Come visit more often, but next time leave the germs in Little Rock.

Ho hum, I guess I should blog to keep certain people happy (you know who you are). The bad news: I've spent the last 6 days or so doing a lot of whining about how bad my throat hurts and coughing my lungs up - thanks, Leah. The good: I got to hang out with Leah for the first time in like, years it seems.

Other happenings:
-Jonathan came to visit last Wednesday till this morning. It was fun hanging out and was a good prelude to this summer!
-I ate Asian food three times in the last week. That's pretty abnormal for me.
-I skipped church without having a good excuse for the first time in a long while today. It was kind of refreshing actually.
-We are T-11 days till I leave for a week in Puerto Rico. To say that I'm excited would be the understatement of 2009 so far.
-The weather lately has made my soul happy. The pollen explosion caused by said weather has made my allergies not-so-happy. I'll gladly make that trade any day though. Bring on the flonase!

Darwin Day?

People in the biology field FREAK OUT about Darwin. Apparently tomorrow is Darwin's 200th birthday. Some of the professors are so excited about it that they started talking about it last semester, so I am not surprised that my department is having a birthday party for him. Here's an exerpt of an email I just got:

"We will be going over activities for the semester as well as celebrating Darwin's 200th birthday!...As part of the celebration, there will be an evolution quiz game with prizes. And if you can, please bring fun Darwin-related food items to help celebrate."

I'm really curious what people will come up with for "fun Darwin-related food items," but I don't intend on going to find out. I'm such a biology rebel. Just for fun, what Darwin-related food item would you come up with? I'm thinking "Galapogos goulash."

I'm not going to name this post Ice Storm '09.

Look y'all! I'm updating my blog! I thought I'd do my obligatory ice storm 2009 photo post. The first picture is the tree in the corner of our driveway after if fell across the road. If you look closely, you can see the electric and cable wires to our house that it took out in the process...thus the beginning of a cold few days at the West Ave. house. Amazingly, we just happened to be on the front porch when it fell. Freaky and awesome all at the same time. Also notice the tree in the top right corner of the picture that is creeping down, more on that one later.

The next Center St. between our house and the university. It was mostly impassable for a few days due to all the trees blocking the road, let alone the inch or two of ice coating it.

Next is a nice view of Old Main from the window in the lab where I work. The trees in this picture are mostly fine, but Old Main lawn took quite a beating.

Another view of Center St. between Hill Ave. and Duncan Ave.

Some crazy looking ice-covered berries.

Remember that tree I told you about in the first picture? Here's the end result. Yeah, that's the street in front of our house.

The finished product.

And my fish miraculously stayed alive even though the temperature of the house got down to 34 degrees!

Lately.

Here are a few things I've been up to lately.

Went to the Arkansas vs. Tulsa football game with Cara, Laura, and Jordan - basically 3 of my favorite people. The picture below was taken from our seats, which were right in the heart of the Tulsa section. I was a bit skeptical about these seats at first, but it ended up being a blast (probably because Arkansas won and we were able to act a fool in the middle of a bunch of angry people holding hurricane warning signs.) Thanks for the tickets Mr. Dean!

Our walk home from the game was beautiful. This was the peak weekend for fall color in Fayetteville, gorgeous!

Last Sunday, I attended a banquet in honor of the Indian holiday of Diwali.  Apparently it's a really big deal to Indian people. I have some Indian friends at work, so a bunch of us (as well as other non-Indian people I work with) went.  And we all wore Indian clothes.  My friend Brenda hooked me up with an awesome male Indian garment (it was actually Nepali, but no one noticed) that she just apparently had laying around.  Indian clothes are comfy, I could definitely get used to them.  The banquet was pretty sweet.  There was lots of Indian music and dancing, some funny clips of Bollywood movies and commercials, and basically the best Indian food I've ever eaten...it was seriously awesome.  The first picture is me with my friend Sharath, who works down the hall from me.

And this is Carmen and Payel, both of whom work in my lab.

The Grim Reality

Fair warning: This is a Debbie Downer post.

So last night I was aimlessly browsing facebook for a long time, and I randomly came across a facebook group dedicated to the death of one of my former students. I had no idea he had died.  He was actually one of my favorite students I've ever had- super nice, hardworking, genuinely interested. I could've definetly been friends with him. After some detective work (searching the archives of the newspaper in his hometown), I found out that back in July he lost control of his vehicle and ran off the road into some trees and was thrown out.

Sometimes I forget that people my age die.  Freak accidents happen.  Life is transient.  I suppose it's a good reminder, but it sucks that such a great human being is gone.

Anectdotes from Sunday School

One of my favorite things about hanging out with a group of 5-7 year olds is the funny things they say or do.  Here are some of my favorites from this morning:

Kid: "We went in a cave once and it was like 50 feet tall.  Mommy said that's about 13 daddies."

While they were coloring-

Me: So what are your favorite songs these days?

Kid #1: Hosanna!

Kid #2: (named another Christian song, I don't remember what it was)

Annoyed Kid #3: Do I have to say a Jesus song?

Me: Of course not!

Kid #3: Ok then, mine is Free Ride with Lightning McQueen. (I assume it's from the movie Cars)

At the beginning of the Bible lesson-

Me: Ok, let's pray. Dear God, thank you for letting us be here, and help us learn more about you. Amen.

Kid: Gee, that was short.

Sing to the moon.

I'm might be more overwhelmed right now than I ever have been.  Not by work, or life, or responsibilities....by music.  The pace at which I'm getting new music right now is much faster than the rate at which I can actually listen to it all.  I think it's safe to say that I'm probably getting on average about 4 or 5 new albums per week.  There are several reasons for this. 

1. The advent of Ruckus (and my subsequent knowledge of how to free my Ruckus songs from the oppression of the licenses they bear).

2. Mojo, a program that lets you browse the iTunes libraries of other computers on your network and download the songs to your computer.  This has made for some ravenous music sharing with the roomies.

3. Friends making mp3 cds for me.

4. New releases from some of my favorite bands.

That being said, here is a list of albums I have fallen in love with lately.  If you are cool, you will like these albums too.

-New Surrender by Anberlin

-The Sparrow and the Crow by William Fitzsimmons

-You are My Sunshine by Copeland

-For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver

-Conor Oberst (self-titled)

-For All This by The Early November

-and there are others but I'm writing this at the end of a long day of work and my mind is going blank.

What a wonderful thing to be overwhelmed by.