busy is good

I don't think I say this very often, but: I'm busy, and it's good!

Usually when I am busy (or at least when I say I am busy - I suppose many would argue that I'm busy very often, and I have to be insanely busy before I actually think that I am) it's very NOT good. It's usually stressful, crazy, and none of the things that must be done get done nearly as well as they could/should.

But not now.

What I've got on my plate for work...

• Writing a report for my thesis committee - meeting is on July 2!!!! And I am intending to do my very best to convince them that I am nearly done and only have to do a couple more experiments before I'm allowed to graduate. No small feat.
• Trying to figure out why my ELISpot assay works one day and then doesn't the next, because I NEED it to consistently work June 21-28 when I take up residence in the laboratory to isolate millions and billions of cells and test them in this assay
• Writing a self-evaluation of the past year for the annual review we students undergo by the faculty, due June 29
• Attempting to learn 2 software packages that will (in theory) make the analysis of my data a ton easier than it is now and will allow me to make pretty pictures to include in the thesis committee report
• Writing (yeah...lots of writing going on here...!) a journal article about several years' worth of my work, which requires making more pretty pictures from data that is buried in one of my 5 lab notebooks and/or in some mysterious folder on one of three computers I've used over the period of time during which the data were collected. Lesson learned: organization is very helpful, and I need to be more organized.
• Trying to make it so the "important!" marked emails in my inbox don't get pushed so far down in the list by new, un-dealt-with email that they don't show up in the top 20 anymore. Perhaps making a few folders and organizing my email would help here...but maybe not.
• Preparing nasty questions to ask to second-year PhD students who are asking me to be part of their mock comprehensive oral examination. This requires that I first read (and hopefully understand) their 10-20 page proposals.
• Plotting out the next several experiments I want to do, which fills my calender up through December 6 and involves making sure there's enough space and time to coordinate these experiments with everyone else's space and time WHILE ALSO avoiding holidays in the schedule-making process.

And then on my plate in other parts of life...

• Trying very desperately to keep up with the constant barrage of emails from friends and teammates and fellow knitters and rabbit-owners. I welcome emails, but I hope people don't think I'm mad at them when it takes me a month to write back, especially when their message says something like, "Hey, wanna have ice cream on Thursday?"...
• Organizing my social calendar. Not that this is exceedingly complex, but I do tend to make being social not a priority when I have lots to do at work, so I'm trying very hard to leave spaces in the schedule for "Hang out with someone!" Which also means I need to do silly stuff like write down in my planner, "CALL so-and-so to fill that hang-out spot, otherwise you'll forget so-and-so exists!"
• Treating Joelle for her sneezing. Again. Of course. Oh, and did I mention that she bit me on the thigh the other day? She was mad that I was trimming her hair.
• Feeding Sheamus one food pellet at a time. He is eating now! But I can't just put food on the water surface and expect him to find it. Ohhhh no. No, he requires that I put one piece of food down at a time...then he can hopefully see it (he seems to be lacking some eyesight quality since his near-death experience) and choose to eat it. And then I can offer another piece. Two at a time is too much. ...My animals are special...
• Taking care of a friend's fish. Why my friend thinks that I, the owner of I'm-about-to-die-oh-wait-no-I'm-not-just-leave-me-here-for-5-months Sheamus, would be a good candidate for fish-sitting is beyond me. Fortunately the fish, Houdini, is really fat and is probably not going to suffer a whole lot if he decides to not eat for the rest of the month that I'll be watching him.
• Knitting! Yes, folks, I am indeed knitting even though pictures never appear on this blog anymore. More out of necessity now than for fun - I've got a baby shower gift on the needles, and the shower is July 7. AAAK! Not sure if I'll be making that deadline, but it'll be close.
• More deadline knitting: Sockapalooza 4. I haven't started yet... And considering my extremely slow knitting pace, it's going to take me many late-night knitting runs to be done by the August 2 deadline... But at least now I've finally ordered yarn and narrowed my pattern choices down to two.
• The everyday things of life, like getting the oil changed, seeing the eye doctor, finding time to go buy cereal and milk...

That is what I've been up to and/or am still working on. Why or why am I not feeling like busy is bad? Because...everything is falling into place very nicely. I can't explain it, it's just...life is peaceful now. I wake up refreshed in the mornings, I have enough time to read the Bible and do a little journaling every day, I eat meals. Maybe I've finally learned how to balance? Maybe everything is going to blow up in my face in the next couple weeks...? I guess we'll see, but for now I'm choosing to stay in this "happy place."

better?

I was pondering today...

You know that poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, the one that goes

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

It's from "In Memoriam."

I don't recall which movie it's from (perhaps "Good Will Hunting"??), but somewhere I heard someone on the silver screen tell someone else those last two lines, rather flippantly, and the listener sneered and you could tell he didn't agree with that at all. It is painful to love, after all. And it is very painful to lose love.

I wonder...what is the consensus on this? What do you think? Is it really better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?

it's not so bad

After I stepped off the bus on Wednesday and got into my car at the park-and-ride, I turned on the radio to my current favorite, NPR. It's my connection to the "real world" of news and such. And I heard all about court cases surrounding Guantanamo Bay...and people running of this, that or the other public office...and how public leaders are being untrustworthy...and how the war in Iraq is causing much consternation...

And I drove the short distance between the park-and-ride and my apartment and went from the least-educated, poorest, most crime-filled, just-on-the-fringe-of-the-city-proper neighborhood in the area to the NICEST one just by crossing one roadway...and I cringed as my car bumped along the road that had gotten torn up for resurfacing...and I was getting a bit downhearted about all the traffic that was being promised for the weekend due to some major construction and detours around the major highway of the area...

Then, to my surprise, I saw a demonstration of sorts going on at the corner. You know: a group of people holding signs, waving a flag, carrying on about their favorite issue, chanting perhaps, motioning to everyone who passes by, and of course during rush hour - although it didn't matter a whole lot because the street upon which they were standing is not a very high-traffic one and is actually quite quiet and peaceful.

But this group of sign-holders was unlike any I've seen before. And EVERYONE who drove by honked in support of their cause! How could it be that everyone could agree upon an issue?? Especially as they drove on this road that connects conservative and liberal neighborhoods? I was curious, but the most curious thing about this group was that they were all kids. Middle schoolers, I would wager.

What were they advocating???

The sign flashed at me as I drove by said, in red and blue writing on the white posterboard: "HONK FOR AMERICA."

Oh.

Leave it to the young people to remind us all that despite bumps in the road - both figuratively and (especially in Pittsburgh) literally - ...we live in a really great nation. And it's worth celebrating.

I guess I have to admit...it's not so bad.

memorial day 2007

This past weekend I wanted to get far, far away from the lab and from life. What better way to "escape" than to hike with a heavy bag 10 miles into the woods of the Appalachian foothills?

I set out on Friday afternoon to Columbus, where I stayed overnight with my brother in his "new" place (it's the first time I've been there, so it's new to me, although it's several months old to him). Saturday morning we drove to Shawnee State Forest and found the backpack trail after visiting with a park ranger who told us to watch out for rattlesnakes. We strapped on our backpacks, laden with food, bedding, shelter, clothing, and cooking equipment.

On Saturday we hiked about 10.4 miles, then we stayed overnight at one of the "campsites." It was next to a stream bed (not much water in it, so it wasn't quite a stream) from which we could hear some frogs croaking to each other. There was a latrine not too far away, but I was too scared to use it without the door open because there were some HUGE crickets that made big noises when they jumped out of the "toilet" and onto the wooden walls. S-C-A-R-Y...!

We set up camp and made hot food and then did some reading and resting and stretching in the tent. We also did a search for ticks on our legs and were astounded to actually find one loosely attached to my brother! He smushed it and threw it outside the tent. I slept well in my new super-duper Slumberjack sleeping bag, but I discovered that the birds all wake up really early...and they're very loud!When I finally emerged from the tent, I found that our tick friend (or one of his buddies) had revived from the smushing and had climbed onto the tent! I threw him in the latrine.

That second day we hiked a bit further but had more time to get there, since we started in the morning instead of the afternoon. The trail took us over some little streams and through heavily vegetated areas and up some fairly steep hills. Not the least of these was the hill just before our campsite destination - upon looking at a map after one of our routine breaks we decided it would take about 30 minutes to get to this site, but we told each other to tack on another half hour just so we'd be prepared for the worst...and it was a good thing, because it did indeed take the entire projected hour to get through the last leg of that hike because it was all uphill! It was very nice to finally get to the site where we could set up camp. I was really ready for a long rest!

Again we set up the tent and cooked food and did a tick check. We found another tick on my brother. Truly, it seemed like every time we stopped we found one on him; there had definitely been one when we had stopped for lunch. Probably it wasn't that he is more appealing to ticks but that he went first on all of the trails, so he probably just accumulated all of the ticks before I had a chance to encounter any of them.

On Memorial Day we hiked the remaining 4.3 or so miles back to where we had started. The final part of the trail dumped us out by the State Park's lake...and I really wished that we had packed swim suits so we could jump in to cool off. I didn't know that it was possible for anyone to sweat as much as I did over those three days. Every day when I took off my pack at the camp my shirt was drenched in sweat. When the shirt finally dried by midday the next day, it had lines of sweat caked on it! I guess this stresses the importance of keeping well-hydrated while backpacking! And also the importance of bringing at least one change of clothes...which I did not in fact do (I had to wear my pajamas one day on the trail because my regular shirt was so gross...).

that's my pj shirt

All in all it was an awesome weekend! I had become so far removed from work and "real life" that I was actually wanting to get back to it! That's what I call refreshment!

that's my gross shirt

not a bump

Where was this picture taken...?And this one?How about this?...Or this?And this - the best!Oh wait, that last one is sort of an inside joke. And a pretty funny one, if you happen to be inside...

And the location...Whistler-Blackcomb, considered by many to be the best ski resort in the world, located in gorgeous British Columbia, Canada!

This was the location of the 2007 Keystone Symposia on HIV Vaccines, which I attended at the end of March. Here's the conference center, nestled amongst the snow-capped mountains...What a terrible place to have a conference, eh?

And here's the dump we had to stay in...I am, of course, being sarcastic. The Crystal Lodge was wonderful!! It was less than 100 yards away from the base of both Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains, which are the home of dozens and dozens and dozens of groomed ski and snowboard trails as well as awesome backcountry, if you happen to be skilled enough to venture off of the trails...which...I certainly am not.

I did make some large strides in getting myself to backcountry-level, however. I took a ski lesson one afternoon when there weren't many interesting talks to attend. This was (sadly) only the second time in my life I've been downhill skiing. The first time was great, but skiing is rather expensive, and it is a lot more fun when one can go with other people. For a long time I didn't know anyone else who skied. Recently I met someone who does, but he was never interested in going to the skiing places nearby. He had grown up skiing, which meant he went to such places as Colorado and Tahoe and Utah and the Canadian Rockies (like Whistler!). He said he wasn't interested in skiing "bumps." I thought he was being ridiculous and that any mountain to ski on was better than no mountain to ski on.

However.

As does seem to happen to me more and more often these days, while standing on the slope halfway up Whistler waiting for my turn to ski down under the watchful eye of my instructor I happened to take my eyes off of the snow before me and looked up, and I immediately realized that I would once again have to bite my tongue or stick my foot in my mouth or some other similar phrase. When I looked up, I saw something like this...Now...that is something you don't see every day. That is something you don't get to see on "bumps" in Pennsylvania or Michigan or Ohio or West Virginia or other places around me where one could ski. You can't look up from the ski slope and find yourself utterly surrounded by more mountains. I can't describe what this feeling was like - it was like being inside a circular room with a panoramic picture of the mountains up on the walls, so that no matter where I turned, I was just struck with more and more and more of the majestic, beautiful scenery. What in the world could compare with skiing in a location like this? No bump would ever come close.

So...I was wrong. Skiing these world-class resorts in huge mountain ranges does make skiing at smaller and shorter locations much less appealing. Not that I'm going to never ski bumps myself, but I can at least appreciate my friend's lack of enthusiasm for such places.

There is so much to say about Whistler. I may end up writing more about that trip at another time. So much to be said and learned from the many cultures intermingled at the resort: the ski bums...the ski snobs...the average Joes who somehow ended up amongst all the skiers...the mountain folk...the locals. There was also the reminder that life needn't be all about being the richest, smartest, or most influential. And finding myself feeling ancient as I told college seniors to follow their dreams before they were too old to do so. You'd think my brain would have been filled with information from the HIV conference, but really it was packed to overflowing with lessons about life.

I should also note that before getting to Whistler I spent a day in Vancouver, the major city nearest the resort. I'm not too keen on the West Coast, but this city certainly had a lot going for it that I enjoyed very much. I saw bald eagles soaring too high up for my camera to reasonably capture, I saw very beautiful modern environmentally-friendly buildings being constructed (which I thought would be an architectural engineer's dream come true), I saw mountains rising from the seas, I saw reminders of the native cultures of the lands, I saw ocean liners poised to whisk people out to sea, I saw industrial products waiting to be picked up and sent to a useful destination. So many contrasts, all in one city. Vancouver was great!But still, it's nothing compared to WHISTLER!!!

happy things

Woah. BIG news! Big news from a little guy.

You know how Sheamus (the fish) hasn't eaten anything in forever? How he's somehow miraculously still alive although he appears to have exceedingly little control of his buoyancy, spine, and up-right-ness? Yeah, he hasn't eaten since at least December 2006. And it's not for lack of me feeding him.

I have basically given up hope for him, because no amount of medicine in the water or special food or frequent water changes appear to help. I resigned myself to the fate that Sheamus will just wither away and die one of these days.

This morning...for whatever reason I looked over at Sheamus's bowl and something made me think, "Hey, he's begging for food like he used to do when he actually ate food." So I thought, "What the heck, I might as well plunk some in there." I've been fooled by this before; usually when I think, "He looks like he's in an eating mood!" he just ignores the food and it sinks to the bottom. BUT...

Today...SHEAMUS ATE!!!! 4 pieces of food, no less! It was amazing.

I don't know what it means in the long-run, but it surely was a good indication that maybe he'll be okay. At least I know that he has some food in his tummy and that's he's not boycotting that type of food.

I won't frighten you with a picture of the poor thing, but here's a picture of something else happy that I will (try to) write about in more detail in my next post (whenever that may be).Anyone know where that is? And no fair "guessing" if I already told you.

what if...?

In light of my newly recanted burning desire to plot out every last detail of my future, my mind has wandered to questions about "What would have happened if you had chosen a different place for graduate school?" Two notes on that sentence: 1) The question isn't a "Oh, woe is me, I made a bad choice!" one; it's simply, "Hm... That would have been interesting." 2) I have absolutely no idea when the last time I read or used the word "recanted" was (excuse the grammar awfulness just there), but for some reason that word flowed nicely through my fingers onto the screen...!

So. What if...

What if I had chosen to attend University of North Carolina? I had a tough time picking between Chapel Hill and Pittsburgh. In many respects, Chapel Hill is just the type of location I would love to be in: a smallish college town, lovely weather, situated equidistant from the ocean and the mountains. I even had the pleasure of meeting someone from a sister church of my college church while I had my interview, and I then spent the next summer living just around the corner from that person (who happened to be an incredibly sweet, good-looking, tall young man). The research there isn't bad, and everyone was very friendly.

The interesting thing about UNC is that one of the motivations for strongly considering the school was the Research Triangle that, in addition to Chapel Hill, has vertexes in Durham and Raleigh. Back in 2002, it seemed like THE place to be. A job was guaranteed in the area. That seemed like a very wonderful thing to me at the time. The biotech industry in the Triangle was thriving and growing. To my fresh-out-of-undergrad mind, it sounded perfect and secure. However, here I am five years later, and I haven't heard a thing about the Triangle in ever so long. Yes, there's a lot of good research being done at UNC, North Carolina State University, and Duke University. However, it's a far cry from the picture that had been painted in my mind. A forecast is, after all, merely a forecast. I feel I would have been disappointed if I had selected UNC with the prospect of jumping into industry in the Triangle...only to find that it wasn't as up on the up and up as had been projected.

What if I had chosen to attend the University of Pennsylvania? Now that is an interesting question. To this day I believe that many people probably thought my choice to turn down Penn was incredibly stupid. In fact, the more I stay in research, the more I believe that. The program I was accepted into at Penn had an agreement with the National Institutes of Health where Penn students could select from not only the Penn researchers but also the researchers at the nearby NIH to pursue their doctoral degree. At the time I was incredibly naive about what that meant. I do recall that it was emphasized in pretty much every informational talk we interviewees sat through; it obviously was something Penn was extremely proud of and thought would impress all of their applicants. Well, call me ignorant, but I wasn't impressed because I had no idea what significance research at the NIH has in HIV and pretty much every other biomedical field. To give you an idea of how appealing the NIH would be to most anyone who knew what was going on in science, at the latest HIV meeting I attended, almost every speaker was from or working in close collaboration with someone at the NIH. The rest of the speakers all seemed to be from Penn.

There you have it...I blew a huge opportunity for getting to work with the best of the best in the field at what many would say is the most coveted biomedical research facility in the world. The NIH (seemingly) has it all - state-of-the-art machines to do the cutting edge research, internal funding so grad students don't have to worry so much that their boss is going to tell them "Oh, you can't do that experiment, it's too expensive," beautiful buildings, the smartest people in the world in the next lab over, access to an endless supply of volunteers for tissue and blood samples. Besides that, it's situated in a fairly wonderful area of the country (again, not too far from both a large body of water and a open, mountainous region - these two aspects pique my interest very much). Anyone who is interested in building a solid career in scientific research would jump at the chance to get an in. And I said no??? What was I thinking!?

Yet, I still am not convinced that I would have selected Penn, even if I had known then what I know now. After all...I don't want to build a snazzy career. I don't want to spend my life chained to my research or be cut-throat competitive. I want to work hard at what I love doing, sure, but not to the extent I gather is the norm at the NIH based on conversations with other students and researchers I have since met who are there. That's not where my heart is at. Perhaps if I had chosen to go to Penn, I would be headed in an entirely different direction from where I'm pointed now...and it's anyone's guess as to whether I would be happy or not.

What if I had chosen to attend University of California, Davis? This question intrigues me most. Over the years here in graduate school, I have achieved a deep appreciation for the HIV-related work going on at UC Davis. For some reason I never seriously considered their offer, and I can only assume it was because they accepted me and made an offer without flying me out for an interview so I thought it was a lousy, second-rate place to go. Today I very much disagree with that judgment; two of the top ten people I would like to work with if I stay in HIV research are there. Probably another thing that kept me from Davis was its distance from family in Michigan. Who would have guessed that by my third year of grad school my sister would be living only an hour and a half away, which is closer than any family member is currently?

There are so many "what if"s. In the end, I really don't know. Nobody ever knows! What I am confident of is that, had I chosen a different school, I would not know the people I know today; that would be sad. And it's slightly possible that I never would have fallen in love with mucosal immunology and the gut in particular. (You can determine whether or not that was a good thing to have happen to me here in Pittsburgh!) Maybe I also would not have learned to rock climb...or scuba dive...or knit! No knitting -- now that is an unusual concept to attempt to grasp!

It's good for me to look back and see how my choice panned out, especially as I approach the end of my graduate schooling and will eventually (but not now!) need to make a choice about where to step next. I realize that what I think will happen is not what does happen. And usually what does happen is a lot better than what I thought would happen, even if it is a little nerve-wracking to get through.

For, even in my selection of the University of Pittsburgh as the school for the pursuit of my PhD, what ended up happening was not at all what I had anticipated. I was exceedingly interested in one particular lab when I moved to Pittsburgh. The projects going on were directly related to my strongest interest in the HIV field. I rotated in the lab for 3 or 4 months, and I was very happy there and got some great work done. My rotation project was not really about the particular interest I had; it was about the gut as a reservoir for HIV during chronic infection and had to do a lot with T cells. When I finished that rotation and went on to the next lab, I picked up a project involving the gut, also, based entirely on my new-found interest in that organ. And six months later when I had to select the lab in which I would continue my education...it was not the one I had come to Pittsburgh for. I could certainly have gone there; there was an opening for a student, and I enjoyed the mentor and the people I would have worked with. But, as usual...something better had been revealed to me.

Funny how that works, eh?

...And I hadn't intended on writing this, and it sounds super, duper silly, but I just thought: D is a great guy. Wonderful. But apparently not for me. That's sad. And yet...if someone better in coming...wow, Someone Better is going to be AMAZING, because D is pretty darn good!

Hooray.

d end

And...the week is over (mostly).

I survived! There will be a bit more craziness at work next week, but this week was the most intense as far as that goes, and all of us in the lab are still friends. We also discovered that we all like the same music. Score!

As noted earlier, the Freaky Appointment never came to be, and that situation is Very Good now. There is understanding between the appointee and me (I know that's terrible grammar, but it rhymes).

Alas, the response that was destined to be bad regardless of what it was never came. Which perhaps is for the best. Unfortunately for those interested in my love life, the anticipated response was to come from good ol' D. There is a distinct lack of understanding between that boy and me. Ungood. Sad. I'll survive. Due to lack of sleep and other things I have half a mind to use mean names and write about how I am frustrated, but wisdom suggests that's not such a spiffy idea.

Here at midnight-thirty I'm finally ready to leave the lab for good for tonight. I GET TO SLEEP IN TOMORROW (this morning?)!!! Hooray for the promise of more than 4 hours of sleep! (And you thought all-nighters only happened in college, didn't you?)

God is good

That is all I can say. I might laugh or jump for joy or scream "Hooray!" or turn on loud, happy music - but truly in light of the way God pulled off yesterday, all I can do is say, "God is good."

You see...

Everything in the lab went well. Yes, it was a very long day, and there were a few rough spots, but considering all of that my team and I achieved decent yields of the cells we were after and there were no huge blow-ups at one another.

I have not gotten the response that I'm waiting for, but as I'm waiting I'm realizing that the response, whatever it is, is not the make-or-break-it thing I've been making it out to be in my mind. If the response is good, then okay. If the response is bad, then okay. I have peace that whatever happens...it will be okay.

And the dreaded appointment... That was the kicker. Have you ever had a moment when someone calls and tells you something and you want to drop the phone and run rejoicing around the neighborhood but that would be exceedingly rude and unkind because what the person told you was hard for them to say? Okay, maybe you haven't. But that's what I felt like yesterday. I was just putting the last thing I needed for the appointment into my bag when the phone rang, and it was the "appointee" saying we would have to cancel due to extenuating circumstances beyond human control. (Er...yes, can I say GOD did that???!) I believe I did a good job of tactfully saying, "Oh, that's too bad. Oh well, no biggie" without being disingenuous.

What a load off my shoulders...! It reminds me of "Sing for joy to God our strength; shout aloud to the God of Jacob! ...He says, 'I removed the burden from their shoulders'." Psalm 81:1&6.

And so, today, while only day two of the week, is looking brighter than I had anticipated. Continuing on my Relient K kick, might I just say:

Something tells me that this is going to make sense
Something tells me it’s going to take patience
Something tells me that this will all work out in the end

looking forward to a week of life

Feeling a little introspective again today... So many thoughts have been going through my mind in the past two weeks, and probably one of the most recurrent ones is, "Can I please figure out how to stop thinking so much??" Thinking doesn't help very much in a lot of situations. What I mean to say is that as much as I think about what I should do if/when this-or-that occurs or what I should do to get this-or-that to occur...many times "this-or-that" is not something that any amount of me thinking or planning for can make any amount of difference. I cannot make stuff happen by thinking about it. I can't wish things into existence. All I can do is take life moment by moment, as it comes, basing what I do on not what I think but what I believe. Hm, can anyone follow that "think vs. believe" concept -- I once described it to some friends as "I need more wisdom, not brain cells."

Anyway... The week ahead of me is one of those that cause me to think muchly. A bunch of stuff going on in the lab; long hours await. I am waiting to hear back from someone whose response I can't predict; whatever the result my mood will certainly be affected. I have an appointment that I feel uncomfortable and anxious about attending; very long and awkward moments are guaranteed.

I think...have I prepared everything I need for the week of labwork...what if that response is unkind or disappointing...the lab work and the response and the appointment could all go in ways I don't want, and that will make the future look bleak because all these things seem to have so much to do with trying to publish results and graduate and find a new place to work...if I'm so uncomfortable about this appointment, maybe I should cancel it - but no, it's too late now, and maybe it's just my defense mechanism to avoid things I don't feel comfortable with...will I be able to keep it together during the stressful week and not go off on my coworkers and to the responder and at the appointment...all these things do not have that much of an affect on my future, why am I so concerned...these three things are what I anticipate for the week, but assuredly so many other things I have not anticipated will also crop up - can I deal with that...is it even worth worrying about the response, maybe the person isn't really worth caring that much about...is my worry about all of these things just setting me up to have a bad attitude regardless of what actually happens... These are my thoughts.

I do believe I need to figure out a way to make my brain turn off...!

da po' bun

My poor rabbit, Joelle...

I neglect her beautiful coat. She does a very good job of keeping it clean - I see her licking it all the time and chewing out all the hay that sticks to her. However, she can't keep the hair on her underside free of debris and mats. That's my job, which I've been ignoring for a long time. :-(

It's led to a few rather funny incidents. Pictures of the one recently were taken the night before I left on a trip I have to tell you all about, and all of my clothes were in the washing machine, so that explains why I am wearing such a freaky outfit.What's that on her butt, you ask? Well...Yeah, she's made in China...

Well, on Tuesday my wonderful friend and coworker came over to help me chop out some of the mess that is Joelle's undercoat. Wonderful friend and coworker has experience cutting her dogs' hair, and she did a great job with her lagomorph subject. Joelle, of course, didn't enjoy any moment of the experience of being HELD and RESTRAINED and TURNED ON HER BACK! By the end of the hair-cutting session, Joelle was pretty much submitted by default because she was exhausted. When we let her free, she rested under her favorite chair for two hours before she found the strength to eat her favorite greens that were sitting right in front of her. Before she slinked to the chair, she showed us exactly how embarrassed and upset she felt...

getting up

This week the trend is for life to be ironic. You only get to see one such example, but really there have been many.

It was both funny and sobering when I turned back the pages in my journal on Tuesday as I ate breakfast. After much thinking and talking and crying on Monday, I finally got to the place where I could see that all my efforts at trying to get my life together for the future...were not working and, more importantly, weren't necessary. I was out of control...and what I was trying to control is beyond my control.

A counselor once gave me a picture of spheres of control. There were three concentric circles. The inner one represented things I can control. The next one out was things I have influence over but can't ultimately control. The outer one was things I have no control over. I really don't like those outer two circles. But seeing them helps me to look at situations in my life and think about in which circle they exist.

Once I realize something is out of my control, though, it's still another gigantic leap to accept that it really is out of my control. And it's even tougher to let God have control of it, which is really the only way things will work out.

The irony of my reading on Tuesday was that I was sitting at the table with all of these realizations and the peace that came with them, I saw that I had written just that in my journal...on SUNDAY. Why did I not at all remember thinking those thoughts?

The answer is, quite simply, that it's one thing to think of a concept but it's quite another to agree with it. And for me, to get to the point where I realized I was not agreeing with it, I had to get a bit hurt in my heart. I had to go down to a very low place, where the only place to go was up.

Also ironic is how very appropriately my new best friends of Relient K sang about my precise feelings:

I'll tell you flat out
It hurts so much to think of this
So from my thoughts I will exclude
The very thing that
I hate more than everything is
The way I'm powerless
To dictate my own moods

I've thrown away
So many things that could've been much more
And I just pray
My problems go away if they're ignored
But that's not the way it works
No that's not the way it works

When I go down
I go down hard
And I take everything I've learned
And teach myself some disregard
When I go down
It hurts to hit the bottom
And of the things that got me there
I think, if only I had fought them

Don't fret, ya'll - I'm good now, because the song, and my story, ends like this:

When I go down
I lift my eyes to you
I won't look very far
Cause you'll be there
With open arms
To lift me up again
To lift me up again

they're out!

It rained all day here on Saturday.

Sunday it was sunny, but I went on my road trip.

When I returned on Monday, it hit me that it was spring, because every yard I passed was blanketed in flowers...these flowers:

hrmn...now what?

This past weekend I took a few steps in trying to figure out where I'm supposed to be headed after graduation. I know that I won't really know for a while (part of this is that I don't have a graduation date established, just "by the end of 2007"), but I'm trying to weigh my options and send out some feelers for some of the directions I am feeling nudged to head.

For this past weekend, that meant two things:
1. Inquire for the MFC researcher I'm interested in if he anticipates any openings for a postdoc anytime soon. I sent this email on Friday evening.

2. Visit one of the cities I'm thinking of going. Why? To get a sense of the place. And...maybe get a blast of lightning saying, "YES!! This is the place to go!! Now, find someone to work with here!!" (I might add that I realize this probably seems like a totally backwards way of selecting a job - at least a postdoctoral research position - to first figure out to which city one wants to go and then figure out if there's a job there. As my boss told me once, the only reason to do that is for family or boyfriend/fiance/husband. I assure you, that is not the case in my situation.)

So, I went to the city yesterday, which was sort of a disaster because I had planned on leaving my house much earlier than I did but that ended up not happening for reasons beyond my control, and as it turned out I hadn't really put much thought into how much time I would have in the city, and all the things I had put on my mental list of stuff to do would have taken at least 7 more hours than I had allotted myself. Well - the getting to the city and doing what I hoped was a disaster. The visit was actually very much NOT. I got a lot of very good, very tough thinking done on the way there and while I was exploring some of the area. No bolts of lightning, though. I did, however, really, really, really, really, really, really appreciate the fact that this city does NOT have insane, falling apart roads like Pittsburgh does. And people also know how to drive there, unlike in Pittsburgh. And it's clean, unlike in Pittsburgh. (I don't hate Pittsburgh, but...it's got a lot of stuff that really bugs me. Some cities are just not for certain people!)

Then I came home this morning. More thinking on the way back. More thinking as I walked to the bus to go to work. One thing I had gleaned from my visit was that regardless of the choice I make - to move there or to move somewhere else or do something totally different than what I'm thinking now - it, in a sense, doesn't matter. It's not like the world will end because I make a choice that is less than perfect. And my life will not be ruined if I make a bad choice, either! So if I go to this city and then it turns out to be a lousy idea...well, that's it. It was a lousy idea, and I accept that fact and move on. (Perhaps easier said than done, but still the thought makes me feel much less anxious about my choice.) And suddenly on the way to the bus I thought, "Well, then GO! There's nowhere else you want to go, so why don't you just go and do it! And it's not a bad choice, anyhow!"

Hm. ...Okay!

And then I got to work and turned on my computer and checked my email and read...

"My lab is pretty full right now, so no, I don't anticipate any openings in the next few months."

Oh. Bleh.

Well, that negates that option unless I somehow decide to beat a dying horse (which I have realized recently I'm pretty good at doing!) and figure out a way to convince this researcher that I can write a grant and get funding for a project of my own to do in his lab. And - I'm not being low-self-esteemy here! - the chances of me actually getting a grant for this type of research coming from the field I'm in is very, very, very low, so that does not seem like a very wise course of action. My efforts would be best spent somewhere else.

And so...what does it mean? Shall I search for other opportunities in the city? I'm sure there are lots, and many that are much more related to my current work and expertise. Do I look somewhere else? The interesting thing is that besides the MFC research, right now absolutely nothing grabs me. Not like when I was in undergrad and looking for grad schools - I was passionate about HIV, and that guided my choices. But I'm not passionate about HIV now, and I don't feel passion for anything except bacteria making electricity. And this is both frustrating (I'm not even at Square One; I'm at Square ZERO!) and comforting (I can do...anything! Wow - that's a lot of options!). But not very informative.

...I suppose that in conclusion I shall say...stay tuned to see this story progress and discover the exciting conclusion in a matter of (I hope!) months...! Oh, and if you have any passion to pass on, please do.

:-)

relient k

As I said to my friend Leeann yesterday when I arrived at the gym and she asked how I was doing because I looked 'not okay'..."It's been a...year." Indeed, life has been full of very interesting and semi-overwhelming occurrences since January 1. Ups and downs, of course, but I remember commiserating with my coworker one day after we both encountered weird, weird, weird results in the lab during the last week of January - and she said, "2007 is not going so well."

Er...I hope this isn't sounding too melancholy...!

At any rate, it had been a long day of thinking and fixing and working with people, but after some biking and ellipticaling (since the chiropractor says running is not such a good idea for my back, hips, and knees), I headed home and felt rather better. And as I sat down on the couch to start working on my home-work (that is...work I needed to do at home to "turn in" to my boss today), I popped an old favorite CD into my new laptop. I was craving some of the comfort and truth of "Getting Into You" from Relient K's 2003 album Two Lefts Don't Make a Right...But Three Do. According to the artists, nobody knows them, but I've known them for a long time, so it's hard for me to tell if that's really true. Anyhow, if you don't know them and you have the sense of humor that made you smile when you read the album title (since...it's true!), check them out (and while you're there, make sure you listen to "Must Have Done Something Right" - even if you're a bitter single person, you'll probably smile because this guy's in-love-ness is so cute and genuine!). Oh, and they also have lots of fun things to say about the 1980's, so if you like the 80's...there you go.

What I appreciate about Relient K's music is that it's not about big, crazy drama. It's about everyday things that happen. When there's a song about "I'm mad at you!" it isn't, "...And my life is ruined and it's all your fault and you'd better come apologize or you'll be sorry." It's "Hm, getting along with people is real tough. Real and tough. I feel angry. You probably do, too. I feel worse thinking that I made you angry. We're both wrong. There's a lot of stuff that needs to get worked out between us and within me." ...Sounds like healthy, well-adjusted, thoughtful people approaching a problem in a logical way. And I guess that's why I couldn't stop with just the one song I had set out to hear last night; I listened to two of their albums. And if you know me and my musical inclinations, you'll know it is quite abnormal for me to spend that much time listening to something. I'm much more of a peace and quiet type.

But - good thing I wasn't last night, because after the music (oh, and a nice cup of cappuccino), I felt much, much relieved of many of the stresses that have been bogging me down lately. It's not that the music fixed my problems. No...I guess it rather reminded me that bad things occur to everyone and we all have to select our way to deal with the bad things and sometimes it takes a long time for bad things to get fully worked out; and that good things also occur; and that the year hasn't been that bad; and that I can thrive under the grace I've received and live a much more joyful life if I recall to extend grace to others.

...Deeeeeep, eh? All that from a band whose songs say stuff like "Ohio has the flavor of a water chestnut."

would you like a picture?

Okay, okay, here we go. I have so, so, so much to catch everyone up on! And that means I need to start back in March...

March is Spring Break time, although that means very little in the world of graduate students. In general that has meant one of two things for me as a grad student: 1) there is more time to work in the lab because classes are canceled for that week OR 2) it is absolutely an oxymoron to say it's "Spring Break" when we grad students have to teach the med students during that week because med student Spring Break is the week afterwards!

Since I've finished my teaching responsibilities as a student and I really didn't feel the need to spend more time in the lab, I chose to take a break. Only for a couple days, though. I drove about an hour southeast of Pittsburgh to Linn Run State Park where I had rented a rustic cabin. When they said "rustic" I figured it would mean REALLY rustic. Electricity, sure that was to be expected, and I had been told that there would be a refrigerator, also. But I was quite surprised when I stepped in the door and found this:We're talking full kitchen here, folks. No running water, but there's a stove with an oven. And, although it didn't make it into the picture, not the tiny dorm-room refrigerator I was expecting but a full-size fridge/freezer just like I have in my apartment! Too bad I didn't know about all of this before because I had worked really hard to pack food for two days that could fit in a tiny space and be made using nothing but...a coffeemaker (one of my secret talents is coffeemaker cooking... They're good for much more than liquid. Mwa-hahaha!).

Despite the nice kitchen, the remainder of the cabin was much more rustic. There was a wood-burning stove (with which I had a fight because I couldn't get the fan to work the night I got there and I felt unsafe letting the fire burn without it so I was quite a bit cold and wore as many clothes as I could over my pajamas) and a dining set with table and wood benches and a connected room with a bed and a bench and night stand. And there was a mouse. How much more rustic can you get?

Other than the cold, which was quite annoying (I wore a hat most of the time), the place was wonderful. If I stepped out of the door, I walked onto a covered cement porch with a picnic table and a lovely view of the little "run."I could even hear the river/creek gurgling when I was sitting in the cabin - it was that loud!

While I was at the park, I did some hiking and reading and thinking. It was very nice to get away from the many stresses of life and worry about more basic things like keeping the fire going. And it was also very nice to see some natural beauty, even in the midst of a winter that came late but wanted to extend itself as long as possible. Due to the weirdness of the weather, the waterfall I hiked to was not completely frozen, but it was mostly frozen.After two nights in the cabin, I packed up and hopped back into the car to get back to the city for my appointment with the chiropractor. I definitely want to go back to my little "home" in the woods!

we don't know a lot

Man, oh man, this surely isn't what I feel like blogging about. I feel like I've been in a chronically bad mood for the entirety of April. That may be my imagination, but it's true today, and so it makes all the previous days seem like they were probably like this, also. "Bad mood" isn't quite the accurate term - I've actually been in a GOOD mood most of the time, but I fret a lot. I am filled with many, many questions, mostly about my life and where I'm going and when. I am stressed about not having answers. And I want to spew it all here right now, but I think that's probably rather unwise. Plus, it's not very nice to read stuff like that, is it? :-)

So, what I'm going to be blogging about today is not that at all. It is about immunology.

At the end of March I attended a meeting about HIV for work (many lovely pictures are waiting to be transferred to the correct computer and posted onto this very blog; promise! Oh, and they're not pictures of HIV or any of that boring work-related stuff - they're of the area surrounding the conference center, which was anything but boring and was also very beautiful). One thing I am always amazed by when I leave an HIV meeting is how much scientists don't know. Not just about the HIV virus itself, not even about the immune response against HIV. Scientists just plain don't know much about the immune system period! It seems that the more we (meaning the scientific community immersed in HIV research) learn, the more we find we don't know. And while the microbial fuel cell is my number one choice for a future career at the present moment, the workings of the immune system is a close second.

I am guessing (hoping, since you all out there will have to read this!) that you don't have to be a scientist to find it interesting that depending on the origin of the "instructor" cells that interact with blood cells to tell them to fight disease, the fighting cells go fight in different places. That probably needs a bit more explanation. Okay... Basic immunology: we all have a bunch of cells floating around in our bodies doing different stuff. "Instructor" cells (technically called "dendritic cells") have the main duty of picking up stuff, figuring out if it's bad, and then telling certain blood cells (e.g. T cells) that the bad thing is there and they should fight it when they run into it. What's new and neat in the field of immunology is that it kind of appears that not only do the instructors say "Bad thing exists!" but "Bad thing exists in a certain location - now GO THERE and attack it!" For example, if you take an instructor cell from the skin and mix it with a fighting cell, the fighting cell goes to the skin. But, if you take and instructor cell from the intestine and mix it with the same fighting cell...now the fighting cell goes to the intestine! It doesn't matter where the fighting cell comes from, all that seems to matter is the instructor cell.

I think that's pretty cool. The rather troubling part is that nobody knows why any of this happens or even if it happens in any other body parts than the intestine and the skin. I happen to really like the intestinal immune system, so I don't really care, but surely it would be intriguing to find out if this happens in other tissues (and if not...why not!?). Did you ever realize that nobody even really knows the details about how to properly stimulate cells to fight off the bacteria, viruses, and parasites that try to attack your body every day.

Yet the body does it quite well. For even though I was sick last week for a few days...the rest of the 360 days of the year I've been fine! Truly that means on only ONE day a respiratory virus was able to get past all the barriers my body has up - and that's a protection success rate of greater than 99.7%! (Hm, come to think of it, that's way better than most birth control methods... Not that this means anything, and not that pregnancy is something you "catch" like a cold! I'm just saying...the body does a good job!)

Oh my, now this is going somewhere I never intended. I think I'll stop and get back to work!

So...moral of the story: we scientists might seem (and certain ones will attempt to convince people of this!) like we're smart and all that, but really, we have NO idea.

got sick

Oogh... Bleh. I figured it out on Tuesday: that headache that wouldn't go away and the aches in my body and the severe exhaustion... These were not signs that I had eaten something bad or that I had played too hard in the hockey game Saturday. No, indeed: I was SICK.

So I spent Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and half of Saturday in bed.

Yick. It's just a bad cold, and I'm feeling much, much better now, but I think I'll be hacking up whatever is still stuck down in my lungs for quite some time, if the people around me who have been sick recently are any indication!

Anyhow - sorry for no posts. This time I had a good excuse!

all a matter of perspective

The old adage is true: I'm my own worst critic.

Last fall I started testing out a new technique to try to suck some more information out of the precious cells I collect in my research. The snazzy technique of intracellular cytokine staining allows me to look at what types of cells are making what molecules that are important for immunity.

I obtained a protocol, tried it out a few times, and it appeared to work on my test cells. Then I tried it out on cells that actually mattered - experimental cells. And that was not so good. I went back and looked at my original data on the test cells...and it kind of looked like the stuff I thought was good wasn't really so good after all. I compared my "good" to what others said was "good" in their systems, and mine was decidedly BAD.

So...thus began much fretting and fussing. I tried everything I could think of to get my little cells to be good. Was I doing the technique wrong? Were the cells just misbehaving? Was I going crazy?

I finally broke down and Asked For Help. Guys dread the Ask For Directions horror; I don't mind asking for directions, but asking for help with an experiment...admitting that I can't for the life of me figure out what's going on and the only remaining possibility is that I myself am the problem - that I don't like. But I did, and I asked the person who I knew would be able to give me a clear and accurate answer but who is also one of the harshest scientific critics I know. That is to say...if your stuff isn't 100% perfect, she'll tell you. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how low or high your self-esteem is and how fragile or solid your ego is.

I don't have much to say about my self-esteem or ego qualities, but after meeting with Said Scary Person (actually she's a real sweet person, not scary) yesterday, I can say one thing definitively: there is nothing wrong with my technique nor my cells nor my results! I can do the technique, the cells have little bits of what I'm searching for, and those little bits are all I should expect.

Fancy that. All that worrying and thinking I was wrong, and through it all...everything was okay. Hm.

It is good.

making money from home

Joelle gets bored sitting at home all the time. As much as I let her run around the apartment when I'm home, there are still many days when she has to spend at least 9 hours in her kennel. (I might note, however, that she quite enjoys her kennel and chooses to sit in it even when she has the option to be elsewhere.) At some point in these long hours she has taken to picking up new skills. I'm not sure where she thought of this because we don't have a television at home, so it certainly wasn't from a commercial! Maybe the nameless bunny who came to visit clued her in. Regardless, I caught Joelle practicing to be none other than the Cadbury bunny in the week leading up to Easter! Behold:(Quality isn't so hot...but it's short!)

Seems that Joelle wants to break into show-business and add to the household income after seeing me toil over tax forms.

the best of times, the worst of times

While I was traveling in Europe last summer, our tour guide made a profound statement that has stuck with me. She was in the habit of telling all of us very long and involved stories about the history of the regions we visited. Most people found these periods during our bus rides to sleep, but I found myself listening intently. It was because of this alertness that I was able to catch what she said: She actually never liked history while she was in school, but as she got into the tourism industry and traveled herself, she found that history was fascinating because it told a visitor how the region he or she was in got to be the way it was. And this is precisely what was keeping me awake! History - I could take it or leave it. But, when it came to "How did Hungary get to be Hungary? Didn't it have something to do with settlers from Russia? And wasn't it part of some bigger empire at some point?" I suddenly found that I LOVED history. Basically, I hadn't seen the point of learning all those dates and events back in high school and college, but now I see their significance. I think math is like that for some people, although I suppose math isn't quite as relevant to "everyday" situations like travel as history is.

Regardless, I was further reminded of the significance of history and how time changes one's capacity to comprehend various pieces of knowledge. This friendly reminder came from none other than Charles Dickens. I have a copy of A Tale of Two Cities looking all pretty on my bookshelf, and in the angst and restlessness of the past few weeks I decided to throw aside all books I have that want to make me Think or Learn or Dream and instead pick up one which is simply to entertain (and isn't full of sensuality). Perhaps many would find it odd to read Dickens for pleasure, but that's just how I am.

And I must admit that it's been a real joy to absorb the print on the pages of the old book. I have only read it once before, and that was in 1994 or 95. I see now that this book is a bit like the history "lesson" I received last summer. I KNOW that I read it those many years ago, but I am quite sure I didn't get nearly as much out of it then as I am getting now! Some of it is a better appreciation of the history of the late 1700s (although that can't be the majority of it, because I'm still no history buff!), and some of it is purely that I understand Dickens' language and highly appreciate his use of words and symbols. And no longer are the symbols items I have to store away in my memory bank to recall for an exam later in the semester! No...now, all of the literary wonder of Dickens can be enjoyed simply because it is enjoyable.

Hey...why didn't they teach me that in school?

a little introspection

Okay, here's a post for you all. I must preface it with the fact that the topic on hand is NOT what has been driving me batty for the past several weeks!! It certainly has come up once or twice, but it's merely one of about a million and seventeen other thoughts and priorities and concerns that have been rocking my brain of late. ...So no jumping to conclusions, as I know some of you are wont to do. ;-)

It has come to my attention that relationships are hard. I'm not talking about dating or marriage or any of that romantic stuff. Just plain, old relationships. Friendships. Acquaintance-ships. Being academic or career colleagues. Interacting peaceably with coworkers. Being civil to individuals with poor customer service skills. Relationships are hard because people, unfortunately, aren't perfect. And they're hard because we can't control them, as much as we might try.

It is the "hardness" of relationships that makes me turn up my nose to them. It's not like school, which I comprehend quite well having spent at least 85% of my lifetime in some sort of school: in school, you get a syllabus, you get a text book, you get told precisely what you need to do to get what grade and to succeed. Not so with relationships. Each person is different, each has a different "grading scale," and NOBODY tells you what that grading scale might be. I don't mean that relating with people successfully means one must live up to others' expectations - I am simply saying that there are many, many unknowns. When I meet someone, the interaction doesn't even communicate, "Ah, I see! The goal of interacting with this person is to become friends." Unlike a new course on the first day of school, you don't walk into the meeting of a new person with a long-term vision. (Okay, well, sometimes people DO do that, but in reality there is absolutely no assurance of anything. Maybe the "semester" with this person will last for 2 years. Maybe 2 hours. Maybe 2 minutes!)

As the realization of the work and uncertainty of relationships slowly unfolded in my mind, me in my infinite wisdom declared internally to myself that I would not stand anything that was so full of unknowns. Certainly I would not want to embark on anything so completely complicated! Er...yes, this is a bit ironic coming from a PhD student trying to cure AIDS... Yet before I realized that irony, I realized that the DIFFICULTY of relationships is precisely the POINT of them! Without tough stuff to endure and work through, I don't ever get to know anybody very truly, and nobody else gets to know the real me, and I stay stagnant in my maturity and self-awareness. I am reminded of the classic song: "I am a rock, I am an island."

It is a pity that Rocks are oftentimes hailed as persons greatly to be admired. Those people who are stoic and self-sufficient and serene regardless of the circumstance. You can't hurt them. ...But...Rocks lack that important quality that separates humans from the rest of nature: humanity!

And so...I guess I'll give relationships a chance, even though I'll get an F in them sometimes. Better to go through something that is hard than to be hard. And quite often the most difficult hard thing about relating is - to take another line from the same artists quoted above - "the sound of silence." The whole waiting, wondering, waxing and waning about what's occurring with the alternate half of the relationship pair...that's what really gets me. Ah, me - I do hope that some day I'll be content in NOT knowing EVERYTHING.

sorry

Ugh, I so don't feel like blogging.

Just wanted to tell ya'll that I'm alive and well, just a bit overwhelmed with life and work and things. I have muchos pictures to share with you, but it's going to have to wait until I finish sorting out a variety of odds and ends.

Cheers!

chiropractor

I've always been wary of going to a chiropractor. I know too many people who seem to be "addicted" to getting adjustments, and I didn't want to fall into that - having a sense of "I HAVE to go to the chiropractor if I want to feel normal!" And I have to admit I had a bit of a suspicion about how real chiropractic medicine is. I know that's unfair, but sometimes it just seems weird to me that by poking or prodding at this or that, a body part in another location can feel better (even though I believe this to be true!). Furthermore, I have been rather afraid of what a chiropractor would tell me was wrong with me - I had a feeling my many years of sports and running and being tall were not the best things to be doing my knees and back...being that those parts of my body seem to hurt on a semi-regular basis.

Nearly a month ago I moved some way in hockey practice, and I remember feeling "something" and thinking, "That's going to make me hurt for a bit." I can't say what precisely I did - it felt like I had pulled a very thin muscle, or a muscle fiber, if that's possible. Things like this happen to me on and off, and I always feel better within a few days. However, this time I did not feel better. I found that I would hurt quite a bit on the side where the "pull" was. The pain would one day be in my leg, another day in my butt, another day in my back. Some days it hurt so much just to walk. Not debilitating, but certainly noticeable, and that's saying something for me who usually lives by the "Suck it up!" principle.

Finally this week I decided to seek out a chiropractor. You can tell that I was concerned about the pain - concerned enough to override all my reservations about chiropractors! And I was lucky enough to have one suggested by a coworker, and the office is just down the road from work. On Tuesday, after I had made my appointment, the pain wasn't as bad as some days, but I got these incredibly frightening "tingling" sensations across my abdomen while riding the bus! I was kind of afraid that I was going to drop dead at any moment. I was just sitting there, not doing anything, and all of a sudden - OWWWWW! It felt like how I think it would feel to get electrocuted. That happened again on Wednesday. And on Wednesday I went to the chiropractor.

I must admit that I have been very pleasantly surprised. I can understand now why people enjoy going to the chiropractor! I went on Wednesday and again today, and when I walk out of there I feel...so much better. My chiropractor uses a technique based on "trigger points" so basically just massages certain parts of my muscles. I was really astounded that after I told him what hurt, he knew exactly where to apply pressure - and OW did it hurt when he found the spots (but it felt better afterwards).

I'm already feeling better, and I haven't had any more scary abdominal spasms - and that alone is worth it! My health insurance covers a certain number of visits with a co-pay, but I can definitely see now where people would religiously go to their chiropractor even if it cost a substantial amount of money. I am hoping I get better really fast and don't have to make the choice about paying full-price. Regardless, I will enjoy the moment: having just arrived back from the chiropractor 20 minutes ago, I feel quite...blissful.

coffee part 2: the coffee conundrum

It seems that nothing in life is simple. With my growing love of coffee over the past few years came a growing concern for responsible coffee-purchasing practices. I am acutely aware that the way I spend my money has an effect on commerce around the world, particularly with food. If I buy organic, I support organic farming. If I buy local, I support local farming. If I buy fair trade, I support fair trade farming. That "fair trade" thing is a bit if a buzz-word, particularly in reference to coffee. And, like most environmentally-and-socially "responsible" people, I tend to want to support it. It is, wouldn't you agree, the responsible thing to do! Support farming where people get paid good wages and growing and work practices are "good." However, it turns out that it's not that simple.

There are potentially a variety of reasons why the fair trade choice isn't "that simple," but the one I'm going with today springs from a conversation I had with a friend's dad not long after he returned from a medical mission trip to Nicaragua last year. His group spent time tending to the medical needs of people and livestock in the "villages" surrounding a large coffee plantation. Basically everyone there works at the plantation. In fact, the villages are technically located within the confines of the plantation itself (e.g. the land was owned by the plantation owner). The people work from sun-up to sun-down (which, when you're in Nicaragua, is a long period of time thanks to its proximity to the equator) doing the hard labor of tending to the coffee crop. In exchange, they get to live in mud huts and eek out a living. Truly, there's not much opportunity to get away from this lifestyle, so they're rather stuck.

And that's the thing. Yes, the work conditions are awful. Yes, these people are poverty-stricken. Yes, it seems I should stop buying the coffee this plantation forces the people so painfully to produce. But...if I stopped buying the coffee...the people wouldn't have any income. Not only that, they wouldn't even have a place to live! If their plantation gets shut down, these people have absolutely nowhere else to go, no other job to get into, no way of getting to a city to find a new job even if there was a job to get, and no savings to make ends meet in the meantime!

I asked my friend's dad what he thought I should do. He didn't know. I don't know. I suppose the answer is to force all the plantations to stop being so harsh. But is that really possible to accomplish without economic pressure and follow-through - saying, "If you don't change, I won't buy" and then acting upon that promise when change is not made. If that's the solution, then I am responsible for the worsening of living conditions for all the people whom I was attempting to help in the first place with my noble goal! It's a tough situation; it's a coffee conundrum.

coffee part 1

Tuesdays are supposed to be for knitting here on the blog, but being that I feel like I'm taking one step forward and three back with that pink lace thing, I'm going to dedicate today do something else. Actually, the pink lace isn't going that awfully. If I work on it at home, all goes smoothly. I got several rows done over the weekend with nary a mis-stitch. But when I pull it out on the bus, something very wrong happens. I knit, knit, knit and get about two rows done on the way into work...and then on the way back home I knit, knit, knit - then realize I have the wrong number of stitches, and that means I messed up two rows ago, so I tink, tink, tink back to where I had started earlier in the morning... Hm... Not too fulfilling.

Yesterday in between my knitting and tinking, I stopped by the grocery store after work because I was utterly out of coffee. Correction: I was utterly out of decaffeinated and/or drinkable coffee. I have a canister of some sort of coffee grounds in the cupboard. The grounds smell pretty good - it's French vanilla, I believe. But man oh man is the coffee that drips from those grounds BAD. Not bad like "I must puke, this stuff is bitter and nasty" - it's just...not good. In fact, as much as I adore the pleasant aroma of vanilla wafting from the coffee pot or mug - the smell of this coffee now turns me completely off. (And yet I drink it...but often with much sugar and/or milk).

Perhaps the culprit is that I am becoming a coffee snob. I am not sure I believe this to be even possible, because I don't really drink all that much coffee. Maybe 3 or 4 cups a week. Certainly not even a daily habit. I have, however, progressed from where I was four years ago, when I enjoyed only the smell of the coffee but never the taste. Now...I actually like the taste (except for that bad coffee in the cupboard)! I can thank my roommates for this transformation over the course of three years. Lori used to buy the most aromatic coffees ever, and on Saturday and Sunday mornings she's brew a pot and the whole house would have that "the best part of waking up" smell that gets the people in the commercials out of bed. For the first year or so I would rush to the pot, pour out a cup, and savor the aroma. Then I'd take a sip and realize, "Oh. It doesn't taste like it smells." It was always disappointing. But I suppose I thought maybe if I drank enough of it, the taste would catch up with the aroma...because I'd drink it! Again, milk and sugar really helped. For many, many months this went on - I'd force down a cup once or twice a week in hopes that some day the taste would improve.

One day Lori bought a coffee grinder, and my life would forever be changed. I cannot be 100% sure that it was the grinder or the beans themselves, but once Lori started freshly grinding the coffee before it went into the coffeemaker basket, the coffee became a different beast altogether. I recall drinking my first cup of this stuff and thinking, "This is SMOOTH." I had really no concept of what people meant by "smooth coffee" other than hints of it from the first pot made from a freshly opened bag of grounds. I don't know if I can accurately describe the difference, either. It's not that the aroma matches up with the taste, it's just that...it doesn't MATTER. The coffee is that good.

When the roommates and I parted ways, I settled into my own apartment and acquired a coffeemaker that someone was getting rid of down the hall at work. But I did not have a grinder. I thought about getting one time and time again, but I thought, "This is ridiculous! The grinder can't be the difference. We probably were just getting better coffee, and I'm more used to coffee now." So I bought grounds. I found that the coffee I bought from the cafes and specialty stores, which they ground at check-out, were much better than the grounds I bought from the grocery store. But was it really worth spending waaaay more money on those "snobby" coffees? Certainly not.

However. Yesterday I found myself with absolutely no options but the gross-tasting grounds in the cupboard. I had scraped the very last grounds from all the premium coffees into the basket a few days earlier. I made a cup of the bad stuff, drank it contemplatively while waiting for the bus, and then resolved after a long day at work that I would just go buy some of the semi-good stuff. Something flavored, maybe Starbucks or the local grocery "good stuff" from Market District. But when I arrived at the store, I couldn't find anything that suited my fancy. Nothing was flavored (I do so love the flavored coffee... The smell, even if it does not match the taste, gets me every time), nothing was decaffeinated. A couple bags of stuff met my requirements, but they were whole bean, and having no grinder, that was useless. I walked up and down the coffee aisle and stopped at the "special coffee" section...sigh...the expensive stuff. My eye was caught by a picture of the Michigan mitten on the front of one bag. "Michigan Sweet Cherry" is what it read.

In all honesty, cherry-flavored coffee does absolutely nothing for me. However, I was entranced by the Michigan reference, and I investigated further. When I read "Mackinac Island Fudge," I was taken. Ahhh...Michigan... I had no idea what that sort of coffee would taste like (but I was pretty sure it would not, in fact, taste like real Mackinac Island fudge!), but simply thinking about Mackinac Island, that motorize-vehicularless summer resort in the middle of the lake between the Upper and Lower Peninsulas, the destination all middle-school children of Kentwood Public Schools waited and waited and waited for until the last few months of eighth grade...I was pretty sure that would make a good cup of coffee.

But. It was whole bean.

But...it said MICHIGAN!

But...it's whole bean.

But - it's made in Grand Rapids! What we had here was Schuil Coffee (nice Dutch name, wouldn't you say?), which, I regret to admit, I hadn't really been familiar with while I lived in Grand Rapids. ...That is, of course, the way it is usually, isn't it? Don't know what your own city has to offer until you leave!

So. I bought the coffee. And a grinder.

This morning I near scared Joelle out of her fur as I ground up a couple scoops. After a few minutes through the coffeemaker...it was ready. I finished my toast and sat down to see what I would get.

It was smooth. It did not taste like Mackinac Island fudge, but it was smooth.

That's one good cup of coffee.

...If anyone would like the remainder of a canister of mediocre coffee grounds that is supposed to taste like French vanilla, I have one for the taking...

funny bunnies

Having the Boy Bunny at the apartment has convinced me that I will not get a second rabbit unless he/she can live with Joelle in the same cage and they are best buddies. Double the work is just not working for me! But, it's been a real treat to have Boy Bunny be around and get some not-in-the-shelter time. He's going back to the shelter tomorrow.

Both Boy Bunny and Joelle were very effective at amusing me over the weekend. I admit that I tricked him into this the first time by putting a treat inside the empty tissue box, but Boy Bunny kept going back for more, even when there wasn't a treat awaiting him.

note the despair.com box in the background, indicating how boy bunny must have felt.

Joelle has certainly been known to get her head stuck in a box or two, also, but this weekend she mastered another type of packaging. I was putting some things away in the kitchen and listening to what she was up to in the living room, and all sounded fine. But as I continued to listen and thought about what I was hearing, the sound of plastic being nudged was going on for far too long for Joelle to really be just pushing around a plastic bag as I had assumed. Thus I investigated and found...Joelle has this thing for apples. (Don't ask why there was a bag of apples sitting in the middle of the living room... The bag of oranges sat there for a week and were fine!) Having eaten through the plastic bag and chewed up at least 1/8 of the apple, Joelle certain staked a claim to that particular apple...

What funny bunnies!