Reading: Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult

Il a être un long temps, n’est pas . Beginning of the fall semester was yesterday. Thought I’d drop by this blog a bit

Breakfast was oatmeal with butter, brown sugar, honey and cinnamon in it. Coffee was cinnamon Foger’s with tons of whipped cream Don’t be alarmed now. I know you’re scared and worried because I don’t eat breakfast normally. It isn’t the rapture (no, that’s later this year in October, don’t forget!) or the end of the world. I just have an afternoon class lol.

It’s sooooooooooo wonderful that my first class today is at 12:20p. However, it’s alllllll the way on the other side of campus that I don’t live on. So I’d say it’s about a 15 minute bike ride if I want to arrive on time at least. And since it is a physics class, I’ll probably leave 20 minutes early to ensure a good seat… in the back of course because I have no idea what the hell goes on in physics courses. Something about electricity and gravity and shit.

I’ve been soooo busy decorating my room. I moved out of a crappy apartment I subleased for the summer from someone for the summer after living in the dorms for 2 years (gross lol ). Now I’m in this awesome house with two other friends. My room is a bit small but I like it, très comfortable

Still recovering from getting my wisdom teeth (all four) extracted last Thursday. I’ve passed the dry socket possibility phase so I’m not as freaked out anymore. I’ve already eaten like Pringles and snacked on some semi-hard bread from Panera (so delicious!). I think I won’t try apples or kettle-cooked potato chips til Wednesday or Thursday.

Until next time… (which might be quite far in the future, probably sometime pass the October rapture )

Reading: Second Glance by Jodi Picoult

Lately, I just haven’t felt like blogging because too be honest, I’ve just been a little overwhelmed with the world now. Not really with my social life but with the events of the world. With the state of women’s right everywhere, blatant destruction of species like blue fin tuna or overwhelmingly beautiful and vital ecosystems like rainforests, President Barack Obama’s broken promises, the US debt ceiling crisis, this recession, my struggle with Christianity. I just feel so strongly, so passionately with a fire that what you see in my emotions are either anger or happiness because I don’t know how to achieve an inner peace when I look around the world and see such utter destruction. It’s overwhelming: the social inequalites between women and men, the atrocities in Africa, the senseless hate that leads to crime, the ridiculous government feuds, the foolish ideologies that cause most of this shit. I mean, sometimes I just want to burst. I don’t know what to do with all the anger, the pain, the emotions I don’t like to admit I have.

But… then my friend Madeleine came to stay the night. Kaleem came to chill at my house while Madeleine and I had white wine and delicious homemade chicken pot pie. These are the moments that make life in this desperately broken, brutal, violently fascinating world worth it.

Reading: Second Glance by Jodi Picoult

Just took the 2nd plane ride in my life to Baltimore, Maryland for a microbiology field study. I’m so excited It officially starts tomorrow since today was for travel. I also get to see mon amie Sarah who transferred back to Delaware from this school since out-of-state tuition just kicks your ass if your parents aren’t loaded.

One of my bosses (lab head) also was a part of another internship program in collaboration with this Baltimore school (IMET) I’m going to and well… I experienced that perk haha. They’re paying for food, lodging, the flight, errythang

My dinner tonight was AMAZING. It consisted of a crab cake with a piece of shrimp in the middle (so freaking good) and a crab cake on a salmon fillet on roasted potatoes. Three layers of amazingly deliciousness. I wonder what tomorrow’s dinner will be And these crab cakes/salmon dish pictures are pretty blurry since I was so eager to keep eating lol.

Other than that, my past week has been a blur of more delicious and awesome food including Thai food, pancakes, and cheddar biscuits with some garlic and butter sauce poured over them. My mouth has just been so happy recently

Reading: Second Glance by Jodi Picoult

I’m not normally an emotional person. I have my many reasons. One of which is explained partly in the scene below of a show I’ve never seen but can relate to (I just bought the first episode of season 1 to see if I’d like it). This is a scene I just stumbled on while browsing youtube for music). While I don’t like Sia’s music all that well, a lot of people on the youtube page of Sia’s “Lullaby” kept talking about how amazing the scene was on The Big C when this song was played. So I decided to watch it just to test my normally chilly, sarcastic resolve… and it was around 1:48 when he reads the note about a gift she’d give to him when he’s a college grad when I cried. I just wonder if my mother ever thought to do this. I can only imagine if she ever wondered what I’d be like as a college grad even though I was only 14 at the time.

Reading: Second Glance by Jodi Picoult

I got a Beta fish! His name is Betagalactosidase because I’m a biology nerd For all of you who are unawares, beta-galactosidase is a protein that cleaves another protein and the result is this blue protein product. This name is awesome because his nickname can be Beta and the most obvious… my fish is blue lol. Match made in heaven, or the nothingness for you shady atheists …

Yep, new layout. Got bored with the basic green one and decided to use some of my photography (and photoshop prowlness) for a layout. I think the picture and the coding is pretty spiffy… [insert snobby British accent] if I say so myself hmm. [/insert snobby British accent].

But onto cooler matters…
“I no longer want to be anything except what who I am. Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’ve gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each “I”, every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you’ll have to swallow a world.“ – Midnight’s Children

This quote holds so much power for me. It’s just true. Think about it: we are our reactions to circumstances, to what happens. Our reactions effect things more powerfully then we’ll ever know.

Something you say, do, think can have an effect. For example, this week, my grad student mentor that I work with for my internship said that I was fully capable to do experiments and such without her. I’ve always felt out of place at my lab. I always feel like people are watching me and expecting me to just completely suck. And as much as I hate to admit this, I see 3 black people in a department with hundreds of people. I’m not unbelievable intelligent but I sure as hell am determined and dedicated. And in that last note, I’ve never really worked as hard in my life until I’ve come to college. But despite that previous point, it just feels like I’m not good enough, like I don’t belong – and then she said that. With her saying that, I reevaluated why I was even doing this internship: Sure the money is awesome ($15.40/hr… I know right… get in line… I know you want my life) and the money allows me to live on my own, to embrace independence and to make mistakes. But this is also about my love for biology (if you didn’t get it from me naming my fish after a protein lol). I love biology. I love the craziness of seeing pictures of how animals adapted to their environment through natural selection, I love seeing pictures of sexual selection (think male peacock’s tail or a male beta fish’s fins – yep, all that craziness for the ladies) I love seeing and smelling flowers, I love learning how the human body can work, I love seeing how powerful bacteria are. How these creatures (bacteria) that are on average about .5 microns big can bring us, humans, to our knees. Fascination engulfs me. Studying biology makes me feel alive.

And this entire cascade of thought, of reflection, I credit to my mentor.

Reading: Second Glance by Jodi Picoult

What do you do when you buy a new camera (Canon Powershot SD 1400)?! You take pictures of stuuuuff!!!!

This is my stuffed turtle that chills with me when I sleep. I’ve had him since 13 or 14 years old from the Cincinnati Aquarium or something but just today I’ve decided to name him Herbert after my dad’s ridiculously funny middle name Yeah, I’m a rude ass, I know. Can’t help it

Besides the camera, as some of you may remember I have a paid internship in one of the labs at my college since it’s a research university. So, my grad student mentor Jing is going to publish a paper with me as a second author. I was like: WHAT THE HECK!?!?! YES! YES! YES! It was quite hard to keep my composure. I am ecstatic. This is amazing. A second authorship for those unawares can be best described through what a first authorship is: A first authorship is when someone writes a science paper with their own research. A second authorship is for someone like me, an undergraduate intern who does what is instructed of them by the first author while learning techniques and such. Something amazing to put on my résumé for graduate school

And I also went on a bike ride yesterday with Angela! And since the trail was a bit far from my house, we put the bikes in the car and drove there. Plus, the last picture with the caution tape was just an artistic moment for me in taking advantage of the mess that’s still here from the storm I blogged about last time lol.

So here are some of my first little bits of photography! And after you click, give shadowbox some time to load the images since I was too lazy to resize them all lol.

Reading: Second Glance by Jodi Picoult

New summer layout! Tired of messing with the coding of the old one.

Hm… this week has been most interesting….

What does this picture show? Well, the apartment on the ground floor right across from where the tree is is my apartment That is what I came home too. But I do realize it definitely could have been worse: the destroyed apartment could have been mine.

Besides being forced to chill at some random lame person’s house and not showering (and having to go back to work smelling slightly suspicious and wearing the same cute outfit as I did the day before), it was kind of cool. The storm knocked down huge branches and uprooted trees. One hypothesis posed to why it was so bad was because the Midwest US has been getting so much rain so that weakens the resistance of the ground against the powerful winds and tree roots.

I walked home from work after the storm had calmed (before I knew my apartment was in danger [firemen thought that there was a potential for the damaged apartment to collapse]) and saw uprooted trees and huge tree limbs everywhere. Even with all the damage, it was such a magnificent and awing moment seeing the contrast between the calm weather that I was then experiencing as I walked through what the severe weather had left in its wake. I couldn’t help but be completely astounded.

But awe aside, it was saddening to see crews removing what was once someone’s belongings mixed with damage and water from the damaged area and realising that this could have turned costly for me too.