Quote of the Day

Me:

You know, I am finding it hard to feel bad for American people that continue to get in their boats and sail around Somalia.  They have to know it's not safe by now.

Greg:

Yeah.  I'll just go into the Middle East with my "I'm an American Christian, and your religion sucks, and we like bombing your country" T shirt on.

Drugs are Bad, Mkay?

So I'm sitting at Starbucks lamenting because the barista gave me an ice-cold coffee when what I ordered was NOT iced.  I considered complaining, but the general public is on my nerves today.

I'm waiting on a student to meet me who needs some extra help in A&P.  I'm assuming we are going to have to have a "come to Jesus" talk, because she is already one hour late.  On her way, but late.  And like I've mentioned before, I am not patient, and I don't like having my time wasted.  So.   She really needs the help though, so hopefully  I can straighten her out when she gets here.  

Anyway, here is what I found on the internets while waiting. This link is a slideshow that shows months or years-apart mugshots of drug abusers, kind of like a before and after to illustrate the effects of chronic drug use on your looks.  What. 

My favorite ones are the ladies who have drawn on their eyebrows.  In the first mugshot they look pretty bad and trashy, but the second mugshot is hilarious, because it's clear they now have the artistic skills of a fetal pig.

Hope everyone is having a fun Saturday!

Birthday Happies!

Happy 28th Bday to my fabulous hubs!

Tonight we are cooking steak for dinner, opening a couple presents and I made him a homemade carrot cake with 3 (full-sized, not whimp-sized) layers.  Thank you, Paula Deen, you are my hero.

I don't have kids, therefore my husband must be dead.

I got a new piano student this past weekend!  His name is Jonah, he is four years old, and he is freakin' adorable.  He looks like a little blonde haired, blue eyed angel with a southern accent. This makes him especially dangerous.

Sunday was his first lesson, and he managed to sit through the entire 30 minutes (UNHEARD OF for a 4-year old), but we did take breaks for him to play with the other instrument settings on the digital piano and to have entertaining conversations.

Here's one such conversation:

**Jonah sees my bike, which is in the corner of the living room.**


Jonah:  You have a bike!
Me:  Yes, I do.  I like to ride it to my job.

Jonah:  It's not your kid's bike?
Me:  No, I don't have any kids.

Jonah:  Why not?  Do you have a Mommy and Daddy?
Me:  Yes.  But I'm a grownup so I don't live with them.

Jonah:  But you don't have any kids? Why?
Me:  I just don't.

**Jonah sees an early childhood picture I have of Jeff and Rob in our living room.**


Jonah:  Well, who is THAT?
Me:  That's my husband, Mr. Rob, when he was about your age.

Jonah:  Is he dead so you don't have kids?


Me:  No, he's in the kitchen!
Jonah:  Can we go see him?
Me:  Not right now, but when we're done with your lesson.

Jonah:  I'm hungry, let's go get something to eat.


Believe it or not, you actually can teach a four year old to play piano, but it's a slow process.  I can't wait to hear what Jonah has to say this week :)

Happy Tuesday!

Bama Fans: Puttin' the ASS in Class.

As if the Bama fans didn't already have a bad enough rep, this gem has poisoned 130 year old live oaks on the Auburn Campus.

Way to go, man, hope you're real proud of yourself.

A new way to take out the trash

Today on the pretty short running portion of my running and abs workout, I saw something hilarious.

I was nearing my house and passed an apartment complex with a very small parking lot (like 30 yards or less) with a dumpster at one end.  A tenant came out of his apartment with a bag of trash.  He put the bag of trash on the hood of his car.  He then got in the car and drove across the parking lot to the dumpster.  At this point he got out of the car, put the trash in the dumpster, and returned to his parking spot and went back into his apartment.

Turns out I've been doing it wrong my whole life?

I love you, 13.1.

This past weekend was the Mercedes Marathon and Half Marathon.  I had a terrible stomach flu beginning Friday night and lasting early into Sunday morning. I was in denial until about 4 p.m. Saturday, but ultimately  I was forced to cancel the lasagna dinner I had planned to prepare for my friends to celebrate the race.  Instead I carbed up on ramen noodles and crackers and Sprite.  I was unsure if I would be able run, and I'm pretty sure Amy had already given up on me and resorted to praying.

But I got up at 5:30 Sunday morning determined.  I choked down some dry toast, tylenol to stave off the fever and aches, as well as a little watered down gatorade, and texted my friend to tell her I would be there!  My rationale was that the course went right down our street (!) so I could stop if I really needed to.  So we ran.  Slowly. I had certainly hoped for better than a 2:07 gun time, but what can you do.  Jada says I get major bad-ass points for running in spite of illness, so we will go with that.  I did my best, and am certainly thankful for my very patient friend who joined me.  We made it, and then I took a four-hour nap.  I am back to normal (finally) today and I actually feel wonderful, almost like I could have done the full.  Almost.

Congrats to Amy for her first half-marathon!

Not feeling awesome, but definitely awesomely excited!

Look, it's Jada!  She is shedding a layer and using our yard as a closet!

 Here come Amy and I.  I decided that if I needed  a pitstop, 

I might as well use my own bathroom. 

A quick layer-shed for us and it's off again! 

Thanks for the butt-shots, hubs, lol!

About 7.5 miles to go.

Happy Valentine's Day!  Mr Muffins arranged these beautiful roses for me himself, then brought them by my office! They smell great too!  How lucky am I?  I am going to cook dinner tonight and we'll probably use our china and watch a movie or something low key.  Have a great day with your valentine, too!

I'm a runner (and Healthcare Reform starts with YOU)

I am so excited to run the half marathon this weekend! It will be my 4th, since I don't do them every year. Celebrating health and fitness, while raising money for a good cause!  I don't do it to compete (although I'm proud of Amy and I for scheduling our runs together), I do it because it makes me feel good about what my body can do.  I do it because I like to be around other healthy people.  It's so empowering to see a few thousand fitness enthusiasts in one place (especially in the deep South, lol).  And even though we are "only" doing the half (13.1 miles), it's still quite and accomplishment.  I hope one day to do the full-only time will tell.

So I've been thinking about this for a while, and I think it might be soapbox time.  Feel free to stop reading-I think I'm about to get preachy.

It's so sad that our country is one of the fattest in the world, and it's even MORE pathetic that we are passing on the grand traditions of McDonald's meals and sedentary lifestyles onto our future generations.  

I love Sonic burgers and french fries. Like, seriously, LOVE. And I have them once in a while.  However, Rob and I cook at home, and use REAL (not fat free, not sugar free) ingredients.  We have vegetables with every meal even though Rob would prefer steak with a side of ribs. We also love air popped popcorn, and we drench it in butter.  Not every day, but at least 3 times a week :) I eat what I want, just not a ton of it.

I exercise several times a week. Yoga, running, weights, sometimes insanity.  It makes my body look better, but this is just a fortunate side effect of the main thing-feeling happy and de-stressed.  It helps me sleep better.  I don't have a perfect life, and scheduling is sometimes hard.  Some weeks are better than others for both diet and exercise. But I make it a priority, and you have to have a system in place, just like getting up to go to work. 

Here's the main thing.  I absolutely don't believe anyone who says they never have time to exercise.  Sorry, I just don't.  Whether you have kids or not, life is busy.  I can't tell you how many people have told me that I will get fat when I have kids and no longer have time to exercise. I admit it will be more difficult and I will have to make some changes, but I hope I can continue to make it a priority in my life when that time comes. I know people who do; you just have to want to. There's Amy (three girls ages 4, 2, and 1).  There's Beth (three girls too!). There's Gautam and Susan, two kids that are doing the kids' marathon this weekend. Gautam is doing the whole 26.2!! They each instill in their kids a healthy lifestyle as well, which I think is fantastic. 

We have a problem in this country of fixing all problems with medication.  Need to lose weight? Move more, don't take a pill.  Feeling sad?  Go for a few walks a week and see what happens.  Having trouble sleeping?  Jog around the block a couple times, and I promise it will help you fall asleep faster. 

I don't want to tell people not to take medication-some people absolutely need it and I will never argue against medication that is needed. Major depression is a serious illness and absolutely must be treated by a doctor, for example. My argument is that we are so over-diagnosed, and sometimes the old fashioned way is the best way out - instead of a quick fix.  It would certainly help our healthcare system and costs if folks would take a pro-active approach to a healthy lifestyle. You don't have to be skinny to be healthy. I admit this is easy for me to say, since I have never had a weight problem, but I fluctuate just like everyone else.

Anyway, I'm inspired by people that work hard to live a healthy lifestyle and to pass it on to their children too. To all of you marathoners, half-marathoners, 5K people, folks running to the mailbox, or walking around the block:  Hats off, keep up the good work, y'all!

Quote of the Day

Keri:

Oh, it says here that Lindsay Lohan was charged with felony grand theft over that necklace that disappeared.

Christine:

Good. Give her the chair.

I didn't burn down the lab!

This calls for cake!

I did a new protocol, starting on Sunday, a Kluver-Barrera stain in postmortem human striatum sections.  This involved placing tissue sections on slides and incubating them at 56 C overnight in Luxol Fast Blue (not important).  Then a bunch of other stuff (differentiation, counterstain, etc) the next day. We have an oven in our lab, but since LFB is like almost 100% alcohol, I was seized by a paralyzing fear that there would be a spark in the dry oven and the entire building would burn down.  Yes, this is silly, because I know the ethanol would just evaporate and that would be it.  But, I was terrified.  No one wants to be "that person" that burns down a lab. Although, I did learn today that someone in our department (a grad student) deleted 4 years of data off the lab computers.  Was it backed up?  I don't know.  Seems like a multi-fail to me.

ANYWAY:  I found a 56 C water bath and incubated the slides in that overnight, thinking that if there was a fire, at least there was water nearby.  Success!

The Kluver Barrera stain turned out beautiful as well.  Just like the pictures on the internets:

And since today is Lesley's birthday (grad student), Joy made her a tiny cake.  And I got a tiny cake too!

Thanks Joy, and Happy 24th Birthday Lesley!!

Super-what?

This past weekend I played catch-up.  Which means this post is a real sleeper.  I went to the lab, dropped off Rob's wedding band for repairs (Rob has two weeks of the single life, lol!), caught up on groceries and laundry, snoooze.

I also went to Steven and Amy's house for a Superbowl party and watched approximately 20 seconds of the superbowl.  I was not even in the same room as the TV.  Sweet.  I felt mostly ambivalent about it anyway, it's just not the same without dem Saints. And let's not kid ourselves about them heading to another Superbowl in the coming millenium.  Don't get me wrong, I will still be a faithful fan.  But you have to understand that being a Mississippi State Bulldog, a UAB Blazer, and a Who-Dat does not exactly inspire continuing confidence in a football team.  Anyway.

As is the case for all superbowl parties I go to, I got placed in a somewhat uncomfortable situation. I'll only tell you about this one instead of all of them to avoid "short story long" syndrome.  

See, there was this guy Conrad there, and we struck up a conversation because he is about to finish his biology degree. Turns out he already knows Rob, and knew Rob was the neighbor and married, but didn't know me until yesterday. So we were chatting about careers and my dissertation (vomit), and this other girl, Kristin, walks in and asks, "so, how long have you two been married?"  It was more uncomfortable for him than it was for me, I just thought it was hilarious.  Then, the same girl asks, "so, Bonnie is your little girl?"  (There were quite a few kids there, and Bonnie does happen to have delightfully blonde hair.)  Wrong again.  Poor Conrad saw this as a prime opportunity to get as far away from me as possible.  Ha.

So, hope everyone had a fun weekend!  Amy and I are gearing up for this weekend's half marathon, so that should be fun!

Happy Monday!

Can't get no respect :/

What do I do with a student who is blatantly disrespectful to me time after time?  How do I deal without completely losing my junk? 

This particular student, I believe, feels he can push me around because he is a 6 ft. tall towering male with a clear inferiority complex. And because I'm pretty nice most of the time to my students?  But everyone else knows and respects the boundaries that are set for student behavior. I don't feel like I'm making a mistake by trying to relate to them.

So far I have been attempting to "lead by example", and respectfully and calmly put him back into his place while explaining my reasoning for doing things the way I do. I can be amazingly professional.  Although, I did totally pull rank yesterday and tell him, "When you have a Ph.D. behind your name, you can do what you want. Until then, I'm the instructor and you're the student." As everyone who know me is aware, patience is not my strong point, so I guess this is a learning experience for me too.  It was bound to happen.

That is all for now.