How serious ARE you?

Three things indicating various levels of seriousness for you to judge. It is always nice to be told you are expected to be judgmental, right?

1. I really do love when I feel fully prepared for class or when I finish writing up an assignment. I am enjoying meeting students at all levels - teaching an upper level course with a lab and an intro lab section. I just confirmed with a student that she will do summer research with me. For the most part, I think I am on the right track. But when the weather channel sent out a storm watch alert for later this week and I heard other faculty complaining about the winter weather, MY first thought was, "let's go snow day or delay!"

I never really thought I would be that person (I mean we are only 2 weeks into the semester!), but it is nice being on the instructor side of a snow day. Plus I honestly do not mind the winter weather, I am sure in part because I do not have to shovel or clear trees that fell down in the recent ice storm.

2. Rapunzel had this idea that we would use Nike+ to motivate each other to stay active, although she seems quite good at it herself. We both said, at least in the beginning that knowing someone else could see when we ran made us more likely to run, and we kept trying to just get ahead of the other person (although I was just trying to keep up...). She finished the 30 miles in 30 days a few days early and set up a new 32 miles in 30 days challenge. And she just finished after 11.5 days. I have not kept up, but I did run 30.06 miles in January and already 17.17 miles this month. Not too shabby, but not quite as serious as Rapunzel.

3. BIL guy is coming with me to my parents for a big bonfire and drinking this weekend. On one hand, I suppose it is some-adjective-I-can't-quite-put-my-finger-on that technically we have only been [clearly] out of the friend zone since Jan 1 and he is hanging out with my family. On the other hand, he knew my BIL way back and has met my sister and the kids, and we have been hanging out for so long, that it does not feel weird at all. He also has been happy to come from the first time I mentioned it, including when I gave him another out over the weekend. That is mostly all I have to say about that.

Phew!

**It has been almost 3 years since I added to my '100 things' list! If you have an idea for a topic for the last 10 things, let me know. Sadly I have already done a 'random things' list.**

Week one of the semester:

Day 1: Can't log onto the computer before my 9 a.m. class. Restart it. Can't log in. Call help desk. Start teaching. Help desk comes and the computer isn't connected to the internet anyway. Finish class without slides. Computer works fine when I check back in the afternoon. Stay up too late after making dinner, doing laundry, watching a couple hours of TV, and deciding I should do work.

Day 2: Would have started by finding a massive water leak in my teaching lab just before my 8:30 a.m. class, but luckily a colleague found the ceiling dripping at the end of Day 1. Stay up too late because I wanted to go over my lecture again and I clearly suck at going to bed early.

Day 3: Headache all day in spite of the 2 Aleve, 2 cups of coffee, and stretching my neck and upper back throughout the day. Headache wains and I run 3 miles in the 20 degree windy weather. Headache comes back. Make dinner. Do some laundry. In bed by 11:00.

Day 4: Start the day with more Aleve, just in case. I think the rest of the day went okay. I don't remember. I still felt off and like any second that headache would come back. Happy hour with other new faculty at the end of the day. Made it to bed at a reasonable hour after texting with BIL guy about how it takes him forever to fall asleep unless I am around and how I just fall asleep because I am that lucky. I barely remember closing my eyes.

Day 5: Feel more normal than I have all week! Probably the best lecture of the week, although I am amazed at how little material I get through. I have a hard time telling if the students are keeping up, bored, and/or lost. 9 a.m. is not that early for a class, but it is if you are college students (and this group sees me at 9 a.m. 3 days a week and 8:30 another day). One of said college students missed class because her grandfather had a bad fall. Go to local meeting of those working with a similar research system. Have awkward conversation with speaker about my post-doc advisor and the speaker's collaborator with whom my post-doc advisor does not speak (long story that is not mine to tell). Feeling exhausted again. Put away all the laundry I have done in the past week, empty the dishwasher, make dinner, decide to watch the pilot episode of West Wing, write a blog post, go to bed super early.

Saturday plan: Get up. Run. Go wine tasting.

Marquee bumper

If my car's bumper were a marquee sign, these are some of the things I might type (with some hands-free device of course) when I was out driving. Not all are negative either!

• Nice blinker.

• I can only go as fast as the car in front of me. Please get off my ass.

• Just because you have a weighted-down truck with 4WD does not mean it is safe to drive fast in a snow/ice storm. (See: flipped SUVs along the road.)

• Thank you/your family member for your service to our country.

• The public safety employee ones: Driving a police car should not give you the right to weave in and out of traffic. Driving a police car should not give you the right to speed. Driving a police car should not give you right to roll through a stop sign. Driving a police car should not give you the right to hold your cell phone in a hands-free state.

• GET OFF THE PHONE and/or MOVE OVER.

• Learn to merge

• Learn to drive in a roundabout/rotary/traffic circle.

What would you add to the list?

Playlist

I have mentioned plenty now that I have been running. I only ran twice last week, but when I did I ran 4.85 and 4.5 miles, and when I have a decent run, I average 11 minute miles. The half marathon I am slowly training for must be completed in under 3 1/2 hours, which I could probably do if I was walking my fast speed. My goal is to to do it in less than 3, and if I can train to run it at 11 minute miles, I should break 2 1/2 hours. When I put it that way, I actually think I can do it. I ran for almost an hour the other day and felt like I could have pushed myself to keep going, but felt like stopping and going home. (I run on campus at work when it is night time.)

I have slowly been building an eclectic playlist to which I can run. It even includes Jim Croce. I had last thought I needed to try running without music because a couple of my runs were terrible, but I think I have realized it is not the music, but running first thing in the morning that is currently terrible for me. Here is the current line-up, clocking in at 3 hours and 4 minutes of music. A couple are better for fast walking (like Tik Tok), but I just count those as built in breaks when they come on my ipod.

Title                                                                         Artist              

Smooth Criminal	Alien Ant Farm
Little Plastic Castle	Ani DiFranco
Long Way	Antje Duvekot
Show Me How To Live	Audioslave
What You Are	Audioslave
Like A Stone	Audioslave
Roam	The B-52's
You Lie	The Band Perry
Walk away	Ben Harper
Crazy	Britney Spears
The Distance	Cake
Last Name	Carrie Underwood
Before He Cheats	Carrie Underwood
Moonshadow	Cat Stevens
Come on Over	Christina Aguilera
A Thousand Years	Christina Perri
The Scientist	Coldplay
I'll back you up	Dave Matthews
You & Me	Dave Matthews Band
Independent Women Part 1	Destiny's Child
Survivor	Destiny's Child
Hunter	Dido
Passerby	Dispatch
My Immortal	Evanescence
Low (feat. T-Pain)	Flo Rida
Got You (Where I Want You)	The Flys
Name	Goo Goo Dolls
Acoustic #3	Goo Goo Dolls
Boulevard Of Broken Dreams	Green Day
I Won't Give Up	Jason Mraz
Time In a Bottle	Jim Croce
Sky	Joshua Radin
What Goes Around.../...Comes Around Interlude	Justin Timberlake
Tik Tok	Ke$ha
Sweet Thing	Keith Urban
I Try	Macy Gray
Girl Like That	Matchbox Twenty
Its gonna be me	N Sync
Nightingale	Norah Jones
Throw Your Arms Around me	Pearl Jam
Every Rose Has Its Thorn	Poison
Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of	U2
Leave the Pieces (Album Version)	The Wreckers
Mary	Zac Brown Band
Highway 20 Ride	Zac Brown Band

Snippets

BIL guy and I have some funny conversations. He is in white; I am in blue. This was the night before we headed out of town together for a couple of days.

I think the most memorable conversation of that weekend was (again) talking about the months and months we hung out as friends. He asked if I thought he was gay, and I told him that while I had joked about it with my aunts, I was pretty sure he was not. Later when he referred to a situation, I pointed out that it was back when he was gay and we had a good laugh.

This was after we spent the weekend together out of town.

BIL guy loves mac and cheese, and apparently is a big fan of boxed mac and cheese. We recently discussed my and my friend's use of plain Greek yogurt in Annie's mac and cheese. If you have not tried it, you must. (While he was skeptical about this combination at first, he ended up thinking it was delicious.)

BIL guy then spent the week deciding what, besides my mac and cheese, would go with the pulled pork. He thought maybe corn on the cob, but apparently I have told him about how I am a corn on the cob snob (as in I only like it fresh). Dude remembers way too much?! I asked him what else I had been snotty about, and he at least pretended not to remember anything else. (Sometimes I think I am like a stererotypical guy, because I am pretty sure I do not remember as much of our conversations. I felt better when we went to brunch and I remembered we had been there before for drinks and he did not.)

Anyway. This was his reason for cooking something that would take all day.

And he meant it. Classes start tomorrow, and he said he couldn't wait to hear how it went.

History (of science)

As I was continuing to (inefficiently) get ready this past week for the start of classes on Monday, I was adding some historical perspective to the developmental biology course I am teaching. The textbook mentions scientist names and the general time in which they made discoveries or proposed ideas about how biological systems work. I started looking up more specific information about these scientists though, and started thinking about how crazy it is that so many discoveries we/I take for granted were made relatively recently. At least it seemed that way to me when I started thinking about how the lives of my great-grandparents (who I knew), my grandparents, and my parents (sorry) overlapped with so many incredible advances. Of course I also thought about how in 30 years students will take for granted exciting discoveries that have been made in the past 10 years, and wonder how there was a time we did not know these things.

[As an aside, I think this is one of the struggles with teaching science. We know SO. MUCH. MORE. now than we did when I was in school in the 80s and 90s. We expect the students to learn these new things, but then we still need to teach them the basics and how to think. There actually are not enough hours in the day. A lot of our teaching, at least where I am, does emphasize the critical thinking and communication/writing skills, but in reality the students are not retaining even a lot of the basics as a result. And they need to at least know the basics and where to look up the more detailed information.]

My great-grandmother was born in 1898, and I think my great-grandfather was born earlier that decade. My grandparents were born in the mid-1920s. So, here are some cool things to think about.

The man, August Weismann, who proposed that we inherit characteristics from germ cells (eggs and sperm) died when my great grandmother was 16 years old.

The images of DNA taken by Rosalind Franklin, that were then used by her and Watson and Crick to determine the structure of DNA, were taken in the early 1950s when my great grand-parents were in their 60s, my grand-parents in their late 20s, and my parents were born?! As an aside, Franklin also studied the polio virus.

The 4 postulates for determining if an illness is due to a disease or a microorganism (like bacteria) were developed around 1890, and have since been revised in light of more modern techniques of studying disease. Koch and Loeffler, who developed these ideas, lived until 1910 and 1915, respectively, when my great-grandmother was a teenager.

I would look up a few more, but you get the idea. Everyone hears about the big exciting things like landing on the moon, but these ideas are just as ground breaking, even if they seem less flashy in this day and age.