I went back through my Bio 115 (Advanced Eukaryotic Molecular Biology) notes looking for some info on double-stranded break repair for a classmate in my current Advanced Eukaryotic Molecular Biology class (ahhh, the glories of taking the same class twice at different universities... the second university thinks you're so smart...), and I found a review sheet with a bunch of hilarious quotes on it.

Here are some of them, from March of 2005 straight to you:

"If you use the yeast system for aging, you have to ask yourself, what does an old yeast look like anyway? Even though I sort of scoff at old yeast I think you have to take them seriously." --prof

"...where there's lots of cleavage, that's naked DNA. ...120 naked nucleotides flapping in the breeze..." --prof

"Are we more complex than a fly or a worm? Or are we just bigger? I think about that a lot. I think what really separates us, besides the fact that flies can't get tattoos, is our nervous system." --prof

"Mice are fucked up. We mutated the shit out of them." --classmate

"It's that part of the chromosome where microtubules are gonna reach out and touch it." --prof

"If you want to go from some boring little yeast into some clever little fruit fly..." --prof (gee, I wonder what his model organism was?)

"If you inject it into a bunny rabbit..." --prof

"Although, then it kills the cell, so that's not very nice at all." --prof

"homologous recombination machinery feels up the DNA and repairs it" --my personal notes, scrawled in a margin. And yes, this is how I remember everything. You should hear my analogy for nuclear export. It involves bouncers.

And my personal favorite:
"God arranged it this way so I could put it on your test." --prof


We are 46% retrovirus.

GAH! SO BUSY THIS WEEK!

I've barely had time to sit in front of the computer at all this week, hence the lack of quotes. Wednesday I failed a French test, went climbing, worked on thesis, went to photo section. Thursday I went to photo class, worked on thesis, went climbing. Yesterday I went to French, had teacher yell at me about not doing homework, went climbing, worked on thesis, met with French partner. Today...

Today I went skydiving again! Yay!

This time was so much more fun than last year. Last year I was all freaked out and panicky and completely clueless, so a lot of my energy was spent trying to figure out just what the hell was going on. This time, I knew the drill and knew I would enjoy the fall, so I spent my energy on learning new stuff. My jumpmaster, the person they strapped me to, was a girl named Aviva who was really nice. She gave me an altimeter so I could monitor how high we were, and when we jumped out of the plane (we got to go first, ha!), we did somersaults. I'd asked to do them, but I still had a bit of sensory overload when we jumped, and it took me a second to figure out what was going on . My thought process: "Wow, pretty California! Oh, what's going on? Ground, plane, ground, plane, ground, plane, ground... Holy cow. AWESOME!" We got 66 seconds of freefall. She grabbed my arms and showed me how to turn. It's really neat that you can control your descent in freefall! I want to do it again! And then, under canopy, we got to do some fun little tight spirals, and the view was just absolutely gorgeous. It was quite relaxing. And the landing was super smooth too.

I can't wait to go again! I'm totally finding a place to go in Connecticut!

Ann, of course, went with me. She did a backflip right after jumping out of the plane. Her jumpmaster was really cool, he let her control the parachute. Afterwards, she and I went and got massages. Ahhh.... Can you say, "Perfect Day"?

Quotes for the last few days (in no particular order, since I lost track in the fray):
"A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard." --Herman Melville in Moby-Dick
"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." --William James
"Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice." --Samuel Johnson
"To know when one's self is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people." --Walter Pater
And today's, vellum:
"Il est plus facile de faire la guerre que la paix." --Georges Clemenceau

Blue strip! Single digits! Only 9 days left!
"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." --Henry Adams

Today was awesome. And I went climbing, and I did a 5.10a/b and a 5.10b. I feel so good! Then we went to the beach and read for a while. Fantastic day.

I hope today's weather holds until sailing on Tuesday!

Okay, quick, another quote, before I get stoned for the Fitzgerald quotes.

Vellum:
"On ne saurait faire une omelette sans casser des oeufs." --French proverb ("One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs.")

How true.

Now I'm hungry.
********************************************
I tried to take a risk today. It doesn't seem to have worked out. Perhaps breaking the eggs was a bad idea.

Today has not been a good day.

I am lazy. The last three days I haven't posted simply because the effort required to type all those letters in all those words seemed too tremendous. So here. Have quotes from the last three days.

Teal:
"No man has ever lived that had enough of children's gratitude or woman's love." --Yeats

Green:
"To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life." --Walter Parker

Yellow:
"Remember that the most beautiful things in life are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance." --John Ruskin, the Stones of Venice

Today, on a strip of goldish vellum:
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." --F. Scott Fitzgerald, from The Great Gatsby

I loved The Great Gatsby. And I love that quote. I don't know why I liked our junior year of high school reading list so much, but really, honestly, I love that book.

Anyway.

I went to lab today and poisoned cells. The sunshine is still here but clouds have moved in and brought a chilly wind with them, so it's not really all that pleasant outside today. I want the warmth to come back so I can go swimming... I want my friends to come back so I can go climbing with them...

I think I'ma go eat something and maybe watch a movie.

I feel like this week has been very emotional. Not that I have been emotional, but that many things have happened this week, and emotions are filling me like I'm just some sort of vessel, holding onto them until they can move on to somewhere else. Like a witch in one of those fantasy books I read in middle school, standing on a node of ley lines of magic, bringing the power up into my body and letting it fill me, and then releasing it. Except instead of magic it's emotions. It's a strange sensation. This morning I feel like I'm full, like I can't handle any more emotions at all, but I'm still strangely seperate from the ones I contain. They aren't mine. I think this comes from the photography class, from looking at strong images that other people have taken and letting their artistic desires seep into me. I don't desire the same things they do, and half the time I don't think the images are aesthetically pleasing, but I still feel the emotions they carry, and somehow I feel like they should be a part of me.

This is going to be a very strange quarter for me. Taking these humanities classes, and getting outside and exercising, are such different things for me, both in body and mind. It's a stretch to find myself in this quarter, to reveal that other side of me, the creative passionate side that I've mostly ignored since I became a biochemistry student. I love the creative passionate side of me, and I'm loving the discovery that it's still there inside me, intact, and I just have to bring it back up to the surface. I hope that it can share space with my analytical side.

Yesterday (and the several days before it) was a fantastic day. A completely different day. I took a French exam, I went rock climbing, I went to the beach with Neal (it was a perfect beach day, pray that the weather holds until Saturday), I presented slides of my photographs in a discussion section (the TA thought my accidental use of light was genius), I played a pattern-finding card game, I had very... descriptive, vivid dreams. Somehow I missed finding the time to update with yesterday's quote. Maybe being without the internet for two months has been good for me. I see growth in me in the last several weeks, and it's partly because I've taken steps outside my comfort zone.

Pink strip:
"I expect that woman will be the last thing civilized by man." --George Meredith

Today, green strip (yay Ylya):
"My darling girl, when are you going to understand that 'normal' isn't a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage." --Stockard Channing in a role as Frances Owens

Back into the real world I go; I have to go to lab and check on my cells, and then perhaps I can go climbing again, and try to seperate my own emotions from the ones evoked by this morning's photography class.

Life is so beautiful this month.

Yesterday's purple strip:
"Oh for a book and a shady nook, either in door or out." --John Wilson

Today, blue strip:
"La chair est triste, helas! et j'ai lu tous les livres." --Stephane Mellarme ("The flesh is sad, alas! And I have read all the books.)

Easter was fun. Steven and Valerie invited Ann and I over to their house, and they made ham and French toast for us. I made deviled eggs, and we all sat around and ate ourselves silly, then played Gamecube for a couple hours. I had waaaay too much chocolate yesterday. It was a good day.

Today I slept in, and decided not to go to French. I hadn't finished the homework and I woke up with a killer sore throat, so I elected to sleep instead of trudge up to campus for a class I'm not even enrolled in. I waltzed into lab around 1:00 and checked my email, and lo and behold, there was an email from the French professor. It wasn't a condemnation for missing class, though--it was a permission number letting me enroll! Someone finally dropped! So I dropped the lit course and will take back the book I bought for it this morning, and life will be perfect for my last quarter at UCSC. I have the ideal class schedule, the weather is supposed to clear up, and what more could a girl ask for? Besides more money in my bank account, that is.

Speaking of which, I spent a bundle of money on graduation announcements this morning, which should arrive within two weeks. Once they get here, I'll send them out, and you lot can expect to receive them in about a month. If all goes well.

I also joined the rock-climbing gym (Ann and I got 1-month trial memberships), so all you Santa Cruz people should come climbing with us. It's so much fun. We went Friday night and Saturday afternoon, and my hands are shredded today, but hopefully they'll be better by tomorrow because we're going again.

In other news, the photography class rocks, and our first assignment is due this week, so I'll actually get some feedback and advice on my technique. That class is killer fun. And sailing meets tomorrow for the first time, if the weather holds. So really... this week is shaping up pretty nicely.

:-D

Yeah, I skipped 26. I think I did 31 twice.

On a peach strip of vellum:
"You can always tell a Harvard man, but you can't tell him much." --James Barnes

Ahahahahahaha. Ha ha ha. *chortle*

I am really going to enjoy this whole Yale thing, aren't I?

So... I forgot the quote again yesterday morning. I think something about the constant rain makes it difficult for me to remember things.

WHEN IS IT GOING TO STOP RAINING?????

I normally really like rain. But I was prepared for it winter quarter and it didn't come. Now it's spring quarter and it's time for sun and heat and THE END OF THE RAIN.

Anyway. I would have updated this morning, except that I had that 8 am photography class, and through some strange piece of logic, the library doesn't open until 8 am. What about all those people that need to do homework in the wee small hours of the morning? Or the middlin' hours of the morning?

Yesterday's purple strip:
"He who enters a university walks on hallowed ground." --James Bryant Conant
I agree. As much as I can't wait to get out of this place, and take that pretty diploma with me, there's something special about being on a campus. Any campus. The air tastes different.

Today, gold strip:
"If it was physically possible to make love to a hot beverage, this would be the One." --Lorelai Gilmore, Gilmore Girls, about a complicated caramel latte thing
This was especially pertinent this morning, as I pulled myself out of bed around 6, whining about how the street lamps were still on and why couldn't I be asleep like normal people? I got Starbucks coffee half an hour later, in the rain, and while I don't think today's cup would have been the One if hot beverages were eligible for that sort of thing, I definitely think that it and I could have had a happy summer romance.

I must go now. My sailing class was cancelled, and I'm going to take advantage of this 2.5 hour block of time to go home, watch some TV on DVD, and probably take a nap.

This quarter is so close to being over I can smell it. Only 10 more weeks to go.