Too excited for just one post.

Tonight I'm going to see the Sound of Music in Leavenworth. Leavenworth is an old logging town that was going bust. In order to save the town, the community got together and decided to turn it into a Bavarian retreat. This means that ALL of the buildings have alpine scenes painted on the side, accordion music resonates through the streets, men walk by wearing leiderhosen, the whole bit. It's more Bavarian than Bavaria. Believe me, I've been to both. The thing is, it worked. Now I've been to Leavenworth five too many times, so that's not the attractive thing about tonight. I'm excited out of my mind to see the Sound of Music on stage. I know it's just a summer theater company that does it every year (think Hill Cumorah pageant except they're sharing their belief in schnitzel with noodles), but it is far and away my favorite movie/story/musical/anything. I cannot wait. Tee-hee! Hopefully the next post will not involve traffic in the mountains, car breaking down, losing keys, missing the play, and getting stuck on the wrong side of the Cascades until 4 in the morning.

Was not expecting a marriage proposal today, but whatever.

Oh wow. Talk about all in a day's work. I thought this kind of stuff only happened in 1980s sit-coms like Balky from Perfect Strangers but yeah. I won't go into too many details but only because the would-be suitor is totally serious, not because of the fact that it is absolutely hilarious. I'm still laughing about this! Really? Really. It took me about thirty-six nanoseconds to say, wow . . . no. And then 13 more microseconds to add, pretty sure that's a felony. Before you think I'm totally heartless, in short, a guy (that a friend of mine and I drove to activities and Institute, etc. about two years ago) wants me to marry him so that he can get his green card. Wow.

Maybe I should send this picture.

So, good news. Last week I sent in some applications for post-doctoral interviews and I have heard back from three of the profs so far. Talk about putting the double-decker cart with 27 cup holders before the poor little horse. I need to graduate before I can accept a post and I need data before I can graduate, but blah, blah, blah. The important thing here is that three profs responded and I get a chance to interview with them and find out if their lab is a good fit for me and they can see if the reverse is true for them as well. One is a crystallographer at Oxford. The perk there is that she does structural studies of Shigella. This little bacteria makes a hypodermic needle looking thing out of proteins. Cooooooooooooool! The other is a crystallographer at the NIH and the third is a cryo electron tomographer at the NIH. I'm excited about all three opportunities and this is really just the first wave. So if these don't pan out, then I still have plenty of labs to apply for. Or, mowing lawns. Anyway, maybe I should show up looking like I do in this picture. It'd be dynamite.

Now accepting suggestions.

In about four weeks, I will be spending 28 of the next 34 days traveling. What?!?!? I know. And if I had accepted the invitation to go to the Immunology department retreat, it would have been 30 of the next 34 so it's a good thing I said no to that. Anyway, with all this traveling, I'm going to need a good book. And that means I am going to need suggestions. Here's generally what I like to read with examples in parentheses: classic English literature involving smart men and smart women meeting each other at parties and on walks in the countryside (North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell), men wearing parkas and climbing something really high and having a bad time of it (The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard), senior citizens solving crimes that the best and brightest of the police force can't handle (Miss Marple by Agatha Christie . . . my love of Perry Mason, Matlock, and Diagnosis Murder also come into this category), men escaping the Nazi's through the bitter Norwegian countryside (We Die Alone, by David Howarth), men fighting jib sails, foresails, mainsails, mizzenmasts, and more while tacking west past Tierra Del Fuego (Two Years Before the Mast, by Henry Dana Jr.). I don't like books that deal with boys coming of age and sports. That goes for movies too, so The Sandlot is an F- in my book. Rudy too. Gag! Also, if it involves people talking about their feelings over the course of 36 chapters or worse "self-discovery", I'll probably not get past page three. So basically, if you think either "didn't Jane Austen already write this exact plot?" or "wow, did it not occur to them to pack an extra pair of wool socks?" I'm game.

Oh Sexson, you should have held out for a job selling popcorn in the upper deck.

So . . . it's a well known fact that I went to many a Mariners game just to cheer on the man with the worst batting average in the major leagues year in and year out, who was also horribly overpaid (think of him as the Greg Ostertag of baseball, but without the nasty Fred Flintstone calf tat). Who? Why that 6'6" blue-eyed first base man, Richie Sexson. Shhhh . . . don't tell him he's bad, he's a little sensitive about it. Also don't hit him with the ball if you're pitching, he may overreact and rush the mound. Well, the news is that the M's just cut him and the Yankees picked him up for pocket change, leaving the Mariners with a hefty multi-million dollar invoice for goods never delivered. But, the ladies (including this one) love him. Don't know what I'm going to do with my Richie Sexson bobblehead . . . make a Yankees uni for him? That's a bit too much I think. Here's an okay picture I found of him. In the other pics, he's not that attractive, guess I've only been seeing him from the upper deck.

No, we weren't playing with fire.

Fire is not a toy. As the daughter of my dad, this may not be my proudest moment. But really, we were by a lake, there was plenty of dirt, and it was just a small stick with the end smoldering. Barely any big deal. Anyway, we just had our Relief Society campout at Lake Ki (up in Marysville-ish somewhere). When it got dark, we went and inspected the nearby lake. Did you know that bullfrogs don't make frog noises (ribbit . . . or croooooaaaaaak . . . or maybe even a chirrup if it was a smallish frog). They make horrid cow sounding noises. Gross. We also shone our headlamps down into the water to torment the little crawdads that didn't want to get seen. Back at camp, Tish enlightened us with the joy of writing your name in fire. This picture was taken by Tish, one of our two resident au pairs in our ward. The next morning after a surprisingly comfortable sleep, we had Suzy teach us some great first aid. In short, if you have a head injury, do not try to cut off the blood supply. Loved it.

Happy Fourth!

I just got back from a trip to Utah for the Fourth of July. Did I come in last place at the annual PIT game for the eighth year in a row? Yes. Okay, all of you who are involved in finance or actuarial science or whatever it is that you people with the wads of cash do . . . what is the strategy of PIT? I can understand that if you aren't trading any commodities at all, then of course you have no chance to corner the market, but I'm trading! Maybe I'm trying to play the market too much and I happen to be on the losing end of every deal . . . i.e, I trade too often and don't allow the cards to come to me and collect them all? Anyway, the last time I beat Ryan was in 1997 or so. Yikes! The only hand I won all night was when I cornered the market on coffee. But, I contribute that victory to my Seattle and not to any real PIT skill. After that, I got about four hours of sleep and then rode around the Val Verda 2nd ward in the back of a flatbed trailer playing Washington Post March on a C melody saxophone at 6 in the morning for the sixteenth year in a row. It was great. We went to the Gateway to see Kung Fu Panda with the grandkids/give the grandparents a chance to take a nap in the dark movie theatre and then I went out to dinner at Sundance with the parents. I was in bed by nine. Am I ninety? Yup! Maybe next year I'll be able to stay up later.