Year: 2013

I’m feeling a little off yesterday – so I slept in until 6:15 this morning and I still feel a little crappy right now. I think I’m still healthy enough to run 3 miles right now, but something feels a little wrong so I’m hoping that it will just go away in a little while.

I’m trying to cook 2-3 night a week and that usually means that I have at least 1 slow cooker night, which always has a 50/50 chance of coming out weird. Usually I err on the side of too much liquid, which was true this week (a chicken/sweet potato stew which we had on Tuesday) so on Wed, I turned it into a soup. Except I forgot the gaskets on the blender.So I had soup all over the kitchen counter.  Today is Thursday, we still may be eating the soup.

My triumphant orchid – I finally (after 2 years) got one of my seven orchids to respike and rebloom. I consider myself an expert now.   I should not get more orchids, they do try my patience.

Last week, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation was awarded to two professors that I’ve worked for – Prof. Langer at MIT and Prof. Arnold at Caltech. These awards are the highest achievement that can be given to an engineer – the Nobel prize for engineering. I watched the live feed on the web, it kind of blows my mind that I had the opportunity to work in these world class labs.  Working in these research labs taught me so much about the scientific process.  Congrats!

Get out of the house! You don’t know how much I struggle with finding outings for the family. We are not very coordinated – often times we will spend a free afternoon just frittering away time, playing bejeweled. We made it out to Frederick Douglass’s house this past weekend 🙂

We are often busy in the evenings, so sometimes it’s hard to have a quiet evening at home. Last night we had no plans – so we made handmade pizza and popcorn/movie night. I called January the Martin/Lee household celebration of small appliances month. We bought a room humidifier, a brown rice cooker and a popcorn popper. I got tired of having popcorn in a bag – so I got an air popcorn popper and had popcorn with real melted butter and salt. Yummy. The dogs agreed.

We try and have movie night once a week – it doesn’t always work out and we always watch the same thing – we watch Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe. It’s the only thing we can all agree on. Last night was a great episode about the SF city dump. Now that is a a dirty job.

Two classes this term – one online and one in person. I found another professor for Anatomy and Physiology II. Hoping that he’s more organized and, frankly, easier.

He said he didn’t mind eating in class (which is held in a lab) which is great – as there is actually no money to have labs that involve chemicals stronger than baking soda.

Did you know most hormones are derived from cholesterol?

The temperature yesterday hit 70 degrees here. I would have jumped for joy until I realized that it was 70 degrees like 3 weeks ago – this is the craziest winter ever and it was like 8 degrees four days ago. Ruby, my trustworthy companion is getting old, I’m giving her joint medication now – whenever we stop walking, she wants to lie down and eat grass. I totally understand. When I reach her age, I hope I’m lucky enough to lie in the sun and have people come up to me and say hello.

It’s so strange to walk in summer weather and see withered trees.

We may be (what’s the opposite of undefeated?) un-undefeated, but we are having a pretty good time.