Distracted with work to do

This weekend was wonderful and awful. I am thankful, grateful, sad, tired, and wondering how to get all the work done that I need to get done. I had grand plans for the weekend, but did not manage to go running (too freakin' cold at my parents' house) or do any commenting/grading on lab reports I have (I forgot I had them...) or work on comments from reviewers on a paper. So, in true Jenski form, I will just spill some randomness to get it out there, so I can focus better.

I am practicing not discussing anything of substance when surrounded by my family. I think that many of you have already discovered the wisdom of this practice. Over the past couple of years I have realized that while people care that you have an opinion, they do not necessarily care what that opinion is and would rather not have you challenge theirs. Your family you are stuck with, so it is best to practice this skill with them. While you choose your friends, it is as if by choosing them you decide it is okay if you have different opinions and therefore it is safe to discuss them.

I do not think I know when my mother things she is being sarcastic or funny. She always sounds judgmental and angry when she comments on things, and then when I try to talk her down she gets actually angry at me. Or maybe she is just judgmental and angry, but she frequently acts exasperated when I comment, so I think she is trying to be funny. I may never know.

My grandmother is quickly going down hill with her late onset Alzheimers. This week my Dad and Uncle are taking her to the home they had all checked out when her mind was working (slightly) better to have lunch and leave her there (and with dementia/Alzheimers patients they do not want you to visit for a few weeks so the person adjusts to their new home). My Dad and I talked quite a bit about the situation, and he knows that this is all more difficult for him (and his brothers) than it is for her, but he is dreading the idea of Christmas. How my Grandmother adapts to living in the home will determine whether the medical staff thinks it is okay to take her out for Christmas. (If she is not adjusting well, they will recommend against it.) Every time I am home, the older generation comments that I will be surprised at how bad my grandmother is, but really I am not. I am prepared to not be able to have a real conversation with her and for her to not remember anything and be confused. I wonder if they are surprised that I am not more upset by it?

Family friends stopped over Friday with their kids, all six of whom they adopted from the foster care system and three of whom I babysat. We usually see them at Christmas, but the dad had been fairly persistent that they stop by while all of us were there. My brother and his wife were in town, and I guess they hadn't met my SIL before. Then the dad died. That night. In the car while his wife was driving. While this was very much sudden and very much completely unexpected, there have been many strange coincidences over the past few weeks leading up to his death. I went in to the hospital with my parents, then we helped get the family and their cars home and waited while the grandmother, two aunts, and nephew drove the four hours in the middle of the night. It was a long night for me, but it will be a very tough holiday season for the Mom and kids. He asked me how life was, I talked with the Mom about teaching, and as they were leaving, he made sure to check in to see if I had a Man in my life. He always asked about that, hence the capital 'M'. When I did have one, he asked about the status of the relationship. In the car, I guess he told his wife I never change (I am pretty sure in a good way!). I am glad they stopped, that I got to say good bye to him, and spend some time with the family. I am hoping and praying the family sticks together and gets through this; a couple of the kids have had rougher lives than others and will not have an easy time dealing with this loss.

Last weekend I got to catch up with some friends from Boston who are atheists. Much of my family no longer practices any religion and no longer has any particular belief and/or also identifies as an atheist. I, to this day, do not know what I believe but in recent years have found and participated in Christian churches with beliefs in various civil rights and investment in public service that I place value in. These values and practices are in secular lives as well, and I think that whether a person is religious or non-religious does not determine their investment in these issues and practices. Both religious and non-religious people are judgmental about the other, which is fairly obvious if you ever are exposed to an ounce of news coverage. See above for my current approach to these topics when with my family. Interestingly, I did not bring up my church attendance with my friends last weekend, mainly because of the meeting they were attending and the people we were surrounded with. Although I did talk about church with the one friend when it was just she and I hanging out, so it may follow my argument above comparing conversations with family and friends.

Boys are boys. My SIL (and my sister who actually reads this) will be disappointed to learn that BIL guy and I just. hung. out. again tonight. And decorated my tree together, because that's what platonic friends do, right? And also I am not willing to put myself out on a limb if there is any possibility of rejection, and I'm okay with that (see previous relationships chronicled on this very blog).

Occasionally I will wonder about the title of my blog, but tonight is one of those times I realize just how fitting it is. Where to start?

Before...

...Sunset

I just watched Before Sunset. I may have seen it before; I don't remember these things. (Seriously. Try to have a conversation with me about a movie I saw a month ago and I will not be much of a conversationalist. I like to watch movies to escape, not to think and discuss.) (Also, if you want to watch Before Sunset for free, sign up for a HitBliss account!) (Also, I took all of these photos from my house.)

Anyway. The whole movie is a conversation between these two people. You are just listening to Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy talk for ~ 70 minutes. I totally enjoyed it. I will probably watch this movie again. Many things did make me think during the movie and make me a little sad - not in a bad way, but in a I-relate-to-that-sentiment kind of way. It got me thinking about if there was a one time thing that I wish had worked out. (No eye rolling, Mollybee.) It got me wondering if the move I made here to the Midwest was early enough in my relationship that I couldn't have foreseen how it has turned out, or if it should've worked out. It reminded me that there was this guy I date for about a month whose name I cannot remember. He was Guy #5! (I remember Guy #4. He was a good guy. If that had worked out I would've stayed in Boston. {sigh} Oh, and the update on the guys!) It made me realize if there is a movie with these thoughts, I am not the only one who has them, something I have thought about as a good friend of mine is excited about dating and I am dreading it. It made me think about why I have crushes on particular people right now. It made me think about the older man who is a friend of my downstairs neighbor and was around today (remember him, Aim??), and how that would make a good one-night stand. It made me think about the friend of a friend of my friend-who-is-excited-about-dating who lives where I am moving and is single and a dad and supposedly a nice guy. It made me wonder why if I have blocked my ex's phone number I had the option to download a picture message from him. It makes me think about the various lives I would have had if various relationships had worked out (not in a depressing way).

It also made me wonder what I wait for. Not just in relationships, but every day. Why do I come home and sit on my porch and watch the sunset when I have other things I need to accomplish? When will my head feel clear, and when will I feel motivated more often than not? Would a week on a beach alone accomplish this? Is it just a vacation I need or something more?





I love some of the old posts I find when I link back to old stories. I am just linking to them now for my future benefit. Like the story of my now 5-year-old digital camera I was so happy to buy. Or a summary of BFFs. SO many more. Some day, when I have a whole weekend when I do not have to do work, maybe I will read old posts like a journal.

2000+ miles

CF and I have covered a LOT of ground from mid-December through New Year's. Because I left my cat alone longer than I have before, I got a second cat pan. She now uses one for #1 and one for #2.

Anyway.

We headed to my parents' house for Christmas (or as I like to call it my Dad and Jesus's birthdays). We set out our stockings...

Luckily Santa found the house...

CF and I used my parents' snowshoes before and after they got 18 inches of snow.

The snowshoes did not do us much good after the 18 inches, but it was good exercise trekking through all that snow!

And we saw the Trans Siberian Orchetra...

Tonight we are off to a New Year's Eve party out (adding another 2 hours of driving in each direction). I will be back next year...probably as infrequently as I have been here recently. I have a lot of data to try to get together in the next few days to get a poster together by Tuesday to print out before I head to a conference next weekend.

Hope you all have had a good holiday season! Happy New Year!

The small things

A recent birthday post over here, and the subsequent link to her project, reminded me of some random acts of kindness I myself performed. Stephanie just turned 35 and has decided to 36 specific things to, well, be nice. Her point is that even if you do not have money, you likely have more than someone else.

I have not recently make any decision to commit to a large project, but I have done a couple of things military related. Much like Stephanie, I think war is stupid. I like to think of war as grown-up boys using real people to play G.I. Joe. But, the people who fight for our country and protect our freedom and country are amazing.

A childhood friend has done three tours. For each tour, he has left behind a wife and children. I have seen many of our old neighbors over the years, but he and his wife have always been too far away to be at most get-togethers. Last spring I sent them a note. I thanked them for the sacrifices they make and let them know that many more people think and pray for them than they probably realize and that I was so glad that their family is together. Shortly thereafter, his wife sent me a thank you for my thank you via the Facebook.

More recently I was traveling to a friend's wedding. Her husband served in Iraq, actually. On my first plane, the man next to me was quite chatty. He ended up sitting next to me at the bar and bought one of my beers. So that was nice! Anyway, it was a long narrow crowded airport bar and a soldier ended up standing near me. I asked if he needed to get into the bar, and he proceeded to tell me that they were not going to serve him further down the bar because there were no seats, so I offered he and the other soldier my (one) seat. They had about nine minutes until their plane boarded, had left Iraq something like 46 hours earlier, and wanted an American beer on American soil. So when the bartender got over to me, I bought the two of them a beer and closed my tab. The best part was that the woman totally beat the man downing her beer. There were handshakes and they were off to their flight.

Now this recent story bothered me the most because they had managed to make their way far down the bar without someone else asking them if they needed to get into the bar. Presumably others heard the bartender tell them they could not be served without a seat at the bar and did nothing. The people around me (who were clearly business travelers with money versus my science-reading, jeans-wearing self) heard the man tell me this story. And I was the only one who thought to buy them a beer? I think I can spare $15 (this was beer in an airport remember) for them sacrificing their lives for me and my country.

Guten tag!

I went on vacation for a little over two weeks to Germany. I got back just in time for the grad student in my lab's defense and for a rotating grad student to start working with me. I thought he was going to have classes during this summer rotation, but no, he will be with me full time for the next 8 weeks. He has been working full time in a lab for 6 months, so I am hoping he will be relatively independent relatively quickly. I have a grant to write for the beginning of August?! Anyway. More on science in a different post. VACATION! This is a small selection of photos (click for a larger view)...

Biggest town near CF's village. I really do not know what the right terms would be for the towns, but this harbor city is where he went to school. This is the beach. Those little hut things are beach seats that people own or rent. I know they are the norm in Germany; I am not sure about other countries.
We took a day trip to Helgoland. CF likes history, so he told me a lot about this island and translated most of the signs for me. (He eventually got sick of translating conversations and stuff and just said it would help me learn more German - Not if I don't know what's going on!) These colorful houses are a symbol of the island.
City Hall in Hamburg.
A view of Hamburg from Michel Tower.The Fish Market in Hamburg. These baskets were OVERFLOWING with fruit and were 10 euros. CHEAP! CF's sister brought me here and decided she would need to come back with a friend with who she could share the fruit in order to be able to eat it all.
A super old Lutheran cloister near CF's aunt and uncles. Apparently his aunt's friend recently looked into living here because is is a nice living.
CF playing with farm equipment at the agricultural museum.
In the museum for the county/area, there was stained glass. I took this picture because the one in the top right was the oldest of the collection - 1697!
We, of course, went to a zoo. Something we do fairly regularly actually. You could buy little bags of fruits and veggies to feed to some of the animals (like the elephants). Brilliant! People pay to come in and then pay again to feed the animals. This is one of my favorite photos from the zoo...and also from the American West section.
I had not had the chance to get a good sunset picture. (I get this from my Dad.) One day when we were driving home early evening, we drove up over a dike there was an amazing view of low tide, and a late sun but I did not ask CF to stop. That image will be one of those that I will always remember though. Anyway. The last night we got back to his parents, and the sunset was not bad. There are also a lot of windmills in the area, so it was an appropriate shot for the landscape I saw there. Here was my last night on the trip.
I have some other favorites I will post separately be cause they do not really need explanation. Tchüss!

Different times

I just listened to Obama's address to the National Academy of Sciences. It was good, in that he respects science. Apparently he is only one of four presidents to address the academy in modern times, and he and JFK were the only two to address the academy during the first meeting of the Academy after they took office.

Anyway. He reaffirmed and announced anew several initiatives. One of these is to increase the number of graduate fellowships from the National Science Foundation. This is great! There are a few people in my department who received these, and I am not one of them. In ten years, hopefully they will not be quite so difficult to get. Less competitive, but just as prestigious.

It is like how the SAT scoring changed between when my sister took them and when I took them. Her score was more impressive when she took them, than when I took them. Or when I took the GRE before they started having people write essays instead of doing those great logic problems. I rocked those logic problems.

A yearly tradition

Someone always gives me an amaryllis for Christmas. It has been my grandmother, my sister, my parents, and my cousin in the past. Every year the flower is a little different. I do not have pictures from 4 years ago or before because I did not have a digital camera. Here are some mediocre pictures of the past few years though.
I like this year's. It is not quite as bright as the past years.

Christmas ornaments

We always had a "family" Christmas tree growing up. As pretty as color coordinated trees are, I still have a preference for colored lights, the mylar silver tinsel, handmade ornaments and ornaments from various trips. As I have traveled, I have followed my parents' example and brought home ornaments and others have given me ornaments too. Here are some from my tree:

This Santa is made from ash from Mt. St. Helens. This one is from the last trip to Disney World.
This wooden one is from a set of angels my old roommate brought back from Germany for me.
This is one my grandmother had given me that had been my great-grandmother's. You can't really tell, but the yarn it is tied to even looks old.
I got this Ortiz ornament as a gift...
...and this New England Patriot's football snowman too.
This tin boot is from a tinsmith at old San Diego.
This blue and white one is one of a few my brother brought back from the Netherlands for me. The red one in the back has a piece of tinsel-garland in it and was also one of my great-grandmother's. The twisted metal thing in front of the red ornament is "victorian tinsel". Much less messy than the mylar stuff and you can reuse it! I think my Mom got it from the Vermont Country Store if you are interested.
This is my newest edition. One of the grad students in my lab loves giving Christmas presents, and she made personalized ones this year. The little quote at the bottom is because she will bring in two McD's hashbrowns, and I will pretend to resist the offer. I always end up eating it.
Do you have any favorite decorations for the holiday(s) you celebrate this time of year?

Nostalgia

Now that I have my own place, everything in my apartment is mine. (Go figure the logic there!) One morning I decided to go through all my photo albums from high school and college (that I have with me at least), and I started remember how happy I was in college and how much fun we would have. I tried to pick out some of my favorites and then posted them on Facebook. I had a mixed response from those who were tagged in the photos and won't post any here, but they were fun!

Last night I drove almost two hours to hear a talk by a scientist who is really well known and works on a compound with which I also work. I have been dying to see this man talk. I gave myself plenty of time to get there because I had to drive through two cities around rush hour. I got to the college campus almost an hour early, called a couple of people (who did not answer) and wandered around the campus. This made me miss college even more than the pictures I had been looking through last week. Campus was pretty quiet, there were some people around, and it is fall, which I love. I noisily walked through my first pile of dry leaves for the season(!), because really why would you try to walk through dry leaves quietly? You have to scuff your feet right through and make that dry leaves noise! I loved the campus, but I don't know if it's for nostalgic reasons or because I could really see myself there when I start looking for jobs.

Then I heard the man talk and got all excited about my work, which is good to keep me motivated. I got excited about looking for and getting a post-doc. I got all nervous, but introduced myself and he knew of my publication!! (Mostly because the company that makes the compound we work with, does a really good job down-playing any publications about the compound AS SOON AS they are published, and he keeps track of that. Whatever.) This story was so much better in my head, but my question is - is there a word like "nostalgia" but for the present? Like fondly thinking about the present? Like "fondly thinking about the present"? Because while I was walking around being nostalgic on a campus I had never visited, I started being nostalgic for the present and going to the great talk and being outside in the fall air walking through the crunchy leaves...

Pseudo-birding

I have become more observant of birds recently, and sometimes know what they are. Growing up, my grandparents had bird feeders and would identify birds, various relatives on my Mom's side would imitate birds with their whistling, and now my Mom is all about the bird feeders and what birds are out there (during the winter months when the bear are in hibernation so she can actually put the feeders up). My parents have had some cool birds up on their mountain. A snowy owl one winter, for example!

The other two bird observations of which I am proud recently:

1. I was walking to get coffee mid-day and there was a bird on the ground. I did not really take note until it flew away and I got a good look at the bright red marking on the back of its head and the bright yellow feathers under its wings. As a I got closer, I noticed that it had been pecking at ants. So I get back to my department and go right to one of the grad students who does bird to find out what it was. The second I said it was pecking at ants, he knew exactly what it was. A Northern Flicker woodpecker. Go me.

2. Then I was driving to my sister's house the other day and spotted a bright red bird fly across the road. I wanted to see if it could be a male Cardinal or a Scarlet Tanager, but did not get a good look at its size. I did see a bright orange bird fly away from the branch the bright red one had landed on. A Baltimore Oriole.

I also grabbed my camera one day when I was sitting on the porch to take a photo of these birds. I have no idea what they are, but they looked like they were enjoying each other's company.

Storytelling

I tend to repeat stories. I am certainly like my mother in that sense. One of the stories I have told several times recently is about my trip to the mechanic last week. When repeating what his father said to me, my mechanic prefaced it with, "I don't want you to think we're racist or anything...". Only it was not racist, but sexist.

The other story is from the wedding. I am pretty sure I have told it a million times, but I laugh every time I think of it. I actually just went back to make sure I had not already posted this story in the few days since the wedding because I have told it so many times and could not remember. It is between *the* groomsman and I. I was talking about my brother as my younger brother...

Groomsman: How old is your younger brother?
Jenski: 28...No? 27. Yeah. 27.
Groomsman [somewhat more curiously]: How old are you??
Jenski [hesitantly]: Uhhh...29. [Big grin and shoulder shrug.]
[Quiet while Groomsman processes this and Jenski waits for him to formulate an acceptable response.]
Groomsman [somewhat confused]: Wow. You don't look like you're 29.
[Translation: You're older than I thought you were?!?!]
Jenski: How old are you?
Groomsman: 25.
Jenski: Ah.

Cracks me riiiiight up.

The old fashioned way

(Background: My sister started reading my blog and said she could not imagine trying to write something new everyday and that it would come out sounding like the old daily journals in my grandmother's things. One of them, not my grandmother's but someone older than her, had one that literally had a daily entry until within the last week of her life. I thanked my sister for giving me a new post idea! I do not remember exactly how they went, but they were pretty bland. We will see if I can recreate one for my own day.)

Today the daily storms continued. Recently, it is nice most of the day, then the dark clouds come in for a good storm, and then it clears up again. I went out to get my haircut and returned to work before today's hit. Per usual, I was in a windowless basement lab and could only hear the thunder. Even though my experiments had been working, something is not quite right and I need to figure it out. Had dinner out with KHC before she enters lock-down tomorrow to prepare for the bar exam. Came home, put away the dishes, made my lunch and cleaned the kitchen floor.

Summer food

I tried to post this morning as I ate my breakfast, but to no avail. I was thinking how DELICIOUS my breakfast was and wanted to share. Does this look AMAZING or what?!That's right - handpicked strawberries from Saturday (my hamstrings are still killing me from bending over instead of crouching) and my grandma's biscuit recipe. The biscuits are by no stretch of the imagination healthy, but boy are they good!

(If you're interested: 2c flour, 2tsp baking powder, dash salt, dash sugar, 1/2 c vegetable shortening, cold milk to mix...bake 400 for ~20minutes.)

So then, as I was eating dinner and thinking about reposting it, I figured I needed to say more about this than, "Here's my breakfast. Aren't you jealous???" :-)

Then I had a mint Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich and OH BOY was it GOOOOOOD. Apparently one sandwich is only two points if you are doing Weight Watchers!

THEN I started thinking about all the great summer food. We had a garden growing up, and I would say a REAL summer dinner consisted of any combination of the following:

BL*T*
Tomato* sandwich (you like BLTs? You LOVE tomatoes? You should try just tomato and mayo sandwiches!)
Fried squash (sliced summer squash*, egged, floured, fried, yum.)
Corn*
Roasted green beans (green beans*, onion, garlic*, olive oil, roast, drizzle with balsamic vinegar)
Cucumbers* and sugar (just sprinkle a little on! This was usually something we were only allowed at our grandparents' house)
Strawberry shortcake (see above)
Grilled cheeseburgers (although "we", i.e. my Dad, grilled year round even though we live in New England)
Summer Squash* Enchiladas
Any mix of fresh veggies set out on the table to munch. Not in salad form, just in bowls.

That's all I can think of at the moment. If I come up with something else, I'll let you know!

*Homegrown, of course!

Honey I Shrunk the Kids Part 4: The final challenge

This sapling has grown nicely in the protection of the sections of wooden fence to the right. This is a section of the fence in the backyard that was taken down more than two years ago now that has been resting against the house ever since. Good place for squirrels to hide! Now the grill is holding that sapling up too. See, if you were shrunk and just made your ways across the whole jungle of a backyard, then you would just need to gather up the energy to climb right up that tree and park yourself on the grill's tray to get someone's attention.During Honey I Shrunk the Kids, there is a scene in which the older boy performs mouth to mouth on the sister. When the little brother asks where he learned it, the older boy says French class. I did not get the joke until the end of the movie, when the camera closes out then opens back up on the little brother and he says, "French class! I get it! French class!" Give me a break - I was only, maybe 10 at the time!

And it is Friday, so I will get home from the conference too!

How do you get yourself to just finish something?

I know what I need to do to finish my PhD. I have some experiments working; I need to get one new technique up and running (but it has been done before in similar labs so it should work, in theory); I need to write a paper; I need to find a job; I need to write my dissertation and defend it. My "class" consists of three women and two men. The other two women will definitely finish by next spring and I REALLY want to. One of them told me that they are both going to push me so we three women can finish together. They both have field seasons, so I told her to give me deadlines of something to have finished by the time they get back.

But right now, the only thing I NEED to do is to make a darn poster of my research for a conference next weekend. I leave one week from tomorrow and gave myself a deadline of tomorrow night to email a draft to my advisor. She has not mentioned the poster at all to me, but then again she never really wanted me to go to this conference anyway. She did inquire about new data Thursday when I was busy trying to get data, but that is as far as her apparent interest in what I have been doing goes.

What have I done today? Went for a run, ran errands, went to lab for 4 hours, played lots of games on Facebook, found some old pictures of my sister's wedding from nine years ago. See, this is me with my hair all teased!I also need to "study" and look up all the scientists who will be at this meeting (two of my old bosses will be!). I know a lot of names because it is an area of research I worked in when I was a technician. I need to work on making my poster relevant to them because I am used to catering to a different crowd. Oiy.

I know I can do it. I just need to DO IT. K. Off to make tiramisu for a barbecue tomorrow.

Beads

I have these seed-bead bracelets that my friend sent me when I lived in China and she was in Africa. [She and I have been friends since middle school when we would braid each others' hair in science class.] When she sent me a couple while we were both abroad, I wore them all the time and told my students where they were from and who had sent them. Then I went and visited her in Africa and bought a few more. Here are the bracelets:The blue and white ones are those which my friend sent to me and are the colors of the Senegalese flag. When I went to Africa, I got the other three. I think I bought two of them and then was given one, or traded for a couple. I forget. My favorite part about these bracelets is how it is okay for them not to match!

I wore these bracelets for a looooong time and then took them off for some reason.

I saw my old roommate (the owner to the two black kitties from yesterday's post) over the weekend. She noticed that I am wearing the bracelets again. Then she asked if I had "the others" on too, in a conspiratory manner. "The others" are waist beads. She said how she always thought they were so sexy and she was jealous that she did not have a reason to wear them, but I did. She says she can not wear them because she has not been to Africa. Like I earned them, I suppose. Here they are:
The pink ones I got in Africa and have been broken and remade; I just redid the orange one with the same stretchy thread I have used to remake all of them so that I can take them off and put them on (rather than just leave them on all the time); and the wood one with the blue bead I made at my friend's house in Vermont after she returned from Africa. I like the wood one the best.

I have, in fact, put these waist beads back on too. Just a day before I saw my old roommate actually. They make me stand up a little straighter, I suppose because maybe they do make me feel a little sexy. All part of my attempts to stay happy and think of things outside of grad school. :-)

I love pictures!

I saw a couple of friends yesterday who asked when I would be going somewhere because they love looking at my pictures on Facebook. I was touched! I am not sure if I have my pictures from Africa on CD anywhere, but I do have a few on my computer. (The discs are probably packed away.) I did start going through the discs on my desk and found some favorites though. I posted the few I have from China before. Here are a couple from Africa. This is me attempting to draw water. Too bad I don't have a picture of me trying to carry a giant bucket of water on my head?!My friend's "niece" and "nephew" (from her Peace Corps host family).Another "nephew".
Me cutting some stuff up for dinner and goofing around with the kids. A village in the country that we hiked up to.And some more favorites I found as I went through the discs. This is a candid of my niece at the beach when she was about 15 months old.And kitty pictures when I lived with my friends with the two cats! This one is fuzzy, unfortunately, but it's my friends' cats watching the water drizzle in the sink.Watching the squirrels...I wish I had taken a picture of them on that rack once a month. If they were to both try to share a space that size now, it soooo wouldn't work.

I am a SEWING MACHINE!

I posted recently about the produce bags I was making (and still have the supplies to make lots more!) and the baby clothes.

Well, I just finished a third sewing project and my friend is on her way over to pick it up. She is Jewish and her husband is Catholic and they had some of each tradition at their wedding. Their high school friends had made quilt squares that one of them sewed to make their chuppah. The intent was to turn it into a quilt to have in their home. When I was making the bags, my friend found out that I sew and mentioned it. She had been quoted a few hundred dollars to finish the chuppah into a quilt. I told her that I could easily do it, but it would probably be simple. No fancy quilting for me! She had all the fill and backing, so I just had to sew. They gave me money to have my sewing machine cleaned and the timing adjusted. Last weekend she wrote me a check and that was the push I needed to actually sew it.

The best part of these sewing projects is that I inherited my grandmother's sewing desk with all the notions (thread, buttons, zippers, etc.) in it! I can just sit down and find thread to match what I am going to work on. This is what the drawer looked like:
But then I thought my grandmother probably kept it looking more like this (all that color grouping and boxes were hers):
And I straightened it up.

An updated history of BFFs

A while back, I took Spark's lead and wrote a brief history of BFFs. I wrote how this high school friend and I lost track of each other, but my Dad had run into her. WELL, thanks to Facebook, she tracked me down! I feel a little bad that I had not yet. It was actually on my life list to do just that.

Turns out she had a little girl who is so freakin' cute and recently had a tumor removed from her back. Ick. I guess the doctors kept telling her it was pregnancy pain and then when it did not go away after the pregnancy, they investigated further. So we are back in touch. She is a good person.

There are lots of things we shared that make me wonder why we did not stay close. We were teenagers. That is what I blame it on. We were mischievous and drank together (just the two of us, kinda lame). We would sneak alcohol from her parents' second house (her father was an alcoholic, so no one ever noticed). When her Mom found out, she was mad...because we had not told her and she bought us fancy premixed pina coladas and stuff! I went on a family vacation with them. It was rough because there were lots of not good moments between her parents on that trip. Well, really, it was one big disaster between her parents on that trip, they have since divorced and her Mom is happily remarried. In the end and in retrospect, I am glad I was there as a stable person for she and her two sisters. Her Mom loved me. Her sister loved me. Now we can reconnect.

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I am listening to a mix an undergrad made for me. She was working in the lab, and is now off in France for a summer program. It did not end well between she and my advisor. She'll have a happier senior year not being in lab though. I am a little envious. As a good-bye, she made each of us grad students a special mix CD with music tailored to us. SO THOUGHTFUL. I like the whole CD, but this song always jumps out at me. Anyone know it?

You've got a chance to put things right
So how's it going to be?
Lay down your arms now
And put us beyond doubt
So reach out it's not too far away
Don't mess around now, don't delay

Randomness

If you want even more randomness outside of this actual post, just click on the links. :-)

Molly still has mice even though the super was going to send someone Monday to take care of it. ICK.

My experiments are SOOOOO working. I ran some of the experimental PCRs. Now I just have to analyze the data.

How many labels should a blog post have? What is the point? If one has 6, is that excessive? Maybe it is just indicative of the fact that the post is random? Like today. And this one.

I made cupcakes for a fellow grad student's birthday tomorrow. He's taking the first part of his qualifying exam Friday (8 hours, 5 essay questions, got about 6 topics a couple of months ago to study) and his birthday the day before. That stinks. He is the one who may have previously (or currently, who knows) had a crush on me. Holiday party at work:

Labmate: Did fellow grad student just come all the way across the room to ask you that?
Jenski: Maybe he just wanted to talk to me.
Labmate: Maybe he did...or maybe he likes you.
[pause]
Jenski: Maybe he does.

Do you ever find you have innocent crushes on friends of the gender to which you are attracted? The following is one of the reasons I like being around Male Grad Student #1. He comes up with random compliments.

Jenski: [entering office with Male Grad student #1 & #2 talking] What? Why did you just look at me an laugh?
Male Grad Student #1: Because you're amusing and lovely.
[Note: Dreamt about him here.]

How do you start a blog? I did not do a very good job. I tried to explain myself though. I often think I have nothing to post. I have tried to look for certain situations or experiences posted previously while writing this randomness and have been unsuccessful. Maybe I am not an effective labeler?

I also have not posted lyrics in a while. Any guesses on these that I like?

You can drag out the heartache
Baby you can make it quick
Really get it over with
And just let me move on

Don't concern yourself
With this mess you've left for me
I can clean it up, you see
Just as long as you're gone

K. Off to put those cupcakes in my special container! I think it is too short to frost them and put them in, so frosting them will have to happen on site.