General Exam Crazyness

It's coming! My Oral Exam is rapidly approaching-- February 10th!

Needless to say, things have been insanely busy. Really. Most days involve waking up to babbling Baby Girl at 7:00am and it doesn't stop til I hit the pillow again that night. Even so, I am making a lot of progress and being productive, which feels great. Proposal is written, revised, and sent out to the committee. This was a ton of work but I've admittedly learned a lot through this whole process of reading and digesting literature. If there is anything to be said about this whole stressful endeavor is that preparing for this exam is incredibly useful (unlike the written exam we work our asses off after our second year, full of knowledge that most of us never use afterwards). Lab work is often routine and monotonous; it's easy to feel like you're not really an 'expert' in anything besides pipetting. In reading so much of the current (and past) literature, I feel like I finally have some ownership over these content areas. Plus, my thesis is now about 2/3 written.

Currently, I'm working on my presentation and analyzing some more experiments I completed a couple weeks ago. I am genuinely interested and -gasp!- excited about the results. They've proven useful for my presentation thus far, so that's a plus.

Woo! Almost there. Seriously cannot wait for this to be over.

Because she is fabulous

"And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women—except, of course—those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape 'kit 'n' stuff.' But for everybody else, it's a win-win. Unless you're a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years—whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know—actually, I take it back. The whole thing's a disaster."

-Tina Fey, upon winning the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on Monday.

In other news:

1. The Kinect (for Xbox) is awesome.
2. I'm in a major lab funk.
3. I can't wait for Christmas (except, I can, because of the absurd amount of things that need to get done before then)
4. This biopharmaceutical class is driving me batty.

Wake up call

Girlfriend's mom is visiting for a while.  Awesome perks about having Girlfriend's mom here for extended amounts of time include (but are not limited to):

1. I get to practice my Spanish.
2. She often cooks at like 7am to make us lunch for the day. 

Today, however, there was a little mishap in the cooking process and the fire alarms started blaring at 6:30am. Talk about waking up in a panic.

Alas, it was just some smoke from frying up some chicken, but poor Doggie was NOT happy about this.  He really hates the fire alarms and proceeds to shake in fear after they subside. No one was hurt, though, and there were no flames to be put out, which was great.  Although, it really made me consider having an escape route since our room is on the third floor and the kitchen on the 1st... we need one of those ladder things that hook on to the window and allow you to escape:

Kidde Fire Escape Ladder


 Not that a townhome would have this anywhere, but buildings in Seattle are never like this:

I'll let you know when we have our first fire drill.