penn

Science Nerd Tidbit

Cool pic over at Dooce of a New Kids on the Block ticket she found (presumably from her teen years).

Yet all I can think is that AUG (look to the left of the big 25) is the start codon in messenger RNA when creating proteins . . .

Darwin Day

In honor of Darwin Day, we EEB kids had a party last Saturday night. Everyone dressed up as their favorite adaptation. Fun times were had; I'm down for anything that involves face paint :-) I dress up as leaves (long time readers will realize that this is quite similar to my Halloween costume). What can I say? I think leaves are one of the most beautiful things in the world.

Photos behind the cut, with more photos at Flickr (including a pic of me with my cute date ^^)

Musings on friends

The whole friend thing strikes me as very odd. Sometimes, you're friends with the people who happen to be around you. I mean, we can't live our life in isolation, so that's to be expected.

But sometimes, you have friends in far flung places whom you rarely see but connect with deeply nevertheless.

I just spent an hour on the phone with a dear friend that I've only seen a handful of times in my life. She's the daughter of one of my dad's friends, and I hang out with both her and her brother (her little brother went to Pacific as well, so I've spent a lot more physical time with him). Erin is applying to grad school, so we had a lot of chatting about interviews, research ideas, and the like.

Somehow, whenever we talk, we connect very well. I've never quite understood it . . . but I'm not one to argue.

My Valentine's Day

Will be spent teaching and in class. Wednesdays are always busy days for me.

I might also be hosting one of the prospectives again tomorrow night if he can't manage to get a flight out. We're supposed to get 6 inches of snow tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.

Other plans including making myself dinner and doing homework. Not the most decadent night . . . but I've got lots of work to do, and I figure it's nicer to myself to get the work done than to slack off more then feel frustrated and upset later.

The importance of clean laundry

After a guest leaves, my mom (or dad) always strips the sheets, runs them through the laundry, then immediately makes the guest bed again. This makes sense: you don't have to store the sheets, and the bed is always prepared.

Thankfully, I (more or less) follow suit here in Michigan. I don't have a guest bedroom here (though I used to have one when I lived in Gold Beach. I miss the two bedroom apartment to myself days), but I do have guests on occasion. Once a guest leaves, I always strip the bed, wash the sheets, and get them neatly put away.

Thankfully, I did so this weekend. I had a recruit visit for our prospectives weekend here at UM. The majority of the recruits visited this past weekend, but a few couldn't make it. Two are visiting this week, and they were supposed to be hosted at someone else's house. This morning, her furnace broke . . . so I am hosting the two guests. Since I had washed the sheets already, all I had to do was makeup the beds and I was good to go.

Side note: It is snowing here in Michigan, and I guess there's been winter storms all across the NE. So, I'm still waiting on one recruit who has been delayed for quite awhile. Now, his plane is supposed to land at 11 pm (it was really due at 11 am). I think I might go to sleep and hope that they call before he gets here.

Chocolate

NPR reviews chocolate. There's some yummy looking options on there.

Cold? Sure.

It's fairly cold here. By fairly cold, I mean that the highs are in the mid-teens and the lows are somewhere in the negative 5 to 20 range, depending on whether or not you count wind chill. So, it's cold, but it's not unbearably cold. However, some students are calling for school to be canceled.

See, I'm a member of a few forums online, and one of them happens to be a forum for students of the University of Michigan. People mostly post event notices and random questions about school policy. Today, the big discussion is whether or not school should be canceled because of the cold.

I'm honestly shocked by the suggestion. Sure, it's cold outside; it certainly isn't warm, sunny, and comfortable here in Michigan. But it's also Michigan, a land where we experience the four seasons with a vigor not usually seen by denizens of my home state (which would be Washington, where seasons consist of "cold rainy," "cool rainy," and "don't let anyone else know that our summers are pretty darn nice"). I moved here knowing and expecting that it would get cold in the winter.

Grad student funnies from the Simpsons

tee-hee

Rube Goldberg and Honda

In discussing SuperBowl commercials of years past, someone mentioned the Honda Cog ad. I'd never seen it, so I found it on the net (that's what the previous link is).

It is a nifty video, but it's ultimately just a Rube Goldberg machine that's short enough to show in an ad. Still, pretty nifty stuff.

Vaguely Surreal

When I call my parents' house and get the voicemail, I'm greeted by my own voice. Even though I've moved away, my parents made me record the message on their voicemail (note to mom and dad: this is fine with me, so please don't change it. Just know that it's a bit weird sometimes).

I think it's cute that my parents like my voice, but it's still a bit strange.