Amazing Weekend

This weekend the weather has been beautiful, so we have spent a lot of time outside. Saturday morning Hope, Daniel, me, and Jackson walked to the park. There's a little pond that's completely frozen over so Daniel took Jackson to the edge and let him walk on the ice. It was so funny! He slid all over the place. There are also geese everywhere and Jackson was dying to chase them. There was a softball field that was completely fenced in, so we took Jackson in there. A whole flock of geese were sitting in the outfield. We took off Jackson's leash and he ran full speed towards the flock of geese. They all scattered and honked really loud. We played fetch until he could barely stand anymore. I love taking him to the park for a long walk because then he's tired the whole rest of the day. When he's tired, he's not being obnoxious or chewing things up or getting into trouble.

Later that night, we threw a birthday party for Daniel's fraternity brother Jackson. We have never had so many people over to our house. It was completely full. I think Jackson (the dog) was really overwhelmed. He wasn't jumping on anyone, or even excited. He was almost scared of all the people. We sang happy birthday, and had cake. Some people (I won't say who) got very sick and ended up sleeping on our bathroom floor. Everyone had a great time anyways. It was a blast. Our wonderful roommate Eric stayed up until 7am to make sure that everyone was okay and his girlfriend even cleaned the kitchen for us. When we woke up the kitchen was clean and there were sheets in the washing machine.

This morning I wanted to take Jackson to the dog park. We've never been, and it sounded like a lot of fun. Unfortunately, there aren't any really near us. We drove about 20 minutes away and when we got there, I was really surprised. There were 20-25 other dogs and their owners inside a small fenced area. When we got inside, we let Jackson off his leash and he took off. For 45 minutes, he just ran. He chased other dogs, and other dogs chased him. It was so fun to watch them all. There were a couple little chihuahuas all the way up to a 5 month old mastiff puppy. The mastiff was absolutely gorgeous! There were 3 other black labs there, and one was a little 3 month old that had just been adopted from the Dumb Friends League! We got to talk to other owners about their dogs and pet lots of other dogs. It was a blast. And after about 45 minutes, Jackson was exhausted. We knew he was exhausted when he sat down for the first time. He passed out asleep in the car and he's been sleeping the whole rest of the day. I definitely want to go again. The people and the dogs were so nice.

Loving Life!!

Well everything is going splendidly. My classes are going well, I love my new job, and I'm having a blast with my roommates.

First, classes. I took my first midterms in two of my three classes and they both were very easy. I got a 91% in physiology! I can't remember the last time I got an A on a test in a science class. It just doesn't happen very often to me, or anybody. And the average wasn't even really high on the test. So I'm way above the curve. I haven't gotten my genetics test back yet, but I think I did really well in that too. The third class I'm taking, Analysis of Equilibrium Systems/ Chemistry is a total joke. I attend it about half the time because every time I go, I feel like I'm sitting in on a high school chemistry class. It's just a waste of my time. I was worried about keeping up with my classes with a job, but so far it's going really well.

Second, my new job. I've had two weeks there, and every time I go I love it. The people there are so nice, everyone is relaxed and casual so I don't feel intimidated at all. I'm learning so much about laboratory procedures and genetics. Yesterday Judy (a Ph.D.) taught me how to count cells. I know it sounds easy, but it's not. There's a little grid you put under the microscope that helps you count accurately, and then you have to do a bunch of calculations. Anyways, she taught me thoroughly how to use it. And when I made a mistake, the first thing she would say is "that's fantastic! that's how you learn" so I didn't feel bad at all. It would have been so easy for her to set it up for me, tell me to count, and then do the calculations herself. But she didn't. She is committed to helping me learn. So I really feel like I'm contributing to the lab and earning my money. Oh, and I got my first pay check in over 6 months. That was nice too :-)

Finally, life in general. Living with Hope and Eric is even better than I thought it would be. Just about every evening we cook dinner together, we sit together to eat, we talk about classes and friends, and life. Hope and I bake cookies, banana bread, and lots of other yummy goodies. Pretty much every weekend night and some weekday nights we go out. Last weekend we all went to see Avatar and out to dinner. We also go grocery shopping and run errands together quite often. Last Wednesday we went to Starbucks and helped Hope brainstorm ideas for a scene she had to write (she's a theatre major). Last night we all collected in the kitchen and made smoothies (with a couple shots of rum for good measure lol) and danced to Lady Gaga. And that was a weeknight. Hope and Eric play with Jackson and help us take care of the house. It's absolutely perfect. I love college.

Misogynistic Article in the DU Clarion

Read this article that was published in our school newspaper:

http://issuu.com/DUClarion/docs/1.12.10

The article is on pages 8/9 and is entitled "7 women you meet at DU." This article has caused a

lot of controversy on campus. A group of students made a facebook group describing the article

as mysogynistic and calling for the resignation of the editors and the author. After about 5 days,

the author eventually did resign. The editor posted a very unapologetic apology that was more

of an explanation and defense of the article. The author also defended himself by claiming the

article was supposed to be satirical and was never meant to be taken seriously.

Most students, especially women, were unsatisfied with that explanation and continued to post

comments on the online version of the article. They had to take it down because of the comments

it generated, so the only place you can find it now is the link I posted.

To see the apology and resignation from the author, go to

http://www.duclarion.com/opinions/letter-from-the-author-regarding-seven-women-you-meet-at-du-1.1076698

To read the apology from the editor go to:

http://www.duclarion.com/letter-from-the-editor-regarding-stuart-cobb-s-seven-women-you-meet-at-du-1.1012485

And to read an awesome article about the whole controversy by my friend Nate, go to

http://www.duclarion.com/opinions/letter-to-the-editor-mocking-gender-stereotype-backfires-1.1076696

I am kind of surprised at the response that's been generated. I really don't like the article at all, but I don't think that the resignation of the editors or the author is necessary. I think they made a terrible mistake, and they have definitely learned their lesson. Like Nate said in his article, it was more a mistake of terrible satire than actual misogyny. Cobb, the author, didn't make it obvious enough that the whole thing was sarcastic. I think the article is more than insulting to women- it's insulting to our entire University. What does it say about DU that the only women that go here are easy sluts who are skating through life on Daddy's checkbook? I think that's insulting to everybody that attends DU. Anyways, this article has caused a lot of students to be very upset and I wanted to put in my two cents. I'm sure it'll blow over soon enough. I wonder how long it will take before Stuart Cobb can get a date. I'm sure that will take longer than a few weeks.

Work and Weekend

I had my first day of work on Friday, and I learned a lot. My first impression: they are extremely laid back and casual. My second impression: they have LOTS of money! When I got there, my supervisor, Laura, came down to get me and show me up to the lab. The first floor is the clinic (where they see patients) and the upper floors are the research labs. She was wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap- you see what I mean by casual. We went up to the 5th floor and she showed me around the lab. It is huge! They have probably 15 benches and lots of little rooms off to the side as well. She showed me all the fancy machines they have. When I worked at Sun Health, one of my jobs was to extract DNA from blood. This takes about 3 full days of work. At NJH, they have a machine that does the entire process! They have so much equipment and the latest technology. I was introduced to the research assistants, and the PhDs and MDs. I was introduced to about 8 PhD and MDs. That's how big the lab is. Every single person is under 40- even the PhDs. I would bet that 90% of them are under 30 even. The whole time she introduced me to everyone, they would joke around and it seemed like they all got along so well. Everyone treated each other like peers. It was hard for me to distinguish who was the supervisor and who was the supervisee (if that's a word). I was also surprised that nobody was wearing lab coats.

Each person told me a little about what they are working on. NJH deals mostly with respiratory illnesses, and that was consistent with what I heard. Some of them were working on epigenetics which is a field of genetics that looks at why some genes are expressed and others aren't. For example, me and my sister have the exact same genes- so why is it that one of us could develop diabetes or cancer, and the other wouldn't? It's environmental, and they're researching how the environment affects how genes are expressed. They do a lot of work on mice, so I imagine I will be as well. They clip the tails of newborns and use that to genotype all of them. They also do lots of autopsies of mice and work with lung tissue and peripheral blood too. I can already tell I am going to learn so much and I can hardly wait.

The part I was most nervous about was scheduling, and it worked out perfectly! I am working Mondays 2-6 and Fridays 10-5. That's about 10 hours a week which is exactly what I wanted. It seemed that they have had a student in the lab before, so I feel a little better knowing that they've worked with someone at my level before. I told Laura that I've done ELISAs, Western Blots, PCRs, and that kind of thing before so she said I may be doing some of that. I won't be doing autoclaving or washing dishes because they actually have a whole separate staff that does that!! They just drop off their dirty dishes in a bin and they come back clean and sterilized the next day. It's incredible the resources they have. The lab also has secretaries whose sole responsibility is ordering supplies and keeping track of the money coming in and going out.

After my first day of work, Daniel, Hope, and I packed up and we drove up to the mountains. Daniel has a fraternity brother, Erik, whose parents own a condo in Breckenridge (his Dad also happens to be a professor in the business school). It's within walking distance of the ski resort. We drove up in crazy traffic so it took us a while. I think everybody was taking advantage of the long weekend to go skiing. Once we got up there, Erik's girlfriend Veronica was making dinner so we all ate together. Some other friends from DU met us up there as well. They were people that I had met before, but don't hang out with regularly. It was fun to get to know them better and make some more friends. Hope and I drank a lot of wine and we ran to the hot tub and hung out there with our wine for a while. It is very uncomfortable to walk to a hot tub in 13 degree weather! I went to bed fairly early, perhaps due to my alcohol consumption, but everyone went to bed relatively early anyways. We had breakfast this morning together and all the guys went skiing while the girls went shopping. Around 3 we all went to this Mexican restaurant where they have $1 tacos and $3 wing baskets during happy hour. The guys were very excited about $1 tacos lol. So now we're back in Denver and recovering from our mountain adventure. Hope is at a party, Daniel is hanging out with some other fraternity brothers, and I'm enjoying the empty house :-)

I am going to really enjoy this long weekend. So far, it's been great!

No Insulation?

Today a guy came to the house to inspect it for energy efficiency. Daniel applied for a government program where you can get the inspection and they will fix everything for free, no matter what is required. They replace light bulbs, insulate around windows and doors, and even replace your refrigerator and other appliances if they're really inefficient. Within an hour of being there he discovered that our basement has NO insulation! NONE! No wonder it's always freezing down there! I can't imagine how much money we are wasting trying to heat the house while it's all just escaping downstairs. What really bothers me is that we didn't know this. We had an inspection of the house before we bought it, why didn't this come up? Isn't that something the inspector would have noticed? I'm sure we would have asked the seller to fix that, or at least Daniel's parents would have taken care of it before we had to endure weeks of weather in the single digits and even below zero. I can't wait to see how much the temperature in our house improves after we get insulation in the basement. And I can't wait to see how much our energy bill goes down! Last month it was almost $150.

Happy!

This week is going so well! I can't pinpoint a reason exactly why. It's probably because I am so relieved that everything is going well with my new job. I don't know what I was so afraid of. The paperwork went smoothly, and yesterday I had a little abbreviated orientation. Every employee has to complete a set of courses and pass a series of tests within 30 days of being hired. I spent 2 hours yesterday morning getting a start. It's information like what to do in case of a fire, your rights in the workplace, sexual harassment, chemical safety, how not to get AIDS, etc. I didn't even mind getting up a little early to go on the one day of the week I usually get to sleep in. I felt so adult getting dressed up and making the morning commute to work. I have barely started and already I feel a sense of independence and pride. I'm so excited for Friday when I will go to the lab and meet all my coworkers. And I'm excited to start earning some money!

School is incredibly boring. I thought all my classes would be super interesting, but so far they're all kind of interesting, but kind of boring. Especially chemistry. According to our syllabus, we are way behind. The topic he covered today was supposed to be last Tuesday. And it's stuff that I learned in high school. So I am bored out of my mind in that class. In high school, I absolutely loved chemistry. It was a challenge, but I loved the sense of accomplishment when I finally got it. The last 2 years I have really changed my mind. Biology is much more interesting to me now. Chemistry seems so abstract and inconsequential compared to how our neurons work and how our cells keep our body going. I'm so excited to see what else I learn working in a Genetics lab at National Jewish.

Life at home just gets better and better. When all four of us are home, I am my happiest. We get along so well and it already feels like we're a little family. We all had dinner together last night- spaghetti, salad, and bread with oil and vinegar. There's always someone to talk to and I'm never lonely. It's almost too good to be true. I'm so happy!!

First day at NJH

I had a fantastic weekend and I feel newly energized for the week ahead. On Friday, I skipped my morning class (great start to the quarter- ugh) and slept in. When I got up, I cleaned the house a bit until Hope got up. It's actually the first time we really saw each other because she's been so busy. We both had rough weeks, so we decided to go do some fun girl stuff together. We went shoe shopping, got manicures, and stopped at a little cafe for a snack. By the time we got home, Daniel was home and Eric was finally up so the four of us spent the evening hanging out. It was so much fun! I LOVE my new roomies :-) All four of us went to some friends' house for beer pong and hookah, though we didn't participate in either activity- I hate beer and I hate smoking. Daniel left early Saturday morning to go skiing with some of his fraternity brothers so I took it upon myself to reorganize all our closets. It made a big difference. We had two big boxes full of stuff to go to goodwill, and I feel like we have a lot more space for storage. Hope and Eric spent the day out to lunch with London friends and then they went shopping for stuff to decorate their rooms and bathroom. That evening the four of us put together this incredible clock. It's made up of 8 1 foot square mirrors arranged in a flower shape overlapping on each other. Then we pasted numbers and dashes in a circle around the edge and put a clock in the very center. It was really scary putting it together because we assembled it with sticky tape. It didn't seem very sturdy, but it's still on the wall right now and it looks amazing. Sunday morning, Daniel Hope and I took Jackson for a walk to the park. It was the first beautiful day we've had in a while so we enjoyed it very much. That wore Jackson out so much he slept the entire rest of the day. Hope and I went to the movies and saw The Young Victoria. We both loved it. I am so happy to have a girl to go do things with! Daniel might go shoe shopping with me, but he would never get a manicure with me and he wouldn't go see The Young Victoria. On Sunday night I pretty much spent the whole night trying to stay calm and prepare for my first day at work.

As monday got closer, I actually calmed down a bit, though I was still really nervous. I woke up extremely early this morning and got ready while everyone else slept. Daniel actually got up and gave me a big hug and wished me luck- encouragement that I really needed. I had a bit of a rough start because I couldn't get the ice off the windshield. I sprayed deicer and scraped it off with my ice scraper. Then as I was driving down our street, I used the windshield wiper fluid to spray the windshield and hopefully get some of the fog off. And I realized that the fluid was instantly freezing to the windshield because it was only about 20 degrees outside. That was a little unproductive and I felt dumb. But once I got on the road, it was only 10 minutes before I was there. I had no idea where I was supposed to go once I got there. I went into the first building I could find, found the first desk with a person there, and asked her where new employees were supposed to go. She gave me excellent directions and I ended up at HR. I filled out a ton of paperwork and within 30 minutes, I was on my way home. Everyone was so nice and I was so relieved to be done with it. From the paperwork I have gleaned that a) I will be working with animals, b) I will be working with blood, and c) if I make some incredible discovery, National Jewish Health will financially compensate me. Like that would ever happen lol. I'm more excited than nervous now so that's a relief.

Week 2 is going to be great! I can tell already :-)

Staying Warm for now

I'm back in Denver and it's full blown winter here! I almost forgot it was winter while I was in Arizona and California. Yesterday it was pretty chilly- in the 20s- and it snowed from about noon all through the night. I shoveled our front walk and attempted to shovel the driveway but the ice had already set in so there wasn't much I could do. I shoveled once at about 3pm, then again about 5pm, and I made Daniel do it again just before bed so it wouldn't freeze on overnight. My back is sore today because of it. Last night the driveway was so icy Daniel couldn't drive on it. He had to back up and get a sort of running start just to park the car. Then this morning we spent 15 minutes brushing the snow and ice off so we could see through the windshield. I hate it when you open the car door and tons of snow falls inside the car and then it melts and you end up with a wet seat. Yuck. And today we'll be lucky if we get above 10 degrees. Which means all that snow will turn to ice. No melting! Growing up in Phoenix, I thought snow was the worst part of winter. But now I realize- it's the ice. Slipping and sliding and falling on your butt and dangerous car accidents and not being able to see through the windshield of your car- it's all due to ice. Despite my complaining, I find the snow absolutely beautiful. When you wake up in the morning and see a couple inches of fresh snow on everything, it's breathtaking. Every tree branch has a dusting of white. And something about snow makes Jackson go nuts! He gets all excited and runs around like crazy. Well, by the weekend we're supposed to be back up to about 50 so it will start melting pretty soon. Hopefully it stays warm enough long enough that all the ice will melt too.

I'm finishing up my first week of class and it's not going as well as I would like. In the past, every quarter I have started off excited about my classes. But not this quarter. Every morning I wake up, I just want to get back in bed. It could be due to the fact that our bedroom is like 50 degrees and I don't want to get out from under the warm covers. But I think it's also because I'm just not thrilled about my classes. And even more so because I'm so incredibly nervous about my job next week. And when it comes down to it, all my stress is about sleep. My least favorite thing in the whole world is waking up early. And by early, I mean before about 9:00. I'm most afraid that I will have to wake up every morning at 6am to go to work before classes start. My first day next Monday I have to be there at 7:30am. With traffic and everything, I have to get up at about 6am. That is torture for me. Realistically, I know that I have the ability to say that I won't work that early. I have class at 9am anyways which means if I worked in the morning I'd have to leave there at 8:30. How much can I get done before 8:30am? So once again I have this irrational fear that is causing me unneeded stress.

My favorite class is physiology. I had the professor a year ago, and I loved her. She is very motherly and sweet and kind, and she also really knows the material. She presents the material in a way that helps us best remember it. She is constantly giving us cues on how to remember something or how best to visualize this or that. And she gives us innumerable tools online to reinforce the lectures. She actually makes little animations with her voice and worksheets that go along for us to review if we want. And she offered to have a little coffee study session every Friday to go over the week's material. She's amazing. And it's probably the most practical class I've ever taken. Most of my classes are very abstract. They talk about things that are important in a background kind of way, but not in real life. This class is entirely about the human body and how it works. I find it fascinating. My other two classes have been sort of interesting. Chemistry so far is boring. We spent an entire hour on SI units. I learned that freshman year of high school. I'm sure it'll pick up soon though.

The rooming situation has been really fun so far. It's awesome living with your best friends. It takes some getting used to. For example, I don't think Eric has ever seen me in my pajamas. But in time it will feel more comfortable. We haven't seen Hope hardly at all though. She has been at school until after 10pm the last two nights. She's been auditioning for a bunch of plays. If she gets a part in one of them, then she'll be very busy and we still won't see her often. But I hope she does because then we can go see her in it.

Last night, Daniel was elected President of Theta Chi Fraternity. Last year I would have been really upset about it, but now I'm very proud of him. He works really hard for the fraternity and I think he is going to do a fantastic job. He has lots of ideas to improve the organization. I just hope it doesn't mean he's so busy he doesn't have time for anything else. It seems like he is already really busy and it's just the first week of the quarter. But I'll help him as much as I can.

California trip

The last 2 weeks have been so crazy! The day after Christmas, Daniel and I drove out to Hollywood with my whole family. I was a little nervous about it to be honest. I wasn't sure about spending 24 hours for 6 days with my whole family. And Daniel and I hadn't had any time to ourselves since before Vegas. I was right to be nervous. It was stressful at times, and completely exhausting. It is nearly impossible to get 10 people from the age of 20 to 75 years old to agree on anything. Where to eat, what to do, what time to get up in the morning…. And to make it all worse was my Dad's terrible attitude. Every time something went a little wrong (which was often) he would throw a fit. Every time our huge 15 passenger van wouldn't fit in a tiny parking spot, every time everyone couldn't agree on where to eat, everytime the girls wanted to go shopping, everytime we got lost on the freeway. After acknowledging that, the trip was actually really fun at times. We went to Santa Monica pier which was just beautiful. We did a tiny bit of shopping here or there when we could convince everyone else to let us. We got to hang out with our cousins and get to know them and their new husbands better. We went to the Magic Castle and had a delicious dinner and watched some incredible magic shows. We drove to Long Beach and toured the Queen Mary and a really neat Russian Submarine. On the Queen Mary we took a haunted tour which I was very proud of myself for getting through. We spent a whole glorious day at Disneyland (without the over 60 crowd) that was absolutely incredible.

Actually, we drove to Disneyland one day and when we got there it was completely sold out. We went with both our cousins and though we wanted to leave at 8am, some circumstances beyond our control caused us to have to wait until about 9:30. Fighting LA traffic, we didn't get there until 10:30 or 11 and on the busiest week of the year, there was no way we could get tickets. So we ended up driving another hour back to Hollywood, picking up the older crowd and driving another hour to the Reagan library. It was so boring I was practically falling asleep on my feet (who cares about Ronald Reagan's 3rd grade class photo??) but the Air Force One was pretty cool. That morning I also ripped both pairs of jeans that I brought in the exact same spot- the crotch- in less than 2 hours. Which meant I needed to find some jeans quickly because we were going on the cruise before we were going back to Denver.

Another notable hiccup was the fact that our hotel lost water. Twice. Two mornings of the 6 we woke up to no water. I freaked out. I do not function well without a shower. The second time I put on my bathing suit, walked outside to the pool (in 50 degree weather) and dunked my head in. I shampooed it right there on the pool deck and rinsed it out. Everyone else made do with the pack of 24 water bottles we bought from the local grocery store. I'm making the whole trip sound terrible, but it really wasn't. There was some time that was really fun and no matter what it was good to spend time with my cousins and aunt and uncle who I don't get to see very often. After spending 5 days with them, we are all very happy they don't live closer. A few days a year is plenty.

Disneyland, however, was INCREDIBLE!! It was decorated for Christmas complete with a Christmas parade and fireworks show. We missed those, however, because it rained all day. It was a light drizzle, just enough to be a little irritating. I was kind of glad though because a lot of people left making the lines much much shorter. In fact, the longest line we waited in was about 30 minutes. Between Mike's iPhone app, which gave us live information about the wait on all rides, and the fast passes, we did really well. It's a Small World was everyone's favorite I think. They completely redo it for the holidays. The Haunted House was also completely redone for Christmas. It was like a whole new park! I was happy all day long, even with the rain. Because we got there at 7:30am that morning to get tickets, we were ready to leave at about 5:30. It was a fantastic day.

The next morning my family dropped me and Daniel off at the Cruise terminal where we sat on a bench overlooking the ocean until Daniel's family arrived. We got on the ship very early and were immediately served complimentary champagne. The cruise was so fun. We went kayaking on Catalina Island and saw a seal just a few yards away in the water. We went ATVing in Ensenada which was terrifying, but thrilling at the same time. It was a 3 1/2 hour tour through really rugged terrain and with every bump I thought I was going to fly off the back. By the end, I was completely covered in dust and mud. It was awesome! We also celebrated New Years with free champagne all night long. I have no idea how much I drank because they just kept topping off our glasses. Daniel and I danced and kissed and it was very romantic. We ate delicious food (as required on any cruise) and enjoyed time soaking in the hot tub. It was just perfect.

After all that traveling, we were sooooo ready to come home. Our new roommates Hope and Eric were moved in and waiting for us. We had tons of stuff to do in just a couple hours. We already missed the first day of class so we had to get ready to start the new quarter and unpack and do laundry and clean the house because it was pretty gross. We managed to squeeze in some time with friends that night and Daniel even went out to a bar. We have missed our friends so much over the break, and some of them had been abroad for months. Now we're trying to get back in to our routine and adjust to the frigid Denver winter weather. Today it's a high of 25 and snowing all day- tomorrow high of 15!! Brrr!! Next week I start my new job and I am really nervous for that. So it doesn't seem my life is going to get much calmer anytime soon. But I guess that's what college life is all about.