Passion

So, I have lots of things I want to say, but I'll separate them. First up, a recap of my 30th birthday and celebratory trip to Kentucky!

It turns out Kentucky is an AWESOME place to vacation. Who knew?

( So, so many pictures... )

...and I've literally had this tab open on my laptop for over a week now, and have only gotten through the beginning of day 2 of our 6-day trip, so I'm going to stop here, post this, and probably never finish the recap.

So here's the quick version: The Kentucky Horse Park was awesome. We spent two days there. Elena was bored out of her mind, but my mom and I loved it. We saw retired Derby winners, big draft horses, and about a dozen examples of rare breeds of horse from around the world (got to pet some of those!). We then spent two days at Mammoth Cave, which was incredible and very educational, and we got to go on an Introduction to Caving tour that let us crawl over and under and through rocks, which Elena loved. Otherwise she was fairly poorly behaved and had problems listening to instructions, but on the crawling tour she was great. On our very last day we drove back to Louisville and actually visited Churchill Downs, including their museum, and went on a walking tour of the track. We got lunch there and ordered mint juleps (yum!!!) and something disgusting called Benedictine (note that if you forget what this is called, searching Google for "Kentucky green spread food" will get the answer for you on the first hit).

Overall the trip was lovely, and I had some wonderful conversations with my mom, which I may or may not go into in a later update. Elena is... difficult for me to relate to? Is that a diplomatic way of saying things? I have a really hard time with her. I feel very guilty about this but I don't think it's alterable.

I was really glad to come home to Chris.

Geh, so this week has been really boring. Mostly, I lolled around on the floor, alternating watching Scrubs with sleeping for two or three hours at a time, only to be woken by people calling to see how I was doing. Monday and Tuesday were okay; I was sick enough to be happy to just sit around. But Wednesday was harder; I had to run errands to entertain myself, even though I was still really too weak to get anything done. Thursday I tried to go back into lab, and the first thing my PI said when I showed up was, "You look sick. Come back Monday." After some cajoling, I got him to give me some reading to do, and I got my postdoc to agree to teach me some things today, and I figured out that they wanted me to go home not because I was sick but because they still didn't have anything for me to do. So I spent yesterday afternoon running errands (and still being wiped out), then slept like a rock instead of going climbing. Today I went back in to lab and worked with flies for the first time, to learn what the different marker mutations look like. I can pick out curly wings and different colored eyes really easily, but stubble hairs are a bit trickier. I accidentally ripped off one fly's leg, and impaled another one, but both were anaesthetized at the time and were killed shortly after, so I'm trying not to feel too guilty.

I have problems with microscopes but I feel like I'm too advanced in my career to admit this to anyone who could possibly help me.

In other news:

I have successfully "learned to knit." I define this as being able to knit without supervision. I'm making a scarf and it has a pattern and I think I'm becoming addicted to knitting. I find myself thinking about knitting while doing other things. ("I'm waiting for the bus. Could I knit while I wait? Hmm, no, too cold." "I'm reading a paper, can I knit while I do this? Yes, if I stop to turn the pages." "I'm walking to lab. Can I knit while I walk? Probably not...")

I decided yesterday that I want to write a novel. I thought about this for a few hours, and have no clue what I would write said novel about. I also realized 1)I can't both write a novel and become a knitter; both take up too much of what little free time I have. 2)I don't quite have the dedication required to write a novel, even if I decide to stop knitting. Therefore, I'm going to... not write a novel.
I'm somewhat sad about this.

My sister had her first birthday Wednesday. If I had pictures I'd post them, but my parents haven't sent me any.

Classes start Tuesday. I'm super excited and am going to approach them in a Rory-like manner; that is, since we have "shopping week," I'm going to attend ALL the classes that sound interesting and then decide which to take based on subject matter, location, and professor. I'm such a nerd sometimes.

Oh yeah, and I really want a new layout for my livejournal, but I have no idea WHAT exactly I want. Maybe I should poke Megan about this....