capture-the-flag, reinvented

So, anyways. I have a lot to catch up on. Celebrating Steph's birthday was fun (especially pissing off her stupid boyfriend by stealing her away from him on Friday night, yay!). The wakeboarding's been pretty safe... slaloming too... although there was one fall last weekend that completely took my bottoms off :) haha, thank goodness for the murkiness of Lake Pepin!!

Time for work, but this is just the beginning. More excitement to come :P

childhood days

Yesterday I got a couple big reminders that life is impossibly short. After dinner, Suzy (my aunt) called to say that she was having severe chest pains, so she was wondering if I could hang out with Gabs (her granddaughter) while she and Jimmy went to the hospital. First off, it's shocking to know that someone close to you could be potentially in a life-threatening situation... I haven't heard back from her yet on how she's doing, but she had to stay overnight ... so it was definitely severe enough for the doctors to worry... Second, how can you expect to take care of a 7-year-old girl when something that serious is happening to her grandma? Gabs probably knew what was going on, but being the good sport that she is, she didn't show that she was scared. Man, it's hard enough trying not to be worried myself, imagine having to calm someone else??

Gabs and I did have some fun yesterday :) We took off in a rocket headed for the moon and then the sun and then Mars... I found out that male seahorses are the ones that have seahorse babies... (take that, boys) ... we bought some horses, zebras, and elephants with our leaf money... got some ice cream at DQ (where I got some weird looks from concerned parents... NO, I'm not her mother)... played around at Hoover Elementary, where I discovered how much my arm strength has diminished in its capability to swing me across the monkey bars... and watched a little Wallace and Gromit before Jimmy came to pick her up for bedtime. It was a good day :)

We'll see what the weekend holds... perhaps a little waterskiing (pllllease, Dad?)... some birthday celebration for Jess, Laura, and my fam... a work party for Kaori...most likely some awful, messed-up dreams, like the one I had last night... wishing that Emily wasn't so busy with soccer tourneys... yep, that's about it.

a bit distressed

Hmm... not exactly sure what to do at this point. We'll see... indeed, we will...

I still have the smell of Greek food on my hands... and on my breath :) I wonder why anyone even wants to hang out with me! It's not because I'm totally lame that I'm at home on a Tuesday night. Well, yes, maybe a little bit. But for real, I need to start getting enough sleep. Raid (my French supervisor at Mayo) has caught me more than once dozing off during one of his procedural lectures. ;) Shame on me. And shame on all you who keep me out late at night!! tee hee :)

I guess I have to stop talking about it and actually do it. Good night, y'all.

ski deprivation sucks

Well, it does. And so is my consistence on updating my blog. I'll work on that. But first I must complain... It will be at least 2 more weeks until I get a chance to do some real waterskiing. Rollerblading just does not cut it. Biking is a little better, but it is a distant comparison at best to the wonders of skiing on water. Yep. So...

I've been working for a full 6 days as of today, and it is definitely getting better. I did fall asleep in today's lab meeting, but really, it was the best I could do when I could hardly understand the acronyms they were using for the molecular receptors and compounds and stuff. Seriously. The next few months of dreams for me will be filled with R-Smads, DMEM, TGF-beta, Cre-LoxP Recombinase, MD-1 cells, Hygromycin, Neomycin, Trypsin, dnTP, Abl-GFP chimeras... do I need to go on? Didn't think so.

Steph's grad party was a grand success. Hanging out with the family (and extended family) was definitely worthwhile, as was finding out that Aaron Freeman will be going to RCTC next year ;) Poor Aaron. Well, I guess I'm really not all that sorry. Oops. I also got a chance to talk to Danny, which was excellent, as I haven't talked to him in ages. I think he may have gotten over the fact that I'm a horrible and cruel person. Anyways, this summer should be good. I hope.

I still have scrapes and bruises from wrestling Emily the other night... ;)