Happenings

Hi all!!! A lot has been happening since I last blogged. I finished cutting all of my brains! I also finished my hormonal assays! The Blackhawks won the Western Conference Semifinals!

I forgot to mention that I went to Chicago in mid-April for Jill's wedding shower and bachelorette party!!! It was lots of fun! We went to Cafe Ba Ba Ree Ba for delicious tapas and sangria. I can't believe Jill will be married in less than 2 weeks!!! That is CRAZY (and awesome!). Yay for Jill and Evan!

Chrissy is also getting married soon (one week after Jill). Her bachelorette party is this weekend, and I am psyched (although I am feeling kinda sick, so I hope that goes away). We'll be hanging out in downtown Indy, livin' it up. I am excited to be Chrissy, April and Robin's sistah!

Speaking of weddings, ours is 150 days away today. That is approx. 5 months! I have kindof reached a point where I am unsure of what exactly to do. I almost wish it were closer to the deadline so that I could feel like I'm doing more (but I'm sure that I will kick myself 3 months from now for saying that).

Work-wise, I have been doing a lot, but it has been more enjoyable lately. Brain cutting is mind-numbingly boring; right now I am sampling blood from rats, and learning how to do ELISAs (enzyme linked immuno sorbent assays). Even though hormonal assays are repetitive, I sort-of enjoy them; stuff changes color (that ALWAYS makes me happy), you get the results immediately, and other than pipetting issues, there isn't a whole lot of room for error. Much better than things like in situ hybridization (which I am going to do with the brains), where ANYTHING can go wrong, and you won't know it 'til the very end!

On Thursday, Dan, Brad, Liz and I went to see the Blackhawks annihilate the Canucks in game 4 of the semifinals. I guess annihilate is not the right word, since it was scoreless during the 1st, then the Canucks had the lead for over a period, only to have the Hawks score in the last few minutes of the game, and take it into OT. THEN the Hawks quickly won in sudden death. Despite the low score, it was exciting! They also won on Saturday and Monday to secure playing for the conference title.

On Saturday, Liz and I ran in a the Jay Cooperidge Memorial 5k, which supports mental illness. I was dumb and ate cereal with a bit of milk a bit too close to the race, and I was feeling sick to my stomach for most of it. My time was not so good (30:50ish), but I finished, and that is what really matters.

I guess that is all to report for now. Ta ta!

Sleep?!?

Without Dan around, I have already gotten myself on a weird schedule. I am working extra hard (doing the mindless, tedious stuff, mostly), trying to get as much done as possible, but still somehow falling short of my expectations...

I still have 19 brains left to do, and it is going to be the death of me. 2 SOLID days of nothing but brain cutting, and I have not even quite cut my total in half (at least, not my weekly total). Tomorrow I will most likely not get many done, since I have other stuff going on. That leaves a lot of time on Thursday (but not all day, since I am helping RJ out with some stuff), and most of the day on Friday, but I still will prob. have a few left. Maybe the weekend? Who knows. I will just be happy when it is done. Maybe I can talk Kim into giving me a break after it's all done, instead of making me work just as hard on something else? Unlikely, lol. I think that is the nature of Academia... you have to do what you are told to do, and then figure out some *extra* time to do the stuff that will actually advance you. Extra time. haha.

Anyway, I guess my life is pretty lame, since this (work) is ALL i have been blogging about. This must be why people used to be so sad during the times before labor laws were enacted, etc. At least I like my job... on some level... it must have really REALLY sucked to spend 15h/day at some FACTORY doing manual labor or something.

But anyway, here is a question for all y'all: WHAT do people talk about when they aren't doing anything interesting? It would be helpful for these times! I don't want to get [any more] boring!

Happy birthday, Dan!

Oh, and I almost forgot! This weekend was Dan's 30th birthday!!! <3

We had a fantastic time together! On Saturday we had a nice lunch at Jane's Cafe, and then went to see Much Ado About Nothing, performed by the actors at Purdue. It was really good, AND some guy proposed to his girlfriend at the end of it (she said yes!). After that, we wandered around, and then had a picnic in the park. It was a beautiful day! After the picnic, we walked around, and enjoyed the weather, and then went home and relaxed.

On Sunday (Dan's real birthday), we had lunch at Panera, and then Dan worked in the garden (he planted his tomatoes and peppers. Very exciting!) while I went for a long run (5.5 mi!). It was super hot, and the run was not that fun, but fortunately there were many water fountains over by the park on Salisbury to drink from, as well as the occasional wind gust. Still, when I got home, I was super overheated, and I kept sweating for like 2 hours!!! Today I am sore, but I am sure it was good for me. Anyway, after Dan and I got cleaned up from our respective activities, we drove to Indianapolis and ate dinner at Maggiano's with Dan's family. It was really nice; lots of food, good company, etc. They gave Dan (and April, b/c her birthday was Friday!) these gigantic dessert platters [Maggiano's doesn't do anything small] that had cookies, cream puffs, ice cream, cakes, bananas (that had been caramelized), strawberries, and probably a whole bunch of other things on it. YUM.

I hope that Dan (and April) had fun. I also hope that Dan learns a lot at his secret conference in Our Nation's Capitol!

GO HAWKS!

OK, first and foremost, the Chicago Blackhawks have moved on to Round 2 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Yay. Then we will be playing the Canucks in Round 2. Simultaneously, the Mighty Ducks will be playing the Red Wings... it is rare that I root for a California team in Hockey (they can have summer sports!), but the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so go Ducks! Anyway, exciting times.

The other news of the day is that Dan is gone far far away at a conference. This is sad, but it has allowed me to be productive. Remember how I said I cut 4 brains on Friday. That is actually a lot of brains. Today I cut 10. I am still in the lab, getting all of my stuff together so I can go home. I was going to try to cut another one, because I accidentally cut one that I didn't need to cut (suck!) but the cryostat started to defrost midway through my last brain, which I think was my cue that I had overstayed my welcome.

So, now I have 27 brains left to cut. 7/day I will be done this week! This is unlikely, due to classes, etc., but it IS possible!

That said, it is kinda pointless to rush it sooo much, since Kim said she would be away much of June, so it looks like getting my masters this summer is nearly impossible. That is sad; I really wanted to. It just sucks that all the profs are away during the short window of time available!

Well, I guess it is time for me to go home and sleep! It has been a long, long day!

productivity report

talk: complete
insulin RIA: complete
data entry: complete
leptin RIA: complete
readings for class: not started/due Wednesday
experimental design - human subjects paper/presentation: not started/complete
brains left: 36.

Today I got 4 brains done, and it was a lot of work! If I can do 3/day on average, that is ~15/week, which means 2-3 weeks of solid brain cutting! UGH!

That said, that means if I work my butt off I can have the brains all fixed and ready for in situ by the very middle of may. Of course, this is unlikely b/c of the Ghrelin RIA that I have to run... plus the meal testing, etc. but we will see how it goes (maybe I can bribe an undergrad or RJ into cutting at least 1-2 for me?)

In any case, if I DO get the brains and such finished SUPER quick, AND I do the in situ SUPER quick, AND I analyze the data SUPER QUICK AND there are no problems, AND I know what I am writing about, AND nobody decides to go on an EXTRA EARLY vacation, there is a SLIM chance that I could defend my masters in time for August graduation. That would be SUPER EXCITING!

...but unlikely. I am going to shoot for it anyway. It is my goal, but if I can't get it done, then I at least want to defend as soon as Powley gets back from Colorado in early August. That is definitely doable.

Happy birthday, April!

Today is April Noland Groves' 27th birthday! She is going to be my sister-in-law in around 6 months, and I am totally excited about it! I hope she has a wonderful day, and gets lots of fabulous prizes presents!

<3
Sara

Weddings

When I first got engaged, I found myself at a loss for what I wanted the wedding to be like. There were so many options, and they were all interesting, beautiful, and probably priced way out of my budget. I started scouring the web for ideas, and obsessively read wedding blogs, waiting for the perfect idea to come to me.

Well, eventually, my wedding has taken its form. It was a fairly organic process of me having an idea semi-formed in my head, only to find out a.) my idea was too expensive or difficult, or b.) my mom/sister/grandmother/fiance [not usually fiance] disagreed with it (often for very practical reasons!). Eventually, a new idea was suggested, and deemed acceptable to all, and then the focus turned to the next aspect of the event, which went through the same cycle (the flowers are a good example of this; originally i wanted a very organic, yet lavish display that would be difficult to make and encompass many different flowers and seasonal fruits. When that turned out to cost a fortune, we switched to more modern arrangements that I like a lot better in retrospect!).

Anyway, now that I have all the major details nailed down, I could honestly care less about reading wedding blogs (with the exception of apracticalwedding.com, which is awesome). 99.9% of weddings are pretty in that non-memorable way. That is not to say that these people didn't do a fantastic job (they usually did), or that it wasn't a rockin' party (probably was!). But the aesthetic of a wedding is so... wedding, it is hard for it to be anything else! That is, unless they are ugly (see below)!



Soo... since I don't think I can avoid having a weddingy wedding (and I don't think I want to), I am hereby making the conscious decision not to stress out over it anymore. We will see how long this lasts, lol.