Hey there Right Brain, remember me?

When I was a sophomore in high school, I signed up to take Drawing 101 but when I found out that you needed Art 101 as a pre-requisite, as the ultimate rule-follower, I dropped it. I felt that AP Biology would be more practical (good thing, that's where I met Natalie Fisher!) but have always wanted to take an art class. Well, 12 years later and a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology, it's time to push the right side of my brain out of the lay-z-boy chair. I signed up for the beginning drawing class at North Seattle Community College and I LOVE IT!!! Our teacher is absolutely fantastic. With just a few short suggestions, it was if my brain turned on and said, "oh hey duh, of course that's how you would draw, measure, determine, represent etc." We learned how to use the negative space to help define the parameters of the object of interest, to measure using a pencil (duh! of course!), and to determine angles correctly (oh of course, just think of it as a clock rather than guessing!). Usually portions of my sketches are off because I'm not paying attention or because I'm just guessing. But by more careful measuring and being willing to erase erase erase and try again, I think I got a satisfactory negative space representation of the "still life" we were drawing. I loved it. It was so enjoyable to sit there with a big drawing board, some newsprint, and charcoal and let things be messy and imprecise. To scribble and draw and rub and erase and move the charcoal around on the paper and not worry about the outcome. It was so refreshing after years of meticulous and precise representations of reality using scientific graphs, numbers, and words. Here's my drawing. It's supposed to be a folding chair with a bucket and ball on top with some sticks propped against it projecting back to a box and a cone. Remember, we were only supposed to define the negative space so uh, yeah.

Shmita, Hebrew for "release"

From Exodus, we learn that "you may plant your land for six years and gather its crops. But during the seventh year, you must leave it alone and withdraw from it." Well friends, I'm a big believer in the good book and after six years of laboring away under the hot sun of science, looks like it's time to take a Shmita, a Sabbath year, a . . . wait for it . . . Sabbatical. Ta-da! The Shmita is traditionally a time to enjoy the fruits of years of intense labor and explore. Granted, I'm not sure my six years qualifies as anything other than what it was (let's be honest, I did have fun too) but I'll take it. Here are some of the things I've been up to/am doing/will be doing while on sabbatical: spent a lot of time reading and writing for the newton, walked to the post office and back (sixty blocks) because I had enough time and it was nice out, donated blood because of some flintstone vitamins that boosted my iron, signed up for a drawing class, cleaned my room (multiple times in just a few short weeks, definitely a record), learned to make wontons, read two books late into the night (because I could - The Hunger Games and Catching Fire are fantastic by the way), went for a run at 11:15 in the morning because I could, renewed my passport (because I should), trained for ReserveCorps, pulled invasive weeds out of a park, and signed up to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity (because I have time to do something meaningful). It's been amazing. What a perk of being an academic - the Sabbatical! And whenever I get a little jittery over my entirely unplanned future, I have this poster hanging up in my room to remind me to relax a bit.

The Organisation that Must Not Be Named

Oh hey look at that, I spelled "organization" wrong up there. And when I say wrong, well, I mean wrong. Anyway, the entire region up here is really worried about a dam breaking down near Rainier. If it goes, then the entire valley and a whole bunch of communities would be flooded with water, mud, trees, and if I know anything about vegetation, nasty invasive blackbery bushes. So a certain organization wants us to be ready to volunteer and run a shelter and be known as the ReserveCorps. Sounds pretty cool yeah? A whole bundle of us bundled up and took off to a beautiful church building in Queen Anne to be taught, over the course of six and a half hours, how to help them run emergency shelters. Here's what we actually learned: "Don't park by adult movie stores while driving their vehicles. Also, don't get pulled over because that's really embarrassing. With us, image is everything." "In order to be a great volunteer, you have to love working with food." And "The bigger the disaster, the bigger the stress." I enjoyed the enthusiasm of the instructors but I wanted to get down to brass tacks. Two hours. In. Out. Ready to go. But yeah, no. Well, at least I got to peruse the hymn book and find new classic lines like "who's the king of the jungle, yeah! yeah! who's the king of mars, blah! blah" (no joke) and "back in '87 the Grembles in Boston took Satan down in their living room" (huh?). So all in all, I'm now trained to staff an emergency shelter. Good thing I can probably figure out how to set up a cot on my own. Here's maybe what I spent some of my time doing: Isn't that stone scroll work behind the pulpit gorgeous? I would love to have church in a chapel like this.

Fighting the British Invasion, One Vine at a Time

This morning, in honor of our county's new namesake and in honor of our country's man's man of men, the University of Washington hosted a Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service. As MLK said best: "Life's most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?". Well, true. Not sure if our project really helped others but it's a Northwest Classic: ripping up the evil and invasive Himalayan Blackberry and its equally vile invasive friend, English Ivy. Both are apparently from Britain. Now, normally I'd assume that a Himalayan Blackberry would be from somewhere else than a little island off the coast of France but hey, I don't argue with people, yeah? And this little beast made "The Top 10 Unwanted Pest" list which advises "patrolling the area" and "searching out defenseless seedlings" with the motto: "LEAVE THE BRAMBLES IN SHAMBLES". So, let's just say this isn't the first time that we've had this project. And yet, knowing what we'd be facing, I pulled the classic volunteer trick which is to sign up for the list of miscelaneous tasks right at the beginning so as to avoid the blackberries and other nasties. Now this backfired when I was at the cannery and had to measure and pour raw beef (with blood, eeew!) in 40 pound sections. But it was aces this time. I was assigned to make stick rafts that would allow for composting in place without allowing the nasty Himalayans to re-root. We also tore up ivy. The best part of the day? The LDSSA (Institute) made all of the volunteers lunch. I can point out 200 happy people that love Mormons. Thanks Institute! Oh, and I got really muddy but no thorns and scratches. Which since it was at Seward Park, those blackberries have gotten me plenty of times!

Newtonian mechanics.

So the task for January (and what is helping me maintain a strong front against the eroding power of rest and relaxation, heaven forbid!) is to prepare and submit a Newton International Fellowship. It provides a post-doctoral salary line (enough for a package of bread and some peanut butter every two weeks) for a two-year stint to work in the UK if you're not from the UK. Enter me. And Newton. We'll see. I won't hear back until July (what! really, what are they doing? watching stephen fry every night instead of reading fellowships? okay, i don't blame them.) I'm writing the fellowship from scratchikins and spent every single day from dawn til dusk and past at the library writing, reading, and writing. About 8:30 PM tonight, one half hour before the library closed for the week, I got the thing submitted to the UK lab I'd be working in for approval. Next week, paragraphs on how important I am, how my moving to the UK will benefit the UK (duh! it's me!), and how my moving to the UK will benefit from the US (oh, i don't know what they'll do without me so i'll have to make something up like, i'll only be gone for two years so don't cry for me am-er-i-ca, the truth is i never left you). So I'm crossing my fingers but really I just need to cross this off my list so I can move forward and get a real job.

Christmas at Home 2009!!!

There's not really any other title for this blog than the rush of photos from the break. We missed the New York branch of our family but were happy that the Colorado contingent drove over and the Seattle girl (me!) and the California couple (hurray Aunt Jo and Uncle Frank!) made it into town to spend Christmas together. Here's what our family Christmas stockings look like now. I used to be 5th on the list but am now 12th on the list. Any more grandkiddos in the family and I'll be out by the back door. It'd be worth it though, those nephews and niece are hilarious! One of the daily entertainments was finding certain ornaments on the tree, a magnificent accomplishment I think. Good work Carson! Yeah see, you can't even tell what he's holding can you?The major theme of the break was playing bingo. I mean, these kids are bingo fiends and would give Mildred, Gertrude, and Albert down at the Senior Citizen Center a run for their money. Especially Colter. From what we can tell, the kid doesn't look at his card but knows exactly what he, and probably you, have on your card. Here's the gang playing it and I think you can tell from the expressions on our faces what we're thinking. For instance, I'm thinking "I might just have a chance to beat these guys!" (I didn't. I didn't beat them once. And we played 48 times.) Here's my dad. You take your best guess at about how excited he is to be playing the sixth game of DVD Thomas & Friends Bingo that night. (He's a great sport.) We also made gingerbread houses so here's Carson and Colter decorating it up. And as we have a Mexican fiesta for every Christmas Eve at our house, I made flan for dessert. And Tom's pork and tomatillo sauce. But back to the flan. I won't say that it was Tom's recipe because that would defame the most incredible flan ever made. So I'll just say it had nothing to do with anything and that I need to take some flanrichment classes or at least get some flansense because this was a disaster. As we all know that the Internet is the circle of trust, I'll post a picture of the nastiness and know that you'll all laugh and smile and my attempt. *the disclaimer is that the flan was DELICIOUS! it just looks wretched so we didn't serve it. we served churros! And things got better with the drinks, pork, and tomatillo sauce which all worked beautifully. Thanks Tom! Nothing is more fun than Christmas with a five-year-old and a three-year-old (EXCEPT the addition to that 5 and 3 with another 5, another 3, and a 7 month old!!!) so it was just spectacular. New Year
s Eve dinner was supplemented by some fried brie with baguette and currant jam courtesy of my dad by way of that little restaurant in Edinburgh. And the after-dinner entertainment was supplied by all of us courtesy of the Beatles. Here we are. Christmas break was wonderful in every single way. Suzy, Tom, and Sarah came down the day after to sit and chat for hours and catch up with Suzy. I got to see Megan Paul and catch up with her. See my college roommates Darci and Barbara again. And go to a session at the Salt Lake Temple with Suzy and meet a sister mish on Temple Square who's eyes bugged out when she heard I was 28 and said, you're really old. Really? 28? I mean, I know I'm old but er . . . aren't you sorta running into people that are like 87? So all in all it was wonderful! Big kisses and thanks to my mom and dad for hosting us all. For Lisa, Nate, Carson, and Colter (hi squishee!) for making the drive. And for making a welcome home dr. pickle juice sign for me at the airport! And for Aunt Jo and Uncle Frank for driving in from California and hosting Christmas dinner. Here's what I did the Monday after New Year's-went skiing. Beautiful!!! Well, the weather is beautiful, I think I'm pretty alright too.Here's the sunshine off the mid-way of Stampede. Look at those skies. Amazing heaven yeah? And here's my dad on the top of the back mountain. And the shot off the back mountain overlooking the mind-blowing beauty of Utah Valley. I love where I'm from. Lucky lucky girl.