An email from my boss...

Let me preface this by saying I think my boss is awesome.  She's direct, encouraging, patient, and extremely successful without being anywhere close to a frigid bitch.  She's a freakishly good anatomist but will admit she knows nothing about cell signaling. She comes to my power yoga class and joins in whatever crude conversation we are having that day while we hang out in downward-facing dog for 4-6 minutes.  (Recently it was anal bleaching that caught our attention for whatever reason.) She believes in weekends wholeheartedly and loves animals more than pretty much anything.  Even tadpoles.  She has seven cats (one is so old that she hand feeds it baby food), and two dogs.

She sent me one email all week, and this was it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=pkPNa4DBFHI

That's right.  Dogs on the beach, set to "Walking on Sunshine".

Anniversary! Like a Million Years Later.

Rob and I had our one year wedding anniversary on April 25, 2010.  To celebrate, we did something a little out of the ordinary.  We went to visit his grandparents.  But they are the people we know who have been married the longest (presh!), and they rent a river house, and we needed to visit anyway.  It was lovely.  They really made our fist anniversary special-we fished the first day.  Okay, mostly I read a book, but being outside on the water was lovely.  The day of our anniversary we woke up to breakfast complete with mimosas and they helped us eat our cake topper.  Really I think it was the best way for us to celebrate and reflect on our first year of marriage, and to hear some really great stories of their marital adventures and mishaps.

On the way there, we passed a giant cow on a truck.  Drink milk and eat more chicken, it seemed to say.

First, we stopped by to see Rob's parents in Gainesville.  Our nephew Cooper was there (new haircut that made his mommy cry), and now that he's more interactive, is a super cool kid.  He's growing so fast!

Then we got there!  And watched Granny feed the daily visitors.  We also drank a lot.  A lot a lot.  And when we got back I felt pickled and ashamed to be outdrank by the old people.

Rob did what he does best.  We enjoyed beautiful weather!

We fished.  The highlight of the day really was when the fishing pole was snatched out while I was peeing in a bucket.  But later on we were able to catch up to it and retrieve the pole.  Below is some detail of the line-untangling extravaganza that followed. 

We went out to dinner, complete with HUGE margaritas at a place whose name I can't remember.  Anyway, it was great, because they let us take our margaritas to go!  New Orleans style!

So that was our first anniversary, and I look forward to many many more.  (Get ready for mush...) Because I'm very lucky.  *Of course, Rob's very lucky too.*

How does your garden grow?

This was a while ago, but check out the first squash from our little garden! My husband, who is a VERY intelligent person most of the time, didn't realize that the squash would keep growing if you just left it on the plant.  And I was out of town and unaware any of this was happening. Therefore, our first squash was huge, and the skin was so tough we had to remove it to even consider eating the squash part.  But hey, we've had success growing stuff from seeds!
Next year we will try cherry tomatoes, because we're going broke buying them from Publix.

Oh, Lindsanity

Lindsey Lohan is going to jail.  I have got absolutely no fucking clue why I care.  I guess because she USED to be a good actress who showed up to work and made pretty good movies (Mean Girls was awesome).  And because she USED to be pretty.

Now she looks like a meth addict.  Might be a meth addict.

But also I feel like celebs get away with a lot of crap.  I mean, she was wreckless driving at least twice and both times tried to blame someone else.  Then the cops found coke in her pants and she said they weren't her pants.  Then her SCRAM bracelet said she was drinking and she said it was just her spray tan. Then she faked a lost passport to get out of a court hearing.  If all of these things actually happened she would be worlds unluckiest person.

Now she has been sentenced to jail and I feel happy about it.  I mean, I hope she gets the help she needs at her court ordered rehab/vacation spot, blah blah blah.  But mostly I feel happy that she finally got into real trouble, because she has deserved it for a while.

Maybe she will do something productive?

Lame post.  Will do better next time.

Missing spring

Missing spring, when my yard was in full bloom, and not whining to be watered 400 times per day.

See below.  It was beautiful.

But we still have the marigolds, and at least those keep mosquitos away.


That is all.  Happy Friday!

Scientific Perks

I'll grant you, there aren't many.  But making conferences into vacations is one of them. I've really mastered the art this summer and thought I'd post a few photos:

Me and the hubs at Fenway (This was a trip for the annual IRACDA conference and poor Rob was dragged along...)

Then it was off to Scottsdale, AZ for a stay at the lovely Camelback Resort for the Mitochondrial Medicine 2010 Conference...

And yes, I did "science", but turns out "science" isn't very exciting in photographs.

Me? An athlete?

So I have a blog.  I suppose I can blog about anything, but I feel like I should have a theme. But let's face it.  I can't commit to a blog, so how can I commit to a theme for my blog?  So today I'm going to talk about being an athlete.

My neighbor Amy has become my workout partner.  This only sort of happened because

1. She is a delight

2.  I am a delight (we have a lot in common already)

3.  I now have to PAY if I want a gym membership, and I'm being uncharacteristically cheap about it.

So we work out together.  We do INSANITY (yes, with Sean-T), and I'm working on burning the P90X DVD's.  (I fail, by the way, at converting .iso files to a dvd, so suggestions are welcome.)

So she used to run cross country, now has three daughters (aged 3, 21 mos, and 4 mos, I know, but that's a post for another day), and I suggested we do a half marathon.  She then 1-upped me about 3 weeks later and suggested we bite the bullet and do a full one.  This will involve roughly 468 miles of training runs starting in early October, and a brutal 18 miler the day after Christmas.  I mean, I imagine I'll need a break from Christmas anyway, but still.. 

Since I've done 3 half marathons (see photo from the 2nd) and a few -K's of variable distances, I consider myself pretty well seasoned on the shorter, manageable distances. So we shall see how it goes.  My husband is not a fan.  He is pretty sure I'll need knee replacements after this.  But, you know, I've ALWAYS wanted to do it.  Just once.  To join that elite group.

Plus, I really think that since I'm in that magical place where I don't have kids and I'm out of grad school, now really is the time to give it a shot.