11 Questions

I have to tell you guys about my friend Courtney. She is absolutely hilarious and writes this blog:
where she keeps us up-to-date on the joys of being a stay at home mom. We go way back. I mean, come on, we did Disney together, I've eaten her father's Catch O' the Day (remember that beach trip, Courtney?), we played softball together and her mother was my 5th grade teacher. She has guilted me into talking about myself, so here we go:

First, 11 random things about me:

1. I am getting married in 4 weeks. In order to have enough days to go on our honeymoon (Thailand) I am working Saturdays. I thought I would have more free time to do some planning here and there at work. Nope, I'm spending that time teaching new techniques to grad students. Now is the time for you guys to place bets on whether or not I have a meltdown. Vodka is my friend.

2. My toes make a loud snapping sound when I walk. It is absolutely impossible for me to sneak up on someone barefoot.

3. I work out at least 3 days a week, but find it hard to stick to an actual program. The vodka (see #1) counteracts all of this. However, I am bound and determined to complete a full marathon in the year of the 30.

4. I drive to Galveston everyday for work. The more time I spend in Galveston, the more I hate it...and the people that live here and think it's great. I found out yesterday that there have been people who picked up that flesh eating bacteria from swimming at the beach in Galveston. I thought this only happened in lakes. I'll take my chances with the neighborhood peepee pool where I don't have to deal with stinking seaweed and rip currents.

5. Courtney- I also have an irrational fear of tornadoes. I have nightmares about them. I think it comes from having to stay curled up in the hallway of my elementary school for 45 minutes when a rash of storms broke out. There was another time I was on I-40 in Durham and traffic came to a complete stop. It started hailing and a funnel cloud formed. I called my parents crying. Luckily, the cloud dispersed and the sun came back out in a 3 minute time span. Bad storms make me anxious. Every building I spend time in, I plan out my tornado hiding spot. Oh, this past week I discovered that they don't do tornado drills in Galveston. "We've never really had them here." Hurricanes spawn tornadoes, ya dipshits. See #4. However, I guess if it's hurricaning, they have other concerns.

6. When I am having a bad day, I like to look at pictures of boxers on the internet. It cheers me right up.

7. I became an excellent parallel parker while I lived in PA. Whenever I'm looking for a spot now in the city and someone suggests, "You can't fit there," I think to myself, "Challenge accepted." This may be the only talent I possess.

8. I have a hard time with 7s and 8s. I still use my fingers to subtract these numbers from larger numbers. However, I do complicated math at work. Sometimes I impress myself. Other times I feel like a huge moron.

9. I have a super sensitive sense of smell. People gross me out a lot. Like this morning at the gym, I could smell the lady's feet that was working out beside me. Handle that, ok?

10. One of these days, I will convince a group of adults to play duck duck goose with me.

11. I have had two, TWO, separate encounters with a dead bird in less than 24 hours. I feel like I should be disturbed about this fact.

Now to answer Courtney's questions:

1. If you could re-do one decision in your life, what would it be? Well, every decision I've made has shaped who I am today, so that is a tough one. I allowed someone to treat me pretty bad for quite a few years. I should've ended it at the sign of the first red flag. I missed out on some pretty good times with friends during that stint of my life.

2. What's your all-time favorite scent? Not perfume, but.. like.. smell.
Freshly mowed grass right as it starts to rain.


3. Do you remember your first kiss? Lol. Just take a minute to bathe in the awkwardness...... and then regale us with it.
Technically, I think my first "kiss" was initiated by a sibling b/c someone took a picture of it. We must've been 4 and I was kissing his chin while he kissed my nose. But, the awkward one that everyone wants to hear about, occurred in 6th grade at Gray's Creek Elementary. Pretty sure I just stood there with my lips pursed out while he awkwardly licked my lips.

4. Speaking of, what's the most awkward moment that you can ever recall?
My mother decided to have a "sex talk" with my brother while I was in the backseat of the car. Asking him if he was using protection. I'm sure it was waaay more awkward for him, but I still wanted to melt away.

5. What the worst trouble you ever got in in school?
I got detention for letting a friend copy my homework. Seriously, I tried to be a good kid. I think that particular teacher had it out for me. They hate it when you're smart but don't participate.

6. If you could go back to a place you've visited, where would it be?
It has been way too long since I have visited the NC mountains. I don't have a particular spot in mind, it would just be nice to go back. Preferably during mid-October.

7. Describe the most perfect day of your life so far.
The day I left Raleigh, met Ben in Atlanta, and we spent 4 days in Aruba. Everything about the day we left, and the 3 days that followed, were awesome.

8. Do you have a firm handshake and do you think that matters?
I try to use a firm grip while shaking hands. Lately, I've only had to shake hands while meeting people at work. In that case, I guess it could matter. I mean, I'd probably judge someone who limply shakes my hand like I'm diseased. Usually what matters most to me are the words that come out of their mouth immediately following the handshake.

9. What size bed do you have? Validate your decision. Especially mention if it's a super tall bed. I do not understand the logic. What if you fall out? Wouldn't it hurt way worse?
We have a queen sized bed. I'd like to upgrade to a king sized. When it's 100 degrees at night, you want to sleep as far away as possible from the one you love. I feel like our bed is normal height off the ground. I don't need a running start to get into it.

10. What would you buy right now if I gave you $100?
Most likely something wedding related. We still need to buy our toasting glasses and cake cutting utensils.

11. Complete this sentence: I feel strongest when I . . . .
.....have ran any distance longer than 3 miles.

My questions:

1. What is your most favorite article of clothing? The one thing that you can't bring yourself to part with, regardless of holes and stains?

2. What is your earliest memory?

3. Do you have a close relationship with your parents or siblings?

4. Give me your best, "Hey y'all, watch this," story.

5. What are you currently reading? Do you recommend it?

6. Beach or mountains? Pick one or the other and explain why.

7. What's one thing that grosses you out that would surprise others? For example, with the work I do, it takes a lot to gross me out. However, I cannot handle snot. By this I mean the green, stringy, nasty kind. Or the sounds snotty people make . When we have kids, Ben is on snot patrol.

8. Is there anything that causes you irrational rage? (Cue someone who never attended UNC dissing NC State. We shall rise again).

9. What is your most favorite thing to eat?

10. Do you consider yourself a patient person? Why or why not?

11. What is the top thing on your list to do before you die....or get too old to do it?

Feel free to respond to the questions in the comments, or create your own blog!

Weddings for Tomboys

For those of you who don’t already know, I’m a tomboy. Shocker, I know. I like playing sports, getting dirty, watching sports, rolling around with my dogs, and running from farm animals. I prefer wearing blue jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers. I have absolutely no sense of fashion. I’m extremely thankful that I have curly hair because it looks good most of the time without having to put any kind of effort into it. I’m amazed that I actually wear makeup to work. My rationale is I’m not going to impress anyone with the way that I dress so I have to show some type of effort in my appearance. So you may be even more shocked when I say that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing planning a wedding. Someone should write a book entitled, Wedding Planning for Tomboys. Perhaps it exists already, I haven’t checked. Here is my advice for other ladies like me who are lucky enough to have snagged a guy that wants to marry them.

Rings: You should probably know about these. There are different cuts, settings, and types of metal. And people expect you to know all of the answers to the million questions they ask you while trying to choose a ring. Good luck.

Wedding gowns: There exists such a thing called tulle. When I went to try on wedding gowns for the first time the lady asked, “Why type of fabric do you like?” I’m pretty sure she heard the birds chirping in my head because I had no idea I was going to have to mention a specific fabric. After I replied with, “The shiny kind?” She decided to list off all of the types of fabric I could choose from. All I knew was that I didn’t want to go with lace. I am nowhere near girly enough to wear lace. Then they ask you about style. So it’s probably a good idea to be familiar with these alien terms they throw at you and know what style you want to go for before you go to the store. The internet helps a lot, and bridal magazines which I feel silly carrying around.

While getting your dress, save yourself a trip and go ahead and pick out a petticoat. Yep, I had to google that one. No one mentioned a petticoat while I was trying the dress on. You’re going to need one of these bad boys, a little something called spanx, and the shoes you plan on wearing for your first fitting. Bee-tee-dubs, that petticoat needs to have been purchased and allowed to poof out to its fullest potential before the fitting.

Bridesmaid dresses: Your bridesmaids will probably hate the color and dress you pick out. Mine have been nice enough not to complain about either (but hey, they got to pick out their own dress). You have to make a lot of decisions here too, like what shoes should go with it, accessories, and for the love of god, accent colors. The words, “What the hell is an accent color?” actually came from my mouth.

Flowers: Luckily I have a favorite flower, but other than that I know what roses look like. The florist is going to want to know what flowers you like and what colors you were hoping to have at the wedding. It’s a good idea to do a little research and know what’s in season before meeting with them. Also, go with a budget so you can be like, “Do magic with this figure.” Our guy sent me a collection of 800 pictures of his work and I was able to point at stuff. I love it when they make it easy for me.

Food: Food is pretty much self explanatory. Just keep in mind that this will be your largest cost….and will make you want to punch anyone that complains about the food. Your caterer isn’t just responsible for food. They’re going to want to know about plates, napkins, cutting the cake, serving your alcohol, toasting champagne, etc. Again, good luck.

Invitations: You pretty much need to know how much information you’re going to include in your invitation before you go order them. For example, will you need to include a direction card and a card for menu selections? Would you like to order thank you cards with your invitations? Also, make sure you word it right. I learned that you can pick out invitations at Michaels and Party City and have them print everything and save a lot of money (after we ordered ours).

There’s a difference between a wedding planner and a wedding director.

Be prepared to make another million decisions on seating arrangements, timing, music, hair, cards and courtesies. I could go on and on but I would turn this blog into a novel.

Just don’t get lost and bogged down by it all. In the end, you’re marrying your best friend (who loves the fact that you don’t know what tulle is) and that’s all that matters!

Random Ramblings

I think there is a correlation between intelligence level and how blatantly obvious some dudes check out females. Here’s an example:




The typical congressman/congresswoman did not grow up with the internet. Therefore, they do not properly understand or know how to use the internet to its fullest potential. So why is it up to them to determine what rights we have as citizens to use said internet? In my opinion, it’s the same as letting a chimp teach a teenager how to drive a manual car.

Should those marines have pissed on those corpses? Umm, probably not. Am I going to sit here and condemn them for doing it? No, because luckily I’ve never experienced what it’s like to be in a war or had to witness what enemy foreign soldiers have done to the corpses of my comrades. You never know, they could’ve had a very good reason for doing it. (Sorry, this was brought up again this morning).

Getting married is expensive…..we’ve had to tighten our purse strings. Just because I can’t go out and spend money on the same silly things I did a couple months ago doesn’t mean that I don’t want to hang out. The past few weeks have really made me realize what it must be like once you have your first child.

Has someone backed sprints as the new go-to exercise? Like, have sprints been a hit on some reality tv show? Have they been endorsed by some new workout regimen? Just wondering, because on both Monday and Wednesday of this week, I’ve had someone get on the treadmill next to mine and do sprints. This was two separate incidences at two different gyms. These people could have been trying to do intervals (which I have heard endorsed) but their routine was quite confusing. It went something like this:

1) Step on treadmill, start running at a fast pace without any kind of warm up.
2) Speed up treadmill and run really fast for 30-60 seconds.
3) Don’t slow treadmill, stand with feet on sides of treadmill straddling the belt, bend forward with hands on knees and pant heavily for 1-2 minutes.
4) Hop back on treadmill at ridiculous speed. Repeat steps 2-3.

I was concerned for the well being of both these people during the bent over panting step. WTF is going on?

It’s very awkward having rotational grad students in the lab. I feel the need to keep them entertained, which kinda sucks when you have to teach every little thing. That and I feel like they judge my laziness.

I would love to wake up at 7 am everyday and be home by 5:30 pm. If I hear one more person complain about having to wake up at 7, I’m going to need my own soapbox. I get up at 5 am to work out and get everything else done before getting to work at 8-8:30. I usually don’t get home until 6:30 pm. Count your blessings…it could be worse…and you could have a child that wakes you up even earlier.

For awhile, I thought it would be cool to see how many friends I could get on facebook. Recently, I’ve started deleting people based on retarded posts. I’ve decided that I’d rather not be associated with stupidity. For example, I had to delete a girl in December that posted a false news article (haha, if I say that fast enough it sounds like Fox news article) stating that Obama banned Christmas trees at the Whitehouse. You can’t believe everything you see on the internet folks!

This concludes today’s ramblings.

Bad Day

I had a bad day. It wasn't that anything extremely terrible happened, or that any one particular person was an ass to me. It was just one of those days. You know, where you end up having to wait to walk the dogs because it starts pouring rain. Then you're already running late for work just to re-discover that you don't have enough gas to get to work. When you finally do arrive to work your boss is sitting right there noting that you're an hour late. Then you drop your birth control pill into your purse and end up having to dump every single thing out to find it, cause we don't want no babies! Then your boss keeps annoying you about the grad students and what you have planned for them to do all day (seriously, calm the eff down, I got this). Then thanks to an illy (wait is that a word?) timed fire drill and your boss interrupting you several more times you discover that you only accomplished one thing today. Just to end the day with pouring rain on the way home (thanks to the drought people in Texas have forgotten what that liquid substance is and are terrified of it when in a vehicle) and getting behind someone on that last stretch of road doing 30 in a 55 mph zone.

It's ok though. I got a kiss from Ben and picked up two forties of Olde English and two scratch off tickets on the way home. With a few more kisses and some more cuteness from the dogs, these worries will melt away.

New Year, Same Old Bathroom

Yay, it's 2012! So many exciting things are happening this year! For instance, getting to marry my best friend =) I didn't really make any resolutions this year....but I'll try to blog a little more frequently. That being said...first post of the new year:

Sometime last year I blogged about the bathroom we use at work. Some of those problems have been taken care of (haven't really noticed the smell creeping out of the drain lately), but one thing in particular has really started to grate my nerves. The handicap button on the door.

Now, let me go ahead and give a disclaimer. If you are a dude and hold the bizarre belief that girls never fart or take a dump then you should stop reading (and you should probs stop being my friend). I mean, come on, everybody poops.

For those of you who are still with me, we have a handicap accessible bathroom. Which is totally fabulous, I'm all for equal opportunity. However, we seldom get handicap people in our building, in particular, using the bathroom on the third floor which requires two separate card swipes to be accessed. All of the contempt I hold is for the women that work on said floor.

Anyway, there's this handicap accessible button on both the outside and inside of the bathroom. Meaning, when that button is pushed, the door opens on its own and stays open for a few seconds before slowly shutting. A few times I have ran into this scenerio:

Me thinking to myself (as I clench and make my way to the bathroom): Wow, I really shouldn't have tested out my lactose intolerance by drinking that glass of milk with breakfast this morning. Great, boss is standing in hallway having a scientific discussion with two other people. I hope they're almost done and don't notice how long I'm about to be in here. Crap, someone is at the sink, they should be making their way out soon though. Yay, I made it to the stall, now only clench it together until this person leaves.

AND THAT ASSHOLE PUSHES THE HANDICAP BUTTON!

Me sweating: Oh God, my gut won't let me hold this together any longer....

Then all hell breaks loose and I can only hope that the conversation in the hallway had ended and people were no longer standing there.

I don't understand the thrill of using the button. While using it from the inside of the bathroom, it's just as dirty as if you had pushed the door with your hand. Is there something wrong with these people's arms? Are they just that lazy? Is the door too heavy for them and it causes them physical pain to open it? Regardless, it annoys me that several times a week, the hallway is subjected to whatever I've got going on in the bathroom.

Being Thankful

Like me, I'm sure you have one or two Facebook friends that are posting something they are thankful for from Nov 1st through Thanksgiving. While some people are doing a fantastic job with it, other posts are way on the shallow side and it makes me want to cyber slap some individuals. I don't know if I should consider these people lucky because they've never been through something hard and don't realize where they should be giving thanks, or if I should go on thinking that they are stupid.

Last month, I had a conversation with not one, but TWO, individuals very close to me that started with, "So I've found a lump." Unfortunately, some of you know all too well the heart dropping, gut wrenching emotions that follow those four little words. After spending quite a few weeks worrying like crazy, thinking about what if it's cancer, being a little too over emotional, I am thankful that in both cases, the results came back benign.

This year, I am thankful that these two individuals are healthy and cancer free. It really would have turned my world upside down had the results came back differently. I am thankful for my wonderful family that is always there for support. I am thankful for Ben...I would still be lost without him in my life. I'm thankful for my friends (even though I miss a bunch of them every single day) and how willing they are to help me out or drop me a line of encouragement when needed. I'm thankful for our dogs that bring us endless hours of entertainment. I'm thankful for being fortunate enough to live in an awesome house in a nice neighborhood where I don't think twice about running by myself in the dark. I'm thankful for having a job, even though I bitch about the commute from time to time. I'm thankful to be able to go on awesome vacations. I'm thankful. I'm thankful. I'm blessed.

ADD?

I've never been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, so maybe I'm just clueless....or bored, or apathetic, or would much rather be doing something different than what is currently occupying my time. Maybe you guys can tell me if this happens to most people and I am totally normal. This is what happened today:

My thought process: Yay, 15 minutes until I need to take my stuff out of the autoclave. I'll take this time to look at Facebook, flights home for Christmas, and annoy people on gchat.

5 minutes later......in walks boss.

Boss: Just checking to see how things are going, can I help you with (insert experiment), how is (insert other experiment)?

Me (as I frantically try to minimize everything and pretend I'm doing something work related): Yep, everything is going fine. I plan to start (experiment) tomorrow due to timing.

After a 10 minute discussion, boss walks over to talk with coworker.

My thought process: Yay, now I can get stuff out of autoclave and start making reagents for (experiment) and go do (other experiment).

Overhear boss's discussion with co-worker......get sucked in which goes like this for me.

Boss: Sarah, do you have any ideas for what we should be doing in order to gather more background information that would help us get a paper published?

I reply with an okay answer that doesn't make me look like a blubbering fool.

Boss: That's a good idea.....(not done talking)......

My thought process: Woohoo, I sound smart for once!

Boss: ..... are they excitatory or inhibitory neurons?. Also, we need to show where the receptor is located.....

My thought process: I feel like I may have missed something, but I still know what's going on. I got this.

Boss: .....cell signaling, we should look at the amygdala.....

My thought process: Hmm, there was a sign on the autoclave not to leave liquids 15 minutes past end of cycle. I wonder if I should be concerned because it has now been 20 minutes past end of cycle.

Boss: ....brain word....

My thought process: Crap, I should know more about that word. I should take home one of the text books and actually study. I bet he expects me to know more about my project than I currently do.

Boss: ....saying more science words....

My thought process: It looks dark outside, hey, there's a guy on a bike. Wonder where he's going. I bet it's nice out for a run. It'll probably be dark when I get home this evening.

Boss: ....saying more science words....

My thought process: Crap, I totally missed what he just said. Thank goodness for co-worker who is adding to this conversation and taking notes. I wonder if she'll share those with me later.

Boss: ......more science words.....

My thought process: I wonder how the skate party will be. I need to send our officiant our rehearsal time. Oh, we should also fill out those forms she asked us for. Reese is retarded. Wonder if Ben has a plan for dinner. My stomach still hurts. I need to come in to work at 7 am tomorrow.

Boss: So what do you think about that?

Me: Sounds good, I'll start working on it.

Awkward silence.

Coworker: Wanna go get started on (experiment).

Me: Yes, but I need to go get my stuff out of the autoclave first.

And I swear, I forgot what I was doing for about 5 minutes on my way to the autoclave.