…. HOMEWORK! More precisely a research paper about allelopathy! Weeeeeeeee! (That actually turned out to be more work than I thought it would be.)

By Sunday I was completely back to normal and felt like I was never sick to begin with. I went to work and found that everyone else was sick and grrrrruuuuuuuumpy! I, on the other hand was so happy to be alive and healthy again! Hahaha you can imagine my day! It was a lot of fun!

Anyway, I’m back to normal now! Woo hoo! Now I need to catch up on my all my stuff! Until next time!

Can I just collapse now?

Would that be okay with everyone? I’ll just… you know… go to a corner and just huddle there to get away from exams. Seriously. Oh how I wish I could just curl up under a comfortable, cool (not cold) blanket with a book in hand and my cat next to me purring and slowly warming up. Or maybe snuggling into a big giant chair and playing RPG games until my eyes hurt from awesomeness? I think I like these ideas, can I start?

But alas, I cannot. I have completed 4 out of 6 tests thus far. (I know, Ew right? And yes Ew did need to be capitalized because it deserves it.) I have another one tomorrow and then on Thursday. Then freeeeeeeedom! Well… at least for like a couple of nights. Then I start all over again except with essays and research papers.

On a much happier note, I’d like to share my experience last weekend with Andre-awesome-Supplee!

Last Saturday we woke up early and headed out to his family’s farm to relax and take care of some animals.
We had to visit his mother’s friend’s place first because I wanted to see the cats. Hahaha! There was even a little black, amber-yellow eyed kitten there! I am so used to my cat being de-clawed that when I went to play with him he tore my hand into pieces.

Andre and I proceeded to go to his farm and walked around. It was beautiful. It was chilly but the colors of the trees made up for the experience. He showed me all the plants he and his family planted and what an annoyance invasive plants can be. At one point Max (one of Andre’s dog) found a nest, which we suppose was a mole’s nest, and decided to move them away and almost eat them. Andre shooed him away and moved the babies back. Unfortunately I think they died due to the fact that the mother would stay away in reaction to both dog and human scent and therefore would freeze to death.

We came back and I studied a little and then we both became restless. We went for another walk but much further. Very cool. Poor Princess (Andre’s other dog) was such a trooper but she definitely was tired and needed to rest. We visited the kitties and other doggies before we ate dinner and went home. Oh yeah, Andre had to slam his brakes once because a red-tailed hawk decided to fly away at a very low arch over the road. It was a close call.

When allergies are no fun…

Oh… I’ve wanted to punch myself in the nose for the past 1.5 weeks. I can no longer count with my fingers how many times I’ve wanted nothing but relief. My allergies this season have been killing me! Seriously… runny nose, itchy throat, and the most annoying off the symptoms: clogged ears. I keep yawning, trying to get my ears to pop. After the first day my jaw was sore, how awful is that? Urghhh!

And as much as I hate hospitals I wanted to go to the doctors… but then my friend told me to try zyrtex. It helps, definitely helps. Not perfect no but muuuuuuuch more tolerable. Tolerable to the point where I no longer feel the need to set an appointment up. I seriously have a fear of hospitals (long story). I’m pretty sure the last time I went to the hospital I immediately started crying and nearly fainted in the hallway. It’s a fear that’s just as unreasonable as my fear of spiders.

Anyway, I now have a sinus cold (in which my brother immediately responded with running away for fear he might get it… sigh, my brother is stupid). I now no longer sneeze or have a runny nose but I’m frequently coughing. And it doesn’t help that midterms are going on and I can’t get a decent night’s worth of sleep. Hopefully two weeks from now I’ll be able to heal/sleep properly.

Any nice thoughts my way would be most appreciated!

すみませんですが、頼むよ！本当に ありがとうございます！(<— Japanese for “Sorry but I’m counting on you! Thank you very much!)

If music be the food of love, play on…

Duke Orsino:
If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

Twelfth Night Act 1, Scene 1, Lines 1-3

Ahhh, how I miss being able to read beautiful literature (as well as being dramatic) such as Shakespeare’s works.

…..Also crossword puzzles with friends.

Well this week has been crazy and I can only expect the next two to be even worse. And by worse I mean, 6 tests in the next two weeks. Ick!  So if I can’t hang out next weekend it’s because I will be swamped with studying.

Sigh, college life can be such a bummer. I had an idea that I would have a hard time at statistics and despite everyone saying ‘it’ll be easy’ I find myself struggling not to fall asleep when reading the book. I tend to start head bobbing by the 5th sentence. ARGH!  >_<

But on a happier note, this weekend I am going down to Lake City, MN to visit my great great great aunt Irene. I love her very much and consider her my absolute favorite aunt! This weekend is our annual get together with her and to celebrate Fall’s arrival. And by celebrate I mean we all go buy some pumpkins, apples, and visit the neighboring garage sales for treasures. Sometimes I find the greatest books but most of the time I just find funny things to laugh at. And we always stop by to visit Irene’s husband, my great great great uncle Fred. I miss him immensely. Everyday, I wear a bracelet he gave me just before he died.

Below are pictures of Aunt Irene and Uncle Fred. I can’t wait to hug Irene and tell Fred how much I love and miss him.

I miss my freedom but at the same time I love learning more and more things. I just hate being tested on it.

Let the Music Begin

Welcome to my new blog! Hopefully I’ll write in here every now and then to let you (my beloved friends) know just what’s going on. That way when you see me in person you won’t have to ask me “How’s life?” and I reply with a befuddled look.

So let’s get the first entry in!

College at the Uof M is steady and progressing ever so slowly. I must admit that my genetics lab is about the most exciting thing that has happened to me in a long time. I also might be becoming an “intern” (aka volunteer work) at Dr. Neil Olszewski working on double mutant strains in arabidopsis plants. We will have to see how well this goes for me! (Wish me luck!)

In other news, I wish I had the time to gaze at my brand new orchids which were graciously named by Andre and Jill. Their names are Jezzebel, Coy, and Aria Crescendo. They join the family with Amon, Miriam, and the rescued twins Morgan and Finn.