Lousy Tuesday

Dear Lab,

"Nothing can stop me from running tomorrow," I said.  I should have known better than to tempt you like that.  You like nothing better than to prove me wrong.  Just ignore the fact that I've replaced/repaired/cleaned/maintained every possible thing that I can.  Ignore the fact that I've given you almost seven years of my life.  Go ahead and break that new pump of yours.  Go right ahead.  It's not like I want to get data and graduate or anything.  

Not Love,

Me

Sick

For the past five days, I've woken up in the early hours coughing.  I crawl out of bed, go take more medicine, grab a cough drop and then settle down back to sleep.  The nine or ten hours of sleep I'm getting a night aren't helping and I walk around all day, exhausted.  My tongue is swollen from the cough drops.  My lungs hurt, my throat hurts and even my back hurts from my racking cough. 

"This is normal," my friends tell me.  "All my friends who got the flu this year have been this sick for several weeks."

How did they get better?  I plead for answers. 

"Oh, they take the cough medicine I gave you to take." 

It's not working.  Or I'm not working. 

In any case, I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.

The Gnome

I still haven't come up with a good nickname for Niece No.2.  I wanted to call her Dobby because she has the cutest little long legs ever and you just want to put a sock on and free that little house elf.  But her Dad vetoed that idea.  So, until, I figure it out, we'll call her The Gnome. 

Here are some pics of her and me.  Isn't she the most adorable thing ever?

She has this adorable habit of loving to cuddle.  She just settles her head on your chest and is the most content little being.  It's wonderful. 

New Smells

Apparently the word for news in Chinese - 新聞 (xinwen) means 'new smell'.  This baffles me since the character for smell is an ear at a door.  Wouldn't that indicate 'hear'? Or at least 'eavesdrop'? 

But this post is not about my confusion of the Chinese language - rather it is about the News.

Since English class starts up again next week, I thought it would be time to venture back into the world beyond my lab.  Here are the things that caught my eye:


Should we let steroid users into the Baseball Hall of Fame?  Is there a moral line to draw when we've let in blatant racists, drug users, and sex addict?  (NYTimes Sports) Apparently, yes, there is a distinction between being immoral professionally and being immoral personally. 

Does religion have a negative impact on the lives of children?  (NYTimes Room for Debate) Interesting, short read but I'm not convinced to raise my children without religion.  

'Vandal' who defaced Picasso's painting in a Houston museum turned himself in.  (BBC News) Why the quote around the word vandal?  The man who defaced the painting claims it was a political move.

Which led me to the story of a man who defaced a Rothko painting in Europe.  (BBC News) 'Yellowism' is an interesting motive for vandalizing a painting.  What the heck is 'yellowism' anyway?  ('Yellowism' "defined") Is anyone as confused as I am?  It seems we reduce all paintings deemed worthy of 'yellowist' to simply being 'yellow' and nothing more.

Does listening to classical music make our kids smarter?  (BBC Future) Nope.  Apparently your origami skills are improved by listening to anything that you enjoy and it's effect only lasts 15 minutes.

Girl Trafficking in India (BBC News) Yes, it's as tragic and sad as it sounds.  And it's only a small portion of the problem with an obvious gap in gender birth rates.

The latest in Google and China's interesting relationship (BBC News) Google has stopped putting up nice warnings to users noting them that they are looking up censored words.  Apparently, it's just a big headache because China changes censorship all the time (no kidding!).  Google now just transfers all mainland searches to its Hong Kong sites.


In other news, my pump now works!  I was worried that I broke it yesterday when we hooked up the wires incorrectly and blew the system out.  And then I was worried that I broke it when I was putting it back together and the metal casing sparked and shut it down.  Now that I think about, I should probably have counted my blessings that I didn't electrocute myself in the process.  But my concern was only for my pump.

One of those Faces

Last week, a few friends and I were talking about how weird it would be to have people who aren't related to you who look just like you.  Except about three seconds into agreeing with my friends, I stopped.

"Wait a minute!  This happens to me all the time." 

There was one week when I was a missionary that I was asked three or four times if I was the person they thought I was.  One even insisted that I had lived in New York state.  "Are you absolutely sure that you didn't live in New York?"  As though I would have forgotten that fact myself if they didn't remind me.  "No, I'm absolutely certain I have never lived in New York."  "Wow, I was so sure that it was you.  It must have been someone else." 

One time, while visiting Monticello, one of the ladies in the gift shop asked how track was going.  I looked at her slightly confused and she apologized. "Oh!  Are you not the girl who is on the UVa track team?"  This was a compliment I was ready to take.  "No, but thank you for thinking that I look like the type of person who could run track."  She didn't seem to pick up on my enthusiasm and kindly continued, "You just look so much like her.  I would have thought for sure it was you."

And then, of course, one cannot forget my verbally awkward experience in which some woman came up to me in church and told me that I looked so much like her daughter that she thought I was she.  I just awkwardly stood there, unsure how to comfort her that her daughter didn't come to surprise her at church on Christmas.  So, another daughter, who looked nothing like me, jumped in to dispel the awkwardness, "What did you expect?  For her to show up and sit with another family?" 

Yesterday, I was at the mall and paused while walking through one of the department stores to look at UVA apparel when an attendant looked at me, "Oh, you've come here before!"  I looked back her, trying to recognize her face.  It had been at least a year since I'd been in this store but maybe she just has a really good memory?  "Yes, I have."  I responded, still not sure where this was going.  "You came in last time wearing a backpack."  I thought about the backpack that I always carry and wondered if I had ever come to this store with it.  Confusion must have been evident because she jumped in,  "Oh, it must not be you.  Well, you look just like the person who came in.  She was a very impressive woman.  She had been living out in the woods for an entire year by herself!"  I suddenly felt guilty for looking at non-necessary apparel as she told me the story about my doppelganger whose house that she was living in had been sold by her landlords right out from under her and how she had been forced to live in a tent.  "She's kind of my hero,"  the attendant explained.  "I look up to her a lot."  And apparently, I looked just like her.  "Wow," I agreed.  "She does sound like an amazing woman."  I tried to imagine living in the woods in a tent for a year. 

The lives that people with my face lead!  I kind of wonder - if I were to meet them face to face, would I really see someone who looks like me?  Or do people just see in me what they want to see? 

Can't Turn Back Now

I got my haircut today.  It was long overdue.

And since it was so long overdue, I went a bit extreme and chopped it all off.  Then I got haircut remorse when I took a picture and realized I looked like a guy.

And then my camera broke.

I don't know what's wrong.  The app on the phone just doesn't work anymore.

So I pulled out the camera on my computer and just about went to town.

You can see it for yourself.

Up Close

The world today is grey and dreary and uninviting.  So, on my walk into work, I stopped and took pictures of things that caught my eye.

I've changed my mind.  The world is beautiful today.