Thursday, June 25, 2009

My 10 favorite famous people

Tina Turner (R&R singer/actress)
William Burroughs (homosexual writer)
Bette Davis (fierce actress)
Gregor Mendel (geneticist)
Barbara McClintock (geneticist)
Maria Callas (opera singer)
Charles Darwin (scientist)
Guiseppe Verdi (composer)Charles Ives (composer)
Deitrich Fischer-Dieskau (singer)
Francis Poulenc (composer)

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Tosca, mi fai dimenticare Iddio!

Craig came into town for the weekend and here's what happened:

Friday: went to get Indian food and tried my best to die from an acute peanut allergic reaction. Forgot to give Craig the key and my phone is lost and his phone was dead, so I couldn't call him, so I sat in the ER waiting room while he ate ice cream outside my front door, until we finally met at 10PM. And by then, I just crawled in bed and tried to sleep off what felt like a stampede of water buffaloes across my stomach. Good times!

Saturday and Sunday we got to hang out and enjoying picnicking and brunch. Drank enough mimosas to awaken said water buffaloes and had to sleep off an impending hangover by the pool. What a hard life.

Monday: trip to San Francisco and the California Academy of Sciences (where nerds go to have fun), the musee mechanique (very touristy, but full of fabulously disturbing player pianos), tour a real retired WWII submarine in the harbor (just thinking about all those sweaty sailors stuck down there for 75 days made me want to have a smoke afterwards...and I don't smoke), go thrifting at the apty named thrift-town (where I got bambo shaped tumblers and matching blue willow patterned Japanese stoneware...recycle, reuse, reduce in action), and swing by El Farolito (my favorite hole-in-the-wall Mexican in the Mission).

Back in PA, we went to the Nut House (despite all my recent adverse peanut experiences) where Craig got to meet more of my grad school friends and get most of the way hammered.

All in all, a pretty fantastic birthday!

I also got to spend a lot of down time with my sweetest baby Craiger, reaffirming a love for my very own life-sized hunky ken-doll.

This week will be spent reading everything I can get my hands on concerning DNA replication timing, human repetitive elements, and nuclear compartmentalization. Yay for exciting science.

What will 24 have in store?

Is it time to quote Fried Green Tomatoes: "Face it girls, I'm older and have more insurance"?

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Drinking and oath, and smutty jest

I haven't been this happy in a long time. I think I have finally settled in to the whole grad school thing, have a support net, still long to live in glamorous SF, etc.

The past couple months have been an extraordinary surge of (scientific) creativity and fulfillment. I can't remember the last time that I was this excited about science.

I have picked a thesis lab and start next week (after my birthday, the big 2-4).

And yet, a little of me is missing. My Craiger and my zipper are still living in Missouri, and although he is coming to visit this weekend, he will have to go back on Tuesday. When we finally live together, I wonder if I will appreciate it after being apart so long? Will I get used to coming home before it's dark every night? Will I get a motorcycle so I can keep up with by BF who is now officially a biker daddy?

One thing is for sure: I have found a group of friends that make me happy, and I hope I do the same for them. This weekend we hung out at an out-of-town profs house. Drinking ensued, and Lia and I may or may not have cross-dressed and posed with said professor's Lasker.