Christmas break was . . .

really spectacular but was uh, interesting. In short, it was a PANDEMIC of snow, bad travel, fun family, a bad cold, and the actual game PANDEMIC (pictured here with most of world infected). Seattle got slammed by piles of snow and I was a little worried I wouldn't make it to the airport since I was trying to take the bus. Given that some other buses that day plowed down a steep street and into a barrier, ultimately hanging over I-5, I guess I should be grateful I made it at all. Once I got home, I settled into a nice and deep chest cold that lasted the full 10 days and a bit more. I guess I should be glad it wasn't like last year before when I got food poisoning from who know's what and was throwing up every hour for fourteen hours . . . hum, maybe next year my parents won't have to put up with me being sick. So in short, I spent ten days in bed and right when I started feeling better, it was time to go back to school. But, the weather was beautiful, I got to see some friends, spend time with aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, and my grandmother, and it snowed!!! Some highlights, the kiddos from Seattle all got together to see Suzy who recently moved down to Utah from our town. Here are the cupcakes that she made. She's amazing! And then of course the beautiful mountains. People who have never been to Utah's lovely corner of the country picture I don't know what, but I say "It was a fantastic place to grow up, there are two 11,000 foot mountains right outside my front door". This is Cascade Mountain that I had a hard time believing that I actually got to go to the elementary school named after it (seriously, I was REALLY excited when I found out). And Mount Timpanogos, which I may never make it to the top again after the 10 hour escapade of last time . . . where I ended up running a bit of the last mile just so I didn't have to be hiking anymore.

Merry Christmas?

So . . . last night my parents sent me a HUGE box full of individually wrapped homemade cookies. Chocolate mint sandwich, lemon shortbread, walnut bars, oatmeal, walnut tarts, boysenberry pastry, macaroons, and even some delicious s'more cookies that are graham and chocolate chunk cookies with a marshmallow melted in-between. I took the box to lab this morning but barely missed my bus on Campus Parkway so I had about 15 minutes to wait for the next one. Normally I just start walking but since it was about 20-something degrees, and I was holding this big box of cookies, I decided to wait. To pass the time, I wandered around to the other people at the bus stop (about seven or eight others) and offered them some of the cookies. Most people were "uh, okay" some were "oh thank you" and some were "uh, how much?". One of the people came back over and said, "it's so nice to think that parents still do this for their children" and another lady gave me her hand warmers when she was getting on the 30. So nice! But I wished Merry Christmas to every person + the eleven or so more people once I got on the bus and passed out more cookies. I sort of got one mumbled "Merry Christmas" from the bus driver but for the most part, no return of the Christmas greeting. I got this same behavior from my neighbors that I delivered cookies to on Sunday. If someone was offering me cookies and said, "Happy Hannukah" or even the super lame "Season's Greetings" I would return the same. What's the deal? Are we so afraid of offending people that now we're just miserable and cranky? Most people were visibly suspicious of me this morning. Hopefully they were just frozen and in the depths of seasonal affective disorder?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

My friend Emily and I are decorating, planning, baking fiends. By that I mean, I think she might actually do a lot of that stuff, I just dream about how much I would like to be doing that stuff. However, neither one of us has a lot of time or reason to be Martha Stewart juniors (without the insider trading or nasty temper). But this morning, we decided to flip on the Christmas music and enjoy the joy of holiday baking. Emily started off with a delicious praline chocolate double layer cake followed up with some enticing ginger snaps. We rounded out the morning with some southern cream cookies and cream cheese icing. Here is the fruit of the last parts of our labors. They'll be perfect for tomorrow's hot chocolate/candy cane lane meander party. We're particularly pround of Emily's brown color for the reindeer. They do not give the instructions on the food coloring box of how to do this. But a little bit of color theory from the bazillion art classes we've had to take due to our public educations, it worked out well. And since we're equal opportunity holiday celebrators, we added a whole slew of white, light blue, and dark blue frosted stars of David for our friends of the Hannakah inclination.

Whistle while you work. Or hot glue gun. Whatev.

So, my co-worker Matt, who I've sat within three feet of for the past three years, is a Dr. Pepper fanatic. He routinely amasses mountains of empty pop cans until they reach terrifying heights at which point the custodian takes them down to the recycle bin. Well it was about time to do something with all that lovely aluminum. This may be one of the best ideas we've had in our bay yet, and believe me, we've had some real winners. To celebrate the Christmas season, I spent about twenty minutes yesterday assembling a Christmas tree out of Diet Dr. Pepper cans with Matt's hot glue gun. Matt made the star and the little package at the bottom for Roland. More fun than making protein. No question.

Things I've learned in graduate school.

Perhaps this should wait until I finish but I'm doing this now. I am supremely confident that my head is full so I can't possibly learn more than I already have. That being said, what's the point of waiting. Oh, and when I say it is full, I am in no way implying that there's a lot in there. I'm just saying it's full. Let's see . . . oh, this list is edited for content. And when I say edited, I mean I took out all of the horrible things I've learned. And when I say horrible, I mean the insufferable, odious, and loathsome things I've endured, not the wild and wicked. I've been in lab for almost six years, I've had no chance to become wayward.

• The 65 bus will not stop for you. Running, pounding, and yelling will not help.
• It only takes 30 minutes to walk from Campus Parkway to my house.
• It only takes 45 mintues to walk from my lab to Campus Parkway. (The 70 will not stop for you either.)
  
• Cuban sandwiches from Paseo are slices of paradise.
• "Misting heavily" and "torrential sprinkles" are both perfectly acceptable forms of precipitation.
• If it's cold, wear a jacket. If it's really really cold, wear two jackets. Coats are not acceptable forms of Seattle fashion.
• Never visit IKEA on a Saturday. Ever. Tuesday's at 9:13 PM is your best bet.
• The water in Lake Union is dirty and cold. Very cold. Especially at 7 AM in January.
• The water in Lake Washington is delightfully warm. Especially at 7 PM in July.
• If you can't find an orienteering control point, it's because you're lost. They didn't forget, they didn't misplace it, it wasn't stolen, you're lost.
  
• Your best bet for winning first place in a Street Scramble is to show up in your jammies, half-walk, half-run, and just be smarter than the rest of the competition.
• I would like to own 40 acres outside beautiful Moses Lake.
• If you have to work every day, make sure that the co-worker sitting closest to you is a lot of fun.
• 2 for 1 day at Scarecrow Video is Wednesdays.
• If there is a Thai restaurant every half-block or so, you're not in Thailand my friends, you're in Seattle.
• UW football is bad. Really bad. Have they ever been good? Thought not.
• Men in Seattle have no excuse for not buying their girlfriends flowers.
• The best donuts in the world are sold by a nasty hairy man at the market. Really, he's kinda gross. So, sometimes just go to TopPot instead.
• I'm actually pretty good at foosball.
• I hate rats. I hate them. I hate them so, so much.
• I hate maggots. More than rats. And that's saying something.
• The lights at the Hutch automatically turn off at 8:04 PM, 1:13 AM, and 4:26 AM.
• Longboarding at Alki is fun.
• No need to merge early, just ride the Seneca lane and squeak in at the end. That's what it's there for.
• Google maps is the best. True that. Double true.
• The GEICO commercial with squirrels plotting to run in front of cars to make them crash is not computer generated. That's actual footage folks. The little devils.
  
• A walk around Greenlake with friends is the cheapest form of therapy.
  
• If a friend asks you to go see a new band, you should probably go. I could have seen DCFC for about $5. Then again, I've also been saved from seeing a lot of boring bands. So, maybe I haven't learned anything after all about this one.
• Museums in Seattle are free on the first Thursday of the month.
• In relation to the previous one, I've learned this: Paul Allen is weird.
• Don't trust sweet-talking men from Oklahoma.
• Parades can take place on the water! Clowns will throw candy to you from jet skis!
  

New Favorite Book.

The term "favorite book" is a really hard one to define. It's like asking the crazy cat lady down the street who her favorite "child" is. There's too many to choose from! I think I just unwittingly implied that I'm a crazy shut-in. But hey friends, I get out. I get out and go to lab. See? That's totally normal. At any rate, over Thanksgiving (I always take every vacation as an opportunity to read something fun) I read "Villette" by Charlotte Brontë. It's about exactly what you'd expect from one of the Brontë trio. So in short, it was depressing, and then it got really sad. Actually that's not a fair assessment of it. Dr. Bretton's mom is just the sort of sassy gal most of us women aspire to be when we're in our olders, Graham Bretton is the just the nice sort of lad most of us women would like to meet, and the ending of the book is just the realistic sort of ending that happens a lot in life . . . but maybe sometimes wouldn't want to have happen. So, if you've got a vacation coming up and you'd like to read about how an uneducated gal from the sticks of England moves to the French countryside to teach a bunch of dumb girls how to speak the real lingua franca, i.e. English, then this is the book for you. And with a summary like that, how can you miss? No really, really. It's good.

Definitely a happy Thanksgiving.

I went home for Thanksgiving to bask in the shadow of the everlasting hills. Or rather, the sun sun sunny skies of the mountain tops. While my wonderful mother took care of the two little nephews (really Mom, we could have all come home to help!) my dad, sister, bro-in-law, and I all went skiing at Alta. I think that parts of heaven must look like Alta on a sunny winter day. Bright blue skies, snow-flocked trees, groomed slopes, spectacular. Later in the day, it got socked in fog and as I tried to weave through dozens of seven-year-olds that were out on the steeps for their first time, I decided to call it enough for the day. Thanks family for a wonderful morning! My mom had prepared an amazing and delish dinner for the tired gang but I worry that she didn't get to watch any football at all. It was just nice being home. The trip got extended an extra day because Delta overbooked my flight to Seattle by about 348 people. Well, it must have been that many because they gave me $1200 to fly back to Seattle Tuesday morning, which I did. My parents were so tickled. Probably equally so to have me home another day (they're so great) and that I got a great deal (thanks Delta!)