penn

Poetic Spam

Spam can be like fortune cookies: sometimes weird, often off-base, and occasionally spot on. Here's a spam post I got on the blog today.

You may believe these four proverbs: All men are poets at heart. Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind. After the verb to love, to help is the most beautiful verb in the world. Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.

The last is especially fitting for me right now. I am so busy with school, and the school thing is cutting into the rest of my life. Further, I am not doing as much as I would like to do in terms of schoolwork. I do a lot of studying and work -- believe me, a lot -- but I know I could do more. It's that grad school mentality that the work is never done.

Right now, I am dreaming BIG and falling a bit short. I have high expectations for myself, and it's hard not to beat myself up for not measuring up. (And I also have high expectations for others. I do give others more allowances than I give myself, so I guess the "proverb" isn't exactly spot-on.)

For the remainder of the semester*, prioritizing is key. What brings me joy? Today's Mighty Girl post on Life List how-to: one way to start might be a good place for me. What makes me happy? Perhaps I start with this list (from ZenHabits via Slice of Pink), which really resonated in me.

More reading. More outdoors. More walking. More Real Food. More smiles.

* the remainder of the semester: 1 week of class, a week of spring break, and 7 more weeks of class before the week of finals. Then, summer freedom!

Friday Thought

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -Howard Thurman

At school

A little bit of what I do during the week here . . .

I spend 4 hours a week or more in micro lab, staining bacterial samples and then examining them under the microscope. This is just a small sample of the pretty, pretty colors.

round bacteria (cocci)

rod bacteria (bacillus)

And a streak plate to isolate the bacteria

I sort fruit flies. This first pic has a mutant versus a wild type fly.

And I sort males from females (female on the left):

I'm also breeding some plants with my lab partners to look at how the parental genes and appearance affect the offspring.

I also teach, spend a lot of time in lecture, and go to physics lab (tho no pictures of that. I need to bring my camera to physics lab, because there are nifty things we do there). And, finally, I spend a lot of time in my office. At least we have nice windows. And how do you like that snow?

Lutsen

On the first day of our Lutsen weekend, I went downhill skiing for the second time in my life. It took me a few tries down the really long bunny hill to make it down without falling. Matt stayed with me for the morning as I got the hang of skiing (the man even did 7 bunny hill runs with me!). In the afternoon, I kept up the bunny hill practice and tackled one more hill. Skiing is still difficult for me, especially because speed scares me. I'm getting slowly better, but the cross-country type is by far my preferred pursuit.

The bottom of the super long bunny hill:

Us on the lift! Do you like all the snow on my hat? I took some pretty epic falls on that bunny hill. The bunny hill at Lutsen was bigger than all the hills at Mount Kato (the only other place I've previously skiied, and it would be more accurately described as a large hill).

Oberg Mountain

Some pictures from my day of cross-country. I love cross-country skiing, especially by myself. It's so peaceful to ski through the woods with no noises other than the schussing of skis (and apparently schuss is a ski term, though it technically means "a straight downhill run on skiis"). There was a little gentle snow that occasionally fell as I skiied, and I enjoyed good outdoor air and exercise in the beauty of the north woods.

Lovely groomed tracks!

Up North

As I mentioned in the last post, we went up to Lutsen approximately a month ago to go skiing. I'll post a few more pics sometime this week (school has been extra busy!) when I get time. Just want to share a quick pic of a nifty encounter I had. On the second day up on the North Shore (local vernacular for the north shore of Lake Superior), I decided to go cross-country skiing while the rest of our group did a second day of downhill skiing. I drove up to Oberg Mountain, which was 10 or 15 minutes away from the resort we stayed at. On the road, here's what I saw:

For those without eagle eyes, here's a close up:

As I was driving up, I saw two canines jogging up the road ahead of me. At first, I wondered why two dogs were off leash way up in the woods. As I looked closer, I realized that I was seeing wolves! I managed to snap just a few pics, and this was the best of the bunch. So beautiful.

Here's another pic of my drive up:

Cross-country pics tomorrow!

Dreaming

It has warmed up a little here this week. I haven't been able to enjoy most of it (oh, school), but I did get some time outdoors yesterday afternoon. Wednesday is my hell day (class 8 am to 9 pm with only 3 hours of break in there and 5 hours of teaching). So, today, I am just dreaming about summer. It does make it hard to pay attention . . .

This is Matt and me at the Upper Falls (or middle falls? not the lower) at Gooseberry Falls State Park. We went there for a 4th of July vacation in 2009.

We also went there a few weeks ago on a weekend trip to the North Shore (of Lake Superior), and here's a picture of the Lower Falls.

Both beautiful, but right now, the summer picture seems just right. I'm a little sad to lose the snow (and fun cross-country skiing, and wearing cute winter sweaters) . . . but I'd like to be able to walk outside without multiple layers. And I am definitely not a fan of the ice that will surely be on the sidewalks from now until the thaw is complete.

Microscope Laugh

It's a wonder this thing even worked on any magnification level . . .

Yes, this is a real picture from our lab here. No, I do not have any idea how a pair of dice made it into a microscope. We use dice in one lab, and I'm guessing a student decided to be mischievous.