Early April and the near future - part 1

Oh man, it's April already. This is insane. In just a few months, I'll be starting a new chapter in my life story, and time is moving at a ridiculous rate. I wish it would slow down, but alas, it's not going to bend to my whims. Not yet, anyway. I've been pretty busy lately, so forgive me for not having updated in a few days. Here's a quick recap of some significant recent events and thoughts.

With the end of March came a welcome change in my job. I finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel with all of the much-needed random tasks that come with starting up a new lab. Well, there's still plenty to do, but it's much more manageable now. This means that I can get back to research, and thus, on Wednesday of last week, I ran my first experiment in more than a month's time. I haven't done any real science (for my own projects) since mid/end of January. It was long overdue, and felt really satisfying. Thursday was also full of science. I spent most of the day injection dsRNA into 6-day old aphids. Over the course of ~5 hours, I was able to inject 80 individuals, and when I checked on them the next day, only 7 of them had died. That's a great mortality rate! After much praise from my boss, I later homogenized them and stored them for a later day to extract their RNA and check for gene expression. I haven't even check my Wednesday results to see if they're good or not, perhaps out of fear and/or excitement, but I'm sure that'll come tomorrow. It feels good to get back in the swing of things, labwise, and hopefully I'll be able to collect a good amount of data over the next few months to land myself in a(nother) publication! By the way, if you're at all interested in what my lab does, please check out our lab webpage: www.angeladouglaslab.com and/or ask me about what I do.

Work aside, my personal life has been up and down lately. I still find myself in full-panic mode, but I think I've recently settled a few troubling issues which has put me at greater ease (at least I hope so). I can thus concentrate on living happilly and getting along with others. Speak of which, Corey took a one-week vacation, and I found myself alone in the apt on Wednesday. At first, I was thrown by the independence and slight loneliness. If you know me, I usually like to be surrounded by those I care about, so this situation was somewhat strange. If I want or need 'me' time, I'll get away myself, but this time, it was different. At first I struggled to think of what to do with myself, but I quickly sat down and began to play Wind Waker for about an hour. After this, I dawned my sweatpants and plush robe, ordered DP Dough, and watched anime. Fatting around is an activity I hold near and dear to my heart, yet, I wanted to be slightly productive and had a spark of inspiration to practice music. Since I sadly don't have a vibraphone handy, I practice piano for 20 min, bass for another 20, and clarinet for 20. I'm way out of practice for all three. Baby steps, right? I then ended the evening by spending 2 hours finishing up Paulo Coelho's The Witch of Portobello (I think Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead is my next book to tackle), talking to Timmy for a while over Skype, and headed to bed at a reasonable hour. Turns out alone time can be relaxing and productive! Who knew.

The next day, I went out to dinner with Matt and Don. I like having guy's night. We should do it more often. I then later hung out with Brian and we watched Enchanted. I love feel-good movies. And when they're Disney, and musicals for that matter, I'm sold. Friday was a busy lab day, so much that I skipped my usual happy hour and went home instead. Timmy came down soon after I got home and spent the weekend here, so maybe it was good that I didn't go home drunky drunk drunk drunk like Crystal would've inevitably done. We went out to dinner and then headed to hang out with Matt and Don to watch some weird Japanese show about a loser who should probably not exist. Regardless, it was funny to watch. The rest of the night consisted of awesome Rock Band playing, including a Spongebob song. I know you're jealous.

Saturday was spent video gaming with Timmy. We have been playing Final Fantasy IX for a while, and decided to pick it back up. We're on disc 3 out of 4. Hopefully we can finish it by the end of the summer. I forgot how amazing FF music is. Go listen to some now. Along the splendor of entrancing music, I found myself screaming at a video for the first time in years. I entered a room with a treasure chest at the end. So, logically, I proceeded to open but to my surprise, a huge dragon hawk thing burst through the wall and engaged the party in battle. My split-second through process went as follows: holy crap, something just burst through the wall, I'm not actually scared, but I'm really startled and don't know how to react, omg, whatever, default action - scream! Tim could not stop laughing, haha. And to his delight, the same thing happened a few minutes later, with the same reaction. Mwomp mwomp. After a bunch of gaming, we both headed downtown to Sophie and Rodrigo's house for a lab social. Rodrigo had been busy cooking homemade pizza while Sophie whipped up some homemade hummus and crepes. All of the food tasted was the best in the universe, just so you all know. If their science PhDs don't lead them down a successful path, heading into the food business is not at all a bad choice for them. They make amazing food. Aside from eating and drinking, Sophie, Rodrigo, Calum, Adam, Tim and I chatted the night away, which was relaxing and refreshing. We had a lot of laughs, and headed out sometime after midnight, but not before introducing the foreign students to "marry, screw, kill," courtesy of Tim. Having that type of gathering makes me excited for eventually settling down and hanging out with married couples, or friends in general. Too bad (though, not really) I'm years from that happening. Tim and I came back, stuffed with full bellies to play more video games before retiring for the night.

We slept in the next day, though I woke up a little earlier than Tim to get a much-needed haircut. It's pretty short now. I haven't had it this short in what feels like forever, though I'm sure it's only a matter of months - 6 to 8 perhaps. I came back home and we soon headed to the Commons for lunch at Asia Cuisine and walked around for a little bit, enjoying the sunny weather. This was followed by more video gaming and general enjoyment. Sadly, soon enough, Tim had to head back to the Syracuse area. I later met Sharona for dinner at Viva, which, by the way, is more authentic than I gave it credit for. I wouldn't frequent the place, but it's not bad for Mexican food. It gets the 'okay' in my book.

After dinner, I readied myself for a late Palm Sunday church service at 9.30pm. This signified the end of the Lenten season, recalling Jesus' return from his 40 days and nights in the desert. Upon quick reflection, I did not break my Lenten promise and have lived the past 40 days with no (at least that I can recall) resentment towards my parents. Every conversation with my mother and father has ended happily. I even found myself offering my mother advice which she took and found herself in a much happier state than when we first began speaking. It's nice to be able to spread happy sentiments. Smiles are contagious, turns out. It's been uplifting and liberating to act so maturely with my parents. Being more of an adult has its advantages, I've found - something I could get used to, and plan to. Just because Lent is technically over doesn't mean I won't keep this up. It's proven useful and calming thus far, so I think I'll continue the trend. I highly recommend it.

My Sunday ended with some quick research into Drexel University's School of Medicine. I had scheduled an interview with them for April 7th, and thus prepared myself for the drive down to PA the next morning, and the interview on the day after. Unfortunately, I'm exhausted from driving 10+ hours over the past two days and will therefore post tomorrow about how my interview went. Interestingly enough, I don't think I can gauge how well I think I did, due to the interviewer's lack of reactions and expressions. Ah well. More to come on that, but now, it's bed time. Good night.