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Janel's Place

Sometimes sparks of genius just have to be typed.

Monday, June 26, 2006

Waiting... 

I need to talk to THE BOSS and he is being hogged. I went camping last weekend up at Lake Agnes and it was AWESOME. I saw a baby moose and it was CUTE. I gave my cats away and it was AWFUL. I got new tires and a hub cap fell off so I went back to the tire place and they gave me four modern, shiny, snazzy new ones and they look WEIRD. The mule bit me yesterday and it HURT. I took my horse past the llamas last night and it was FUN.

Actually I asked an old guy crossing the road if he thought my hub caps looked funny and he said, "No! They look classy." He was just being nice.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeell I'm waiting... I'm thinking... I have no thoughts... well no new ones. All of my thoughts today have been thought before and I'm bored with them. I can't think a single new thought. I guess I learned something about taste buds and hormones today. C'mon! Gimmie da boss! I'm going to do something useful now, this is taking tooooooooo long.

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Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Deeper 

You can run with five balloons if someone helps you organize them and get a tight hold on them. No beetles or toad pictures. I can't find the cord.

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Tuesday, June 20, 2006

The cricket 

1980's version

The little cricket
Chirps it's little heart away
But only at night

2006 version

The little cricket
Chirps my sanity away
KILL THE STINKIN' BUG

Fourth grade haikus race through my head as my one earplug falls out and I'm woken again by God's little creation that is REALLY LOUD and likes to live outside my bedroom window. Tonight I went down there with a flashlight, pulled out some sticky weeds, pushed a bunch of rocks around, inadvertently pulled some legs off of innocent bystanders (grasshoppers) and found a HUGE black cricket that I didn't want to kill after realizing he was just trying to be a good cricket, so I threw him out the front door and heard him hit the pavement... nah it's too dark, I can't see if he's okay. Well what could I do if he wasn't? I guess I could feel bad. BUT anyway, I then went back to find some more (although I'm pretty sure that in my moments of mental clarity Sunday night I deduced that all the racket could be coming from just one cricket) and found a great treasure. It was a very nice sized stag beetle, very similar to good old Dr. Jeckyl from Japan. Actually I just looked back at that blog and he doesn't look like Dr. Jeckyl at all. He looks more like his evil wife Heidi. Why was she evil? Can't remember. Then I had to take a picture of her and the focus on my camera is still messed up and 15 more minutes of trying to get a nice picture with it did not get me anywhere. I'll post some half-nice pictures tomorrow. I will also post my toads. I LOVE toads. I never want to forget the great fatness of this year's toads, thus it has to be blogged, thus it's 11 pm again and 10 pm bedtime ideas are smashed and zombie-hood is slowing increasing, with a cricket acceleration parameter, but hopefully the problem is solved.

I learned a lot in Bible school today. I'm carrying 5 balloons at once which makes running a bit difficult. I need to figure out how to break my streamers. I guess you just break them and quit thinking about how to break them. I'm sure you can wad the fragments into a little ball and with small amounts of scotch tape turn them into something really fun and interesting. This is so deep, man.

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Sunday, June 18, 2006

The Sermon 

1851
MOBY DICK; OR THE WHALE
by Herman Melville

CHAPTER 9

The Sermon

Father Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered the scattered people to condense. "Star board gangway, there! side away to larboard- larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! midships!"

There was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a still slighter shuffling of women's shoes, and all was quiet again, and every eye on the preacher.

He paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit's bows, folded his large brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea.

This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog- in such tones he commenced reading the following hymn; but changing his manner towards the concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy-

The ribs and terrors in the whale, Arched over me a dismal gloom, While all God's sun-lit waves rolled by, And lift me deepening down to doom.

I saw the opening maw of hell, With endless pains and sorrows there; Which none but they that feel can tell- Oh, I was plunging to despair.

In black distress, I called my God, When I could scarce believe him mine, He bowed his ear to my complaints- No more the whale did me confine.

With speed he flew to my relief, As on a radiant dolphin borne; Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone The face of my Deliverer God.

My song for ever shall record That terrible, that joyful hour; I give the glory to my God, His all the mercy and the power.


Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled high above the howling of the storm. A brief pause ensued; the preacher slowly turned over the leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding his hand down upon the proper page, said: "Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the first chapter of Jonah- 'And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.'"

"Shipmates, this book, containing only four chapters- four yarns- is one of the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Yet what depths of the soul Jonah's deep sealine sound! what a pregnant lesson to us is this prophet! What a noble thing is that canticle in the fish's belly! How billow-like and boisterously grand! We feel the floods surging over us, we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters; sea-weed and all the slime of the sea is about us!

But what is this lesson that the book of Jonah teaches? Shipmates, it is a two-stranded lesson; a lesson to us all as sinful men, and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God. As sinful men, it is a lesson to us all, because it is a story of the sin, hard-heartedness, suddenly awakened fears, the swift punishment, repentance, prayers, and finally the deliverance and joy of Jonah. As with all sinners among men, the sin of this son of Amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the command of God- never mind now what that command was, or how conveyed- which he found a hard command. But all the things that God would have us do are hard for us to do- remember that- and hence, he oftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.

"With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at God, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by men, will carry him into countries where God does not reign but only the Captains of this earth. He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and seeks a ship that's bound for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto unheeded meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish could have been no other city than the modern Cadiz. That's the opinion of learned men. And where is Cadiz, shipmates? Cadiz is in Spain; as far by water, from Joppa, as Jonah could possibly have sailed in those ancient days, when the Atlantic was an almost unknown sea. Because Joppa, the modern Jaffa, shipmates, is on the most easterly coast of the Mediterranean, the Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadiz more than two thousand miles to the westward from that, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar. See ye not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee worldwide from God? Miserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with slouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the shipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So disordered, self-condemning in his look, that had there been policemen in those days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had been arrested ere he touched a deck. How plainly he's a fugitive! no baggage, not a hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag,- no friends accompany him to the wharf with their adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he finds the Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; and as he steps on board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for the moment desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger's evil eye. Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and confidence; in vain essays his wretched smile. Strong intuitions of the man assure the mariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome but still serious way, one whispers to the other- "Jack, he's robbed a widow;" or, "Joe, do you mark him; he's a bigamist;" or, "Harry lad, I guess he's the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike, one of the missing murderers from Sodom." Another runs to read the bill that's stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship is moored, offering five hundred gold coins for the apprenhension of a parricide, and containing a description of his person. He reads, and looks from Jonah to the bill; while all his sympathetic shipmates now crowd round Jonah, prepared to lay their hands upon him. Frightened Jonah trembles. and summoning all his boldness to his face, only looks so much the more a coward. He will not confess himself suspected; but that itself is strong suspicion. So he makes the best of it; and when the sailors find him not to be the man that is advertised, they let him pass, and he descends into the cabin.

"'Who's there?' cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making out his papers for the Customs- 'Who's there?' Oh! how that harmless question mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee again. But he rallies. 'I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish; how soon sail ye, sir?' Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up to Jonah, though the man now stands before him; but no sooner does he hear that hollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance. 'We sail with the next coming tide,' at last he slowly answered, still intently eyeing him. 'No sooner, sir?'- 'Soon enough for any honest man that goes a passenger.' Ha! Jonah, that's another stab. But he swiftly calls away the Captain from that scent. 'I'll sail with ye,'- he says,- 'the passage money how much is that?- I'll pay now.' For it is particularly written, shipmates, as if it were a thing not to be overlooked in this history, 'that he paid the fare thereof' ere the craft did sail. And taken with the context, this is full of meaning.

"Now Jonah's Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects crime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless. In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely and without a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers. So Jonah's Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah's purse, ere he judge him openly. He charges him thrice the usual sum; and it's assented to. Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive; but at the same time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with gold. Yet when Jonah fairly takes out his purse, prudent suspicions still molest the Captain. He rings every coin to find a counterfeit. Not a forger, any way, he mutters; and Jonah is put down for his passage. 'Point out my state-room, Sir,' says Jonah now, 'I'm travel-weary; I need sleep.' 'Thou lookest like it,' says the Captain, 'there's thy room.' Jonah enters, and would lock the door, but the lock contains no key. Hearing him foolishly fumbling there, the Captain laughs lowly to himself, and mutters something about the doors of convicts' cells being never allowed to be locked within. All dressed and dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds the little state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead. The air is close, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that contracted hole, sunk, too, beneath the ship's water-line, Jonah feels the heralding presentiment of that stifling hour, when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of his bowels' wards.

"Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in Jonah's room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all, though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance. But that contradiction in the lamp more and more appals him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry. 'Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!' he groans, 'straight upwards, so it burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!'

"Like one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of the Roman race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him; as one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish, praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed; and at last amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as over the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestling in his berth, Jonah's prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep.

"And now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and from the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening, glides to sea. That ship, my friends, was the first of recorded smugglers! the contraband was Jonah. But the sea rebels; he will not bare the wicked burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the ship is like to break. But now when the boatswain calls all hands to lighten her; when boxes, bales, and jars are clattering overboard; when the wind is shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank thunders with trampling feet right over Jonah's head; in all this raging tumult, Jonah sleeps his hideous sleep. He sees no black sky and raging sea, feels not the reeling timbers, and little hears he or heeds he the far rush of the mighty whale, which even now with open mouth is cleaving the seas after him. Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship- a berth in the cabin as I have taken it, and was fast asleep. But the frightened master comes to him, and shrieks in his dead ear, 'What meanest thou, O, sleeper! arise!' Startled from his lethargy by that direful cry, Jonah staggers to his feet, and stumbling to the deck, grasps a shroud, to look out upon the sea. But at that moment he is sprung upon by a panther billow leaping over the bulwarks. Wave after wave thus leaps into the ship, and finding no speedy vent runs roaring fore and aft, till the mariners come nigh to drowning while yet afloat. And ever, as the white moon shows her affrighted face from the steep gullies in the blackness overhead, aghast Jonah sees the rearing bowsprit pointing high upward, but soon beat downward again towards the tormented deep.

"Terrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In all his cringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The sailors mark him; more and more certain grow their suspicions of him, and at last, fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter to high Heaven, they all-outward to casting lots, to see for whose cause this great tempest was upon them. The lot is Jonah's; that discovered, then how furiously they mob him with their questions. 'What is thine occupation? Whence comest thou? Thy country? What people? But mark now, my shipmates, the behavior of poor Jonah. The eager mariners but ask him who he is, and where from; whereas, they not only receive an answer to those questions, but likewise another answer to a question not put by them, but the unsolicited answer is forced from Jonah by the hard hand of God that is upon him.

"'I am a Hebrew,' he cries- and then- 'I fear the Lord the God of Heaven who hath made the sea and the dry land!' Fear him, O Jonah? Aye, well mightest thou fear the Lord God then! Straightway, he now goes on to make a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more and more appalled, but still are pitiful. For when Jonah, not yet supplicating God for mercy, since he but too well knew the darkness of his deserts,- when wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him and cast him forth into the sea, for he knew that for his sake this great tempest was upon them; they mercifully turn from him, and seek by other means to save the ship. But all in vain; the indignant gale howls louder; then, with one hand raised invokingly to God, with the other they not unreluctantly lay hold of Jonah.

"And now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea; when instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea is as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth water behind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless commotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into the yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory teeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord out of the fish's belly. But observe his prayer, and learn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and wail for direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is just. He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with this, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards His holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment. And how pleasing to God was this conduct in Jonah, is shown in the eventual deliverance of him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I do not place Jonah before you to be copied for his sin but I do place him before you as a model for repentance. Sin not; but if you do, take heed to repent of it like Jonah."

While he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking, slanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher, who, when describing Jonah's sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself. His deep chest heaved as with a ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed the warring elements at work; and the thunders that rolled away from off his swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his eye, made all his simple hearers look on him with a quick fear that was strange to them.

There now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned over the leaves of the Book once more; and, at last, standing motionless, with closed eyes, for the moment, seemed communing with God and himself.

But again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing his head lowly, with an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility, he spake these words:

"Shipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press upon me. I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson that Jonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still more to me, for I am a greater sinner than ye. And now how gladly would I come down from this mast-head and sit on the hatches there where you sit, and listen as you listen, while some one of you reads me that other and more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to me, as a pilot of the living God. How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true things and bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the ears of a wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should raise, fled from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God by taking ship at Joppa. But God is everywhere; Tarshish he never reached. As we have seen, God came upon him in the whale, and swallowed him down to living gulfs of doom, and with swift slantings tore him along 'into the midst of the seas,' where the eddying depths sucked him ten thousand fathoms down, and 'the weeds were wrapped about his head,' and all the watery world of woe bowled over him. Yet even then beyond the reach of any plummet- 'out of the belly of hell'- when the whale grounded upon the ocean's utmost bones, even then, God heard the engulphed, repenting prophet when he cried. Then God spake unto the fish; and from the shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale came breeching up towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the delights of air and earth; and 'vomited out Jonah upon the dry land;' when the word of the Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and beaten- his ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring of the ocean- Jonah did the Almighty's bidding. And what was that, shipmates? To preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it!

"This, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of the living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from Gospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God has brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than to appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe to him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would not be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him who as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is himself a castaway!

He drooped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his face to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out with a heavenly enthusiasm,- "But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has gone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the truth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out from under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight,- top-gallant delight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his God, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the waves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake from this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness will be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final breath- O Father!- chiefly known to me by Thy rod- mortal or immortal, here I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world's, or mine own. Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?"

He said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, covered his face with his hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had departed, and he was left alone in the place.

http://www.americanliterature.com/md/MD9.HTML

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Sunday, June 11, 2006

Sssssssssssnakes 

Note: This is all said in a creepy hushed voice like on a documentary about unsolved mysteries. After each period, a low chord on a piano is struck twice.

It was dark, I was in my car. I was scanning the road ahead of me, I was going 30 mph, and there it was. Slithering, then frozen under my headlights. I passed, I stopped, I went back, I got out, I looked from a distance, and it had a triangle head and a rattle. It was three feet long. I yelled for my mom. She did not appear. I got in my car, I debated letting him go, I thought of swelled up horses, I turned up the radio, and I ran him over. I missed, I backed up, it curled up and rattled, and I ran it over again. And I ran it over again. And I ran it over again, many more times. At last it was dead. I ran over a snake while listening to "Lean on me."

THE END.

We'll move on from dangerous snakes to dangerous prayers. I'm not sure I mean this yet, but I'd like to mean it in the near future.

I said I let You in my heart,
And I let You in the door,
But now I hear You asking me,
For just a little more.

Farther down the hallway,
You spotted the blockade,
The rooms I like to call my own,
Where You can look, not change.

But under Your revealing light,
The things I thought were set,
Look just a little crooked now,
A nice try, but not perfect.

Can You take my weird ideas,
And put them in their place?
Can I let my worries go,
And simply seek Your face?

Take it then, take everything,
I don't need it anymore,
Please become the Lord of my dreams,
And show me what You have in store.


I guess the other reality shock paddle that came today was a blazingly clear summary of something God has shown me over the last year and a half: 'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear. For some reason I had the notion for a while that 'twas intellect that taught my heart to fear. As if I was any smarter than the next person! I wonder how many times I sang that without getting it.

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Friday, June 09, 2006

Family business 

You know what? I just love my family. My big family, the people I get to spend eternity with. They're everywhere, honestly, and they're just a bunch of fun, sometimes quirky, sometimes silly, very different, very cool brothers and sisters. I love 'em. Slogging through this crazy world isn't half bad, and DUDE there's so much to look forward to....

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Thursday, June 08, 2006

Good news 

Ding dong, Zarqawi is dead. Good job guys.

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Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Profoundness 

Don't put all your brains on one western.

Now I am writing wise proverbs. I must be close to getting my Ph.D.

Somebody stole my birthday present from the mail! And they were kind enough to leave the card. Hey mean person who stole it if you're reading this, you are MEAN.

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Monday, June 05, 2006

What would you do? 

What would you do if you got back from a long trip to find that another nation had ransacked your neighborhood and taken your wife and children?

This happened to King David about 3000 years ago, and the first thing he did was seek strength from the Lord his God. He then asked God what to do about it. I suppose this type of reaction to catastrophe could be one of the reasons he was considered to be a man after God's own heart.

That was the point of the blog, but I can't exactly stop there because in the process of defeating the opposing nation to get his family back, 200 guys escaped on camelback. This of course deserves a supplemental photo.



www.qatarembassy.net/ Qatar%20Gallery/sport/Ca...

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Saturday, June 03, 2006

NIMH ketchup 

This is my attempt to stay awake for the next 5 minutes. I intend to graduate in 1 year. I will complete all of my experiments by December. I will not need any more fly lines. I will write an incredible paper by the end of the summer. I will finish the second paper by the following April. The next adventure will depend on the vet school admissions committee, but they need to let me in because now is a great time to go. No time like the present.

Or I could go to the Mental Health Institute. Actually, I could go anywhere, I just need directions. Where should I go. Hmmmmmm... I should go rinse my blot. [Rinsed blot]. I like doing experiments. This is a cool one, and I don't believe my wacky potassium buffer had any adverse effects on my gel. Yeah. I like my blue chair too. What a marvelous purchase it was. I must remain awake for the next 7 minutes.

The Mental Health Institute was just awesome and exciting. That is all. I got home too late to sleep before my 7 a.m. flight, so I slept on the shuttle and only vaguely remember a blonde chatty lady asking everybody questions about where they were going. I got to the airport at 5:30 and had three seats to myself on the plane. I remember nothing of that flight. Atlanta was kind of a dumpy airport and I made an effort to comb my hair before getting to D.C. I think people should comb their hair before going to D.C. I don't remember much about that flight either. My pillow and I had some more quality time. Actually now I remember that I sat next to a guy and his cute little boy, and I woke up before flying into Reagan so the guy could point out where all the cool D.C. stuff was while we flew in. I found a shuttle to take me to the hotel in Bethesda and found two students also carrying large poster tubes boarding the shuttle, hence it was the right shuttle to the right hotel. Certainty in numbers. I have to go rinse my blot. [Rinsed blot]. One girl was from somewhere far away. The other one was from MI. There was an older couple in the back of the shuttle going to the Institute for the guy's treatment as part of a clinical trial. I counted some of my blessing right there. Another lady was going to Maryland for her son's funeral. I counted some more blessings. I was just there to have fun. Anyway, we drove past Alan Greenspan's house. I just googled for a picture of it but I couldn't find one. I guess his house was robbed in 2003... hmm.

The hotel was pretty nice, not amazing. We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant right next to it. Lots of students milling around, seemingly most working on cognitive things, but it was actually really neat to hear about that stuff again. Sometimes I forget that I'm studying brains. [Rinse blot].

I seriously hope I didn't just wash that blot in SDS-PAGE running buffer. I wouldn't do that. I didn't talk to any of the *big* people at the party. One of the guys was on my meeting schedule the next day, so no reason to work hard at behaving myself two days in a row. Too hard. Back at the hotel I met my awesome roommate from Atlanta, the GRANDDAUGHTER OF THE FINCH. Which reminds me. I need to email her and find out that finch's name. What finch?

THIS FINCH:

PNAS | April 15, 2003 | vol. 100 | no. 8 | 4873-4878

This is a famous, famous bird that inspired me in grad school year #1 and inspires me still today with its amazing strangeness, and the girl who was my roommate works for the professor who got his Ph.D. from the guy who OWNED the finch. Dude, dude, DUDE. We talked about the finch a lot. I have to go rinse my blot.

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Thursday, June 01, 2006

Grapes of wrath 

I can't think of anything terribly profound to say at this moment. I still haven't written about the awesomeness of the Mental Health Institute. I can't tonight. I'm still imagining that I will arise before the sun to do a western blot... and holy cow I've just killed my first mosquito of the year.

I was whining about not wanting to read papers today. Yet I have a great dad, completely healthy and alive siblings, and I'm not even divorced yet. I'm very blessed and I should really quit all whining. I don't have primordial dwarfism, I'm not addicted to steroids, I don't live in a country with black mombas, I found $14 in my pants pocket, I'm a legal U.S. citizen, and the Bean Cycle has coffee refills for 25 cents. Why in the world do I ever complain?

Final FYI: blowing up grapes in the microwave is super fun. If you cut a grape in half and leave the skin connected it will burst into flames in about 7 seconds.

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Eowyn

Eowyn

If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Eowyn, Woman of Rohan, niece of King Theoden and sister of Eomer.

In the movie, I am played by Miranda Otto.

Who would you be?
Zovakware Lord of the Rings Test with Perseus Web Survey Software