sometimes you need a roommate day. sometimes this includes pretty gardens full of tulips, waterfalls, etc. sometimes you find a coupon that gives you $2 off the entrance fee and it makes it even better. sometimes you wish you were better at photography so you could have captured the beauty...but you enjoy the pics you took anyway...
once upon a time i got an email from turbotax. they told me they had made a mistake and that some people would be getting a refund. they said if i thought i might fall in this category, i should fill out an online request. i remember thinking it was only like $6, but i filled it out anyway...because who doesn't want an extra $6?? well GUESS WHAT. they just emailed me and said i qualified for a $37 refund!! YES PLEASE. and then i lived happily ever after. the end.
so one reason i love my roommate steph is that she signs us up for random stuff i would never think of. like how she signed us up to be volunteer soccer coaches for a team of 1st and 2nd grade girls for provo city. (we don't tell the little ones that i'm not that great at soccer!) it has been a BLAST. these 10 little girls have won their way into my little heart. of course i still get frustrated when they have attitude, or sit down on the field when the ball is on the other side of the field, or get tangled up in the net while they're playing goalie and can't get out when the ball is coming toward them, or when they get mad when i put them on defense, or have a hard time focusing...but we love 'em anyway. :) one gem: "hey liz guess what!! i have a boyfriend...but we're not going to kiss until we're 26!" sounds like a good age!
So friday night was amazing. I dusted off my ballroom dancing shoes with the row of rhinestones that I love (here's a pic of little 19-year-old Liz showing them off) ...
and headed to the Murray Arts Center with a group of about 20 people from my ward! K imagine this...live band...the sweetest old couples you've ever seen dancing like champs...twinkle lights...the works. And I danced. I danced until my feet hurt! And I loved it :) Cha cha, swing, west coast, waltz, viennese waltz (or rather Jay and I faked a viennese waltz while singing "Once upon a dream" from sleeping beauty...good times), foxtrot, a funny made-up comical dance routine with Riley to some song about margaritas... and I even went back to my stake dance days and did the electric slide. Nothing like collapsing in bed after leaving it all out on the dance floor :)
steph's fan is blowing in the next room... it's getting HOT at night... summer :)
michael buble is wooing me as usual
a clean room makes everything happy
finished reading "blink" tonight... now i keep studying everyone's facial expressions to read their minds and wondering what everyone's first impression of me is... short? nerdy?
tonight i will dream of sPLA2, patman, phospholipid tails, and finishing my paper this week
it's hard to remember to clock in and out after you've been on salary for 8 months
reading emails from jenny makes me miss my little ones and wish i could give them a squeeze
why do i stay up so late? i blame it on my mother's genes
speaking of mumsy and popsicle, getting excited for siberia in august! :)
(1) I PASSED MY COMPREHENSIVE EXAM!!! basically this means my coursework is complete and i am officially a PhD candidate! sounds official eh? so now i only have my dissertation left to complete. psh that will be cake ;) currently, writing this paper takes up most of my day...
“MOLECULAR DETAILS OF MEMBRANE FLUIDITY CHANGES DURING APOPTOSIS AND RELATIONSHIP TO PHOSPHOLIPASE A2 ACTIVITY”
Gibbons E, Pickett KG, Streeter MC, Warcup AO, Nelson J, Judd AM, Bell JD
(2) with the semester over I get to do research full time for the summer! i'm super lucky because i got a fellowship with the BYU Cancer Research Center....so they basically pay me more money than i would usually make to do the same research i would have done anyway! lucky me. (oh and they took me out to lunch at la jolla groves in the Riverwoods...BEST. SALMON. EVER....oh and the bathrooms were pretty shnazzy as well...bonus)
(3) I may or may not have tripped on like 3 chairs at once the other day while i was all alone in the lab. i may or may not have fallen HARD CORE all the way to the ground, right on my knee. i may or may not have a huge black bruise on that knee.
(4) my bro-in-law ryan and i decided which half marathon we're going to do this summer! the hobbler half marathon (no pun intended) is 12 weeks away so this was my first week of training! I've run 3 out of 4 days this week so i'm feeling pretty heroic. saturday i'm running a 5k with steph in payson for her school so hopefully i can beat my sad rex lee run 5k time from march. (sidenote: it's super depressing to start running again after you've been slacking. hopefully my body will forgive my recent neglect)
(5) so i get asthma when i'm running...but the more i run the better it gets and it usually only lasts about 1 mile. who cares though...the funny part is what i think about when i'm running with asthma, all i can picture is a diagram dr. judd drew me of a glob of mucous in my airways hanging there making it harder for me to exhale. we called it the loogie explanation and got a good laugh out of it (because i wondered why mucous in the airway wouldn't prevent inhalation as much as exhalation ... turns out there's this thing called gravity making the loogie hang the way it does). disgusting i know. sorry about that. i may or may not have drawn this on the board during my final review for the physiology lab i TA. good times.
(6) one of the highlights of this week:
we got to meet the Guschins! they are my parents' good friends in Novosibirsk and were visiting the United States from Russia for their daughter's graduation. we had such a fun visit with them...they were so kind. it made me happy to feel a little more connected to my parents since they seem a world away. it made it more real that they're actually in Russia. a favorite quote from Brother Guschin: "your father IS russian...he is a russian man." :) so proud of my jukie and pops.
(7) When i was growing up, my mom would always make the 4 girls matching Easter dresses. they were usually the same pattern but different colors. it seems like annie was always blue, jenny always pink, and then abby and i were purple, yellow, or green or something. we were pretty cute. if i had old pictures on my laptop i'd put one on for your viewing pleasure. since i DON'T...here's one from THIS year :) some things never change...
(8) did i mention i bought a fedora? sometimes i'm random like that.
(9) i finally applied for my passport so i can go to Russia in August!! SO EXCITED.
(10) so i was just looking up something on Craig's List...and thought this was funny/weird. sorely tempted though. enjoy...
FREE PHYSICAL LABOR
My name is Mike and I'm looking to do some physical labor for anybody who needs it. Why am I offering this? Lifting weights is incredibly boring! I'd much rather help somebody move a bunch of bricks, dig a hold, pull some weeds/plants etc. The catch is it's gotta be something that will give me a good sweat so I can get a work out. I'm 6'3" and a big strong guy, so give me something difficult! I need to do this! Give me a call anytime, leave a message if I'm not there. I teach piano so that's the recorded message you'll hear when you call. Thanks!
1) wake up at 7:30
2) run 3.4 miles with a cute friend
3) stretch
4) take a hot shower while blasting James Taylor (and singing along of course)
5) throw in a load of laundry
6) read the word of God
7) wear neon yellow shoes
