Amazing Accomplishment

Last night around 8 pm I went to do our weekly grocery shopping. I hadn't been able to get it done over the weekend, so I just went after I got home from work and ate some supper (I have found it is a bad idea to go grocery shopping on an empty stomach). Anyway, for the first time EVER, I remembered all 3 of my reusable fabric shopping bags, and all my groceries fit inside (barely, but I managed to make them fit). Which means, NO plastic bags from yesterday's trip! Yep, here I am, saving the planet one plastic grocery bag at a time. Maybe you should watch for me on the news, I may just be sitting in a tree in front of a bulldozer, refusing to come down....

Life as a PhD Student

Life as a PhD student can be tough. I love PhD comics because it takes my life and somehow brings out the humor in it. I love them all, but this has always been my very favorite one:
"Grad student etiquette"
This comic seems so appropriate most of the time, but it rings even more true today because I walked in to some very nasty data when I came in this morning. So please, please, please, don't ask me how my research is going! I'd much rather talk about the weather.



P.S. An old friend I hadn't talked to in years called me last night. It totally made my weekend. Don't you love it when things like that happen?

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday to my Mom, who is so much fun to hang out with. (Can't you just tell how fun she is from this photo?)

FYI

Adam is in the process of revamping his website yet again. Check out the progress at: clockworkangel

Turkey Day

Are you as excited for Thanksgiving as I am? I am in desperate need of a break, so I am really looking forward to this long weekend. My biggest problem is that sometimes I look too far forward and forget that there is stuff at work I need to get done today!

Ode to Phoenix

Fourteen and 1/2 years ago, my brother John brought a little puppy into our family. He named the dog Phoenix at my suggestion. Phoenix was a yellow lab mix and true to his nature, he was extremely loving and affectionate. Yesterday, my mom and John had to make the sad decision that 14 1/2 years was pretty good for an 85 pound dog, and that the many physical complications Phoenix was experiencing due to his age warranted him being put down. I thought I would be OK, I mean after all he was just a dog. But it turns out that I have actually been quite sad. I know my mother and brother thought long and hard about it and that they made the right decision, but that doesn't mean I won't miss the stinky old thing when I go home to visit my family. I mean, we got the dog when I was 14 1/2 and he has been a part of my family for half of my life.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night and as I lay awake, I imagined what it must have been like for my brother. In my mind's eye I watched John take his childhood companion to the vet and I saw him hold Phoenix as he quietly fell asleep. I watched as he carried Phoenix's lifeless body to the back yard. There he began to dig a deep hole as the rain poured all around, nature openly acknowledging the grief. I could see his strong shoulders and back bearing the physical burden of the situation while his tears dripped down his face and mixed with the rain--a tribute to the love between a boy and his dog.

Phoenix, you will be missed.

Love

I have fallen in love with an asian restaurant down the street from our house. Everything they have there is absolutely wonderful. From hot noodles, to cold sushi, I have never been anything but completely satisfied. This is an affair that will last for years. Hopefully Adam won't get too jealous.

I'm a Winner!

Duke always sends out these surveys about how they can encourage us to use public transportation to commute or some such thing. They always promise that if we fill out the survey we get entered into a drawing for an assortment of prizes. I never believed the prizes actually existed because to my knowledge, no one seemed to be winning them. However, I dutifully filled out each and every survey because what else am I going to do during the 10 minutes here and there where I have to wait for something to incubate? However, apparently after I filled out the last survey about what would make me use the Recreation Center more, I did get entered into the drawing. I know because I won! The prize was a free car wash called the Ritz at a place near campus. Humm...., maybe now that I'm on a lucky streak I should buy a lotto ticket!

Tender Mercies

If you haven't read this talk about tender mercies from LDS General Conference, you should. Yesterday, I experienced a tender mercy of my very own. I have a friend who works in the lab next to mine who is Greek Orthodox and a very devout Christian. He is probably one of the most spiritual people I know. Anyway, yesterday I was talking with him about something and he told me exactly what I needed to hear. I know this only happened for two reasons: 1. He is spiritually in tune and prepared to do the right thing when prompted by the Spirit 2. God loves me and wanted me to remember something important. I just wanted to say that I am very grateful for the tender mercies that God gives us and I hope I can continue to recognize them when they happen.

Attack!

Cute looking, huh? This is a chow chow. Cuddly, fuzzy looking dog. I was taking care of this kind of dog for a friend who has been in the hospital for several months. At least that was until last Tuesday (Sept 29th) when it attacked me. After looking this dog up on the internet, it looks like it is prone to aggression unless "properly socialized." I guess it hadn't been. Everywhere I looked seemed to indicate that the dog needed some TLC (as I am sure all dogs do, but some more then others) to be properly trained and that they were wary of strangers, etc. Well, my friend was gone a lot and I highly doubt he took the time and energy to "properly socialize" the dog. He may not have even known how to. Now the dog thinks it is abandoned by it's owner and I think he is just going crazy. Anyway, unless you know what you are doing, don't get this breed of dog. Please. Don't go there unless you have a lot of experience. (Which apparently I don't.)

Anyway, getting attacked by a dog is terribly frightening. I'm not talking about getting bit, I mean getting attacked. Getting bit is when the dog chomps down on you once and then runs away or something. Getting attacked is when they come back at you over and over with the intent to draw blood. Frightening. Luckily, I was wearing Doc Martens, we were outside, and I was standing near the door into the house. So I was able to fend him off by kicking him with my honking shoes until I got inside and slammed the door in his face. By then I had been bit on my forearm, hand, and knee (although I didn't even realize my knee was injured until much later) and I was bleeding all over the place. Adam was in class and didn't answer my phone call, so I managed to call my in-laws who only live about 5 miles away. I think all I said was something like, "I was bit by the dog and I think I'm in shock." I continued to bleed all over the house until they got there. All of them. I was just expecting my father-in -law and maybe my mother-in-law too, but the two teenage kids they have at home came as well. It made me feel loved, and they did a great job helping out. So, here is my tribute to Tara and Zac who were especially wonderful:

Tara came into the house and immediately found a job for herself. She became in charge of calling Adam and letting him know I was at the ER. She was on top of it and as soon as she took over that responsibility, I knew that eventually Adam would show up and I didn't worry about it for another instant.

Zac came and was helping out. Happy to be there and offering moral support. It wasn't until the next day that I realized this all happened on his birthday. No complaints, not even a mention of "this is kind of a crappy way to spend a birthday." Just there helping me out, no thought of himself. What a guy.

OK, well I am doing much better now. Some of my tendons are still stiff, but I only notice that because I've just done so much typing. The pain is gone and I am healing. Soon I will have forgotten the whole incident, which is why I decided I better blog about it now!

Fortnight

I have so much to do in lab over the next two weeks. It's going to be crazy. I need to plan something to do at the end of it so I have something to look forward to. I usually find that's the best way to get through a hectic time. Any suggestions?

Adam's adventures

My husband has taken up exploration. Especially what he calls "urban exploration." He goes into old buildings and under-ground drainage systems of cities and takes photos. I think he's a little young to already have had a mid-life crisis, but what do I know? The thing is he's hooked. Completely hooked. If we drive by anything that looks interesting, we absolutely have to stop and at least "scope out" the place. It's almost like there is no choice in the matter; some unknown force compels us to stop the car and give notice to places that everyone else seems to be able to just ignore. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing, not that it matters. He's going to do it anyway. I do worry that he is going to get hurt, but he tries to be as careful as one can be exploring a condemned building. I have kindly informed him that if he kills himself doing something stupid, I will never forgive him. Not for all eternity. I refuse to become a widow due to something stupid and preventable. I'm not sure if this makes him more cautious, but I sure hope it does! I must admit that he does take some pretty neat photos. If you are interested, check out his flicker account here.

Glacier National Park, Montana

Here are some more photos from our trip. These ones are all during our family reunion at Glacier Park. We did a lot of hiking, and it was beautiful!

Several of us went on a long hike one of the last days we were there. My brother John packed his daughter the entire way. What a stud!

You can see lots of mountain goats if you hike in the right places.

Alberta

OK, so I promised a few photos from my vacation in July. I'm just going to do the part where we were in southern Alberta right now. My mom grew up in Cardston, Alberta so I grew up going to many of these places and they hold a special spot in my heart!

These photos are of the one-room Chief Mountain School house, where my grandma was the the teacher for a little while-- probably in the late 1930's.

Here I am at the top of Bear's Hump in Waterton park.

One of the few remaining old style grain elevators in the area.

Adam hiking up Red Rock Canyon in Waterton.

If you want to see more and are friends with me on Facebook, Adam posted a ton of photos for me on my profile!

Crazy Summer

Well, it's been a crazy summer. In mid-June my co-advisor Craig got seriously ill and was admitted to the hospital. He had an infection called necrotizing fasciitis. He lost his left leg to right above the knee and nearly died. Luckily, he has pulled through the worst of it and is on his way to recovery. His only immediate family are his sister and parents who live in Toronto. Since we are quite close and I live near him, I have been doing a lot of the "family" type work that needs to be done when someone is taken suddenly away from their normal life and ends up hospitalized like that--plus there are still months of recovery ahead. Needless to say, it has been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster and at times physically and/or emotionally exhausting. That in combination with the fact that I just don't seem to know what to blog about can explain my long absence from posting. However, I did get away to take a fun trip with my family where we visited southern Alberta and then swung down to Glacier National Park in Montana. I have some fun photos and will try to post some of those later, but for now I have to finish up some lab work and then go home and get ready to fly to Phoenix where Adam's brother is getting married on Friday. Yea for Seth and Janette!

Just in case you like to be bored....

My dad asked me the other day about my publications. I often say I don't have any scientific publications, but that's not quite true. I just don't have any first author publications. In the scientific community when a paper is published, the order of the names on the publication is pretty important. The first author listed probably did all the work. The last author listed is the boss. He/she oversees the project but most likely didn't do a single experiment themselves. The people in the middle all did something, but not necessarily very much. In the case of my two publications I must admit that I probably did about the least amount of work one can do and still be considered an author. I think the experiments I did are both explained and then listed as "data not shown." Oh well, at least I did something, right? I'm still waiting for the day where I get that first author publication, where the article will be cited as "Winsor et al....." It will happen sooner or later. Hopefully sooner.
In case you really want to bore yourselves, the articles were published in an open-access scientific journal:
Yeast Screens Identify the RNA Polymerase II CTD and...
Comparative Genome Wide Screening Identifies....

That second article was actually published today, which is probably why I was thinking about it...

Facebook Dilemma...

I love connecting with friends, but sometimes Facebook can also be a curse. I've often struggled at whether or not to accept friend requests from someone I don't remember, but they are listed as going to my high school, or someone I know but barely, etc. However, today I got a Facebook request that has left me with absolutely no idea what to do. I remember this person, perhaps a little too well. It is from the only mission companion I had who I am convinced absolutely hated me. Let me call her Sister X. I half expected Sister X to murder me in my sleep. She was meaner to me than anyone has been since Greg C. harassed me in front of all the boys in the 6th grade. I am not saying I was perfect, but we talked as a companionship about what was going wrong, and I tried my absolute hardest to work on all the problems she had with me, and all my efforts were flatly rejected. We were actually in a threesome at the time (I know, now you think it was being in a threesome that was the problem; that's probably partly true, but I was in 11 different threesome's on my mission and several of them were very good companionships). The other sister (Sister Y) somehow got along just fine with Sister X. However, even she told me in confidence once that Sister X wasn't being fair to me. Looking back I realize that the problem was Sister X was emotionally abusive. Trust me, I wouldn't say that lightly; I thought about it a lot. Anyway, I think she felt threatened by me for some reason and her lack of self-confidence lead her to constantly rag on me. I was always doing stuff wrong, and ruining everything, and I was pretty much completely worthless according to Sister X. She liked to remind me of these things often; at least when she wasn't too busy ignoring me.

So back to my initial problem; today I received a friend request and a message on Facebook, "Hi Sister Sabin, this is Sister X!" I'm just not exactly sure what to do with it. I don't exactly hold a grudge against her; I've just spent a lot of time forgetting her all together. I liked it that way. For the past six years since I've been home I have been quite happy to think of her almost never. Now that she seems for some odd reason to want to be my Facebook friend, I have no idea what to do. Do I accept her friend request to be nice, and then just try to forget her again? Do I simply ignore the request and move on? Do I send her a message saying, "why in the world do you want to be my Facebook friend anyway?" It's crazy. Like she has absolutely no idea how incredibly mean she was to me. Actually, that's probably it. She probably doesn't remember at all. However, with someone that manipulative, I wouldn't put something more conniving past her. Maybe she just wants to be able to rub something in...
What do I do? Advice please!

Happy Birthday Adam!

Adam turns 27 today.

It may be snotty of me, but it sure made me feel better...

I just ran into a MD/PhD student who I haven't seen in a long time. At Duke these students do their first couple years in the MD program and then they enter a PhD program, complete that program, and then re-enter the MD program to finish up their medical training. This student entered the PhD part with my class in the Biochemistry Department. She is defending her thesis next week. I'm not going to say anything about how it feels to watch people who came into the program with me graduate when I have no idea when that will happen for me--you can figure out that one yourselves. The thing that made me feel good is that she said the PhD part is harder than the MD part. She said the fact that we pretty much have to figure things out ourselves, with very little structure, have no idea when we will be finished, and have very few daily rewarding activities, makes the PhD part more difficult than the MD part. Since she is doing both, and is nearly done with both, I believe her. And it makes me feel good. Is that snotty or what?!

One of those days...

It is one of those days. Where the one thing you want to go right just doesn't. The experiment that was going to save my butt didn't work and now I don't know what to do. I almost wrote an entire entry about how science sucks and nothing works and don't believe anything scientific you hear. But I thought better of it. Just don't try to get a PhD in it. That one I'm totally serious about.