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Jan. 4th, 2005 07:49 pmHey guys, sorry this update has been so long in the works.
My break in Texas was kinda nice in that I got to sleep in, and I got to go to about ten thousand restaurants, which was fun, and I got to hang out with my grandparents, who are cool people. Then there was the snow I mentioned. Unfortunately, the whole reason I went to Texas in the first place sort of loomed over my head the whole three and a half weeks.
The weekend before Christmas my grandma went into the hospital. She'd been coughing for weeks--she had a nasty case of bronchitis she'd contracted during her last chemo session--and couldn't get the cough under control, plus she couldn't get enough air to walk to the bathroom. So she finally went into the ER. The doctors were able to figure out why she hadn't stopped coughing--the tumor on her right lung was bleeding into her bronchi. They did a whole bunch of scans, and the verdict came out pretty bad. The tumor grew and is now also in her left lung and in her brain. She got to come home Christmas Eve but she's now on oxygen and she started whole brain radiation the 30th of Dec. They upgraded her to Stage 4 cancer.
Nanny gave me lots of life advice the last few days I was down there. She told me some really interesting things, and she had awesome advice for the present and the future.... She made me promise, above all else, that I would get my degree. When she was in college she was majoring in nuclear chemistry, and she got a job designing rocket guidance systems, but she never got her degree because it was really really hard for women to do that back then--not only was there the radiation thing inherent in the job, but you also couldn't take maternity leave for more than a few months because the field was moving forward so fast and you couldn't keep up. So she had four kids and worked in other fields, but she's always had this scientific background and it was really neat to talk to her about stuff, because she actually understood all my insane ramblings about protein structures. She also gave me a book of poetry by Dorothy Parker and I'm really enjoying reading it--it's funny. She got it for Christmas when she was 16 and there are notes in the margins she wrote when she was a teenager. It's kinda cool.
Other than that George came down to visit me Sunday afternoon and it turns out he and his girlfriend are on this "probation" thing. He doesn't seem too broken up, either. He says he's sick of her. The stupid boy described his perfect relationship and everything he said described his relationship with me. I don't know if I'm missing his hints or if he doesn't realize what he's saying. One of us is being stupid and dense. I'm going to pretend it's him.
I guess the only other things I have to report are my grades... B- in physics, A- in Latin, A in physics lab, and A IN BIOCHEMISTRY!!! (Biochem was the really hard class, where the average on the second midterm was a 43 and I got a 64, and the prof was a Nobel prize candidate because he discovered the structure of the ribosome...) I went to talk to the prof, Noller, today to get my grade and to ask him which grad schools rock for biochem. We had a really good chat (I don't understand why so many kids hate him, maybe it's because we actually had to work in his class). He gave me a list of awesome grad schools (Top 3 are UCSF, Yale, and Caltech) and said he'd be more than happy to write me a recommendation when I apply. I was walking on air.... Harry Noller, Nobel Prize candidate, writing me a recommendation? And I got an A... this totally makes up for the shit I endured in physics and the stupid grade I ended up with.
Anyway, sorry that update took so long to get posted. And I don't really feel like typing out a post about flying home New Year's Day, so just know that it took forever and too many planes and that my red bag had a bit of a hiatus in SoCal but made it home okay, just a little late.
I have homework. Ick.
My break in Texas was kinda nice in that I got to sleep in, and I got to go to about ten thousand restaurants, which was fun, and I got to hang out with my grandparents, who are cool people. Then there was the snow I mentioned. Unfortunately, the whole reason I went to Texas in the first place sort of loomed over my head the whole three and a half weeks.
The weekend before Christmas my grandma went into the hospital. She'd been coughing for weeks--she had a nasty case of bronchitis she'd contracted during her last chemo session--and couldn't get the cough under control, plus she couldn't get enough air to walk to the bathroom. So she finally went into the ER. The doctors were able to figure out why she hadn't stopped coughing--the tumor on her right lung was bleeding into her bronchi. They did a whole bunch of scans, and the verdict came out pretty bad. The tumor grew and is now also in her left lung and in her brain. She got to come home Christmas Eve but she's now on oxygen and she started whole brain radiation the 30th of Dec. They upgraded her to Stage 4 cancer.
Nanny gave me lots of life advice the last few days I was down there. She told me some really interesting things, and she had awesome advice for the present and the future.... She made me promise, above all else, that I would get my degree. When she was in college she was majoring in nuclear chemistry, and she got a job designing rocket guidance systems, but she never got her degree because it was really really hard for women to do that back then--not only was there the radiation thing inherent in the job, but you also couldn't take maternity leave for more than a few months because the field was moving forward so fast and you couldn't keep up. So she had four kids and worked in other fields, but she's always had this scientific background and it was really neat to talk to her about stuff, because she actually understood all my insane ramblings about protein structures. She also gave me a book of poetry by Dorothy Parker and I'm really enjoying reading it--it's funny. She got it for Christmas when she was 16 and there are notes in the margins she wrote when she was a teenager. It's kinda cool.
Other than that George came down to visit me Sunday afternoon and it turns out he and his girlfriend are on this "probation" thing. He doesn't seem too broken up, either. He says he's sick of her. The stupid boy described his perfect relationship and everything he said described his relationship with me. I don't know if I'm missing his hints or if he doesn't realize what he's saying. One of us is being stupid and dense. I'm going to pretend it's him.
I guess the only other things I have to report are my grades... B- in physics, A- in Latin, A in physics lab, and A IN BIOCHEMISTRY!!! (Biochem was the really hard class, where the average on the second midterm was a 43 and I got a 64, and the prof was a Nobel prize candidate because he discovered the structure of the ribosome...) I went to talk to the prof, Noller, today to get my grade and to ask him which grad schools rock for biochem. We had a really good chat (I don't understand why so many kids hate him, maybe it's because we actually had to work in his class). He gave me a list of awesome grad schools (Top 3 are UCSF, Yale, and Caltech) and said he'd be more than happy to write me a recommendation when I apply. I was walking on air.... Harry Noller, Nobel Prize candidate, writing me a recommendation? And I got an A... this totally makes up for the shit I endured in physics and the stupid grade I ended up with.
Anyway, sorry that update took so long to get posted. And I don't really feel like typing out a post about flying home New Year's Day, so just know that it took forever and too many planes and that my red bag had a bit of a hiatus in SoCal but made it home okay, just a little late.
I have homework. Ick.
