November 27, 2008 at 7:37 pm (College, Family, Posted by Cindy)
Tags: grad school, Thanksgiving
First, my apologies for dashing to the 100 mark, only to fall prey to midterms. Some neglect their blogs because of Real Life. Unfortunately, it seems like exams are my Real Life. But, I’m temporarily back to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving!
I am grateful for:
- a loving family
- my health (despite being an old lady who’s sore and lacking an appetite, I seem to be doing ok)
- friendship, farflung and near
- academic support from faculty and instructors
- options
No, that last one isn’t a reference to football strategery. Firefox is telling me that isn’t a word. I KNOW, ok? It’s the realization that I have a lot more going for me, academically and socially, than I realized. So, I’m going to apply to schools this year. I might end up applying to schools next year, too. That’s ok. I’ll keep you posted.
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November 12, 2008 at 2:11 am (College, Life, Posted by Cindy, Science)
Tags: contest, Facebook, GFP, sleepy, sore
Today, I was in lab from 9AM to 11:00PM. No joke. I did a big transformation experiment; details will come. Since I’ve been home, I’ve been able to eat a small dinner, check my Facebook messages (ha…how college is that? There’s always time to check Facebook! Although, that might be a more “Facebook” characteristic than a “college” characteristic nowadays…), edit my student’s speech, and check out a blog by the Berkeley Language Center. And now, I must rush to get my work and research done so that I can go to class and meet with professors tomorrow. First, though, let me do some publicity…
- Check out Found in Translation. A regular poster (the originator of the blog, in fact) is competing for a Blogging scholarship, so you can help out by voting for him!
- So, more specifically, go here, click on the “Vote” button, and select David Malinowski! This seems like a cool contest…maybe, if I’m fortunate enough to be in school next year, I’ll enter, too
As if this didn’t sound like enough of a campaign, let me offer some promises. I will blog more soon, and these are the upcoming topics:
- Halloween 2008. I was a GFP bunny, and there are pictures. They’ll come. I promise.
- Prop 8. All of you who are flicking off the camera with a ring. Don’t worry; I found some friends to participate. If you’re lucky, they’ll guest post. If you’re not, you’ll be stuck with me, but you’ll get the picture (ha!) either way. I promise.
- Acronyms. You might wonder why GFP is important, or what GFP even is. Well, never fear. I’ll explain. I promise.
- Actually, I gave you two links that will explain GFP and its significance much better than I can, so it would be better for me to tell you how I use it in lab. Hurray! We’re not making Franken-foods, I promise.
And with that, I will commence my To Do list. Holy crap. It’s a To Do list, but it’s more like Cindy-in-a-pile-of-Do-Do. *sigh*
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November 10, 2008 at 12:10 pm (College, Posted by Cindy)
Tags: school
So, last Tuesday, Varsh and I hit the big 100…and one-year for our blog. Unfortunately, I was thereafter taken over by exam demons: genetics midterm on Thursday, microbiology midterm on Friday, Biology GRE on Saturday. I promise I’ll be back soon and corresponding. Really! Let me just get my pre-lab done for this afternoon.
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November 5, 2008 at 12:52 am (College, Life, Posted by Cindy)
Tags: 100, Barack Obama, equality, Prop 8
I am so nervous about Proposition 8. This is a proposed amendment to the California Constitution that defeats equality and basic human rights. Again, banning same-sex marriage has nothing to do with religious freedom or health education in schools. It has to do with human dignity, a linguistic differentiation between “civil union” and “marriage,” and an intolerance that would be ominous to our future as a tolerant, humane people. As of 11:50 PM, 44% of votes have been reported, and Yes on 8 is leading 53% to 47%. AHH!
Now, the good news.
THIS IS POST 100! Also, GOBAMA! It’s a good night in Berkeley. (Details and pictorials to come.)
Happy Blogiversary, Varsha
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November 4, 2008 at 5:27 pm (Picture, Posted by Varsha, Travels)
is very fun. My friend works there and got us in for free on Saturday 
. Stuff I love there includes everything by Gilbert and George, which subset includes stuff like “Life” from the series “Death Hope Life Fear”
Also, I thought “Southern Landscape” by Eldzier Cortor was beautiful:
Happy Election Day y’all!
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November 4, 2008 at 10:47 am (College, Inappropriate, Posted by Cindy, food)
Tags: aromas, genetics, pregnant, Regis and Kelly, transgendered
Ok, this is post number 98. I didn’t mean for such a spate of posts to go up in one morning, but as I’m sitting here on my duffer, a lot of thoughts are coming to me! Anyway, I’ve been sitting on the couch in my living room this whole time. When I was calling the professor earlier, I smelled soap. When I clicked “New Post,” I smelled coffee. (I love the smell of coffee…just not the taste.) But now, I’m smelling scrambled eggs.
Huh? The only thing I can think of is pregnancy, but pregnant women have very sensitive olfactory glands, not schizophrenic, right? Besides, Mik and I crack too many jokes about pregnancy as it is. NB: It’s not that we make fun of pregnant women (or man, as the case may be). We just have to pee a lot, that’s all. Incidentally, if you click on that YouTube link, please disregard all the hateful comments. It saddens me that all these people are devaluing a married couple’s relationship and their love of their child simply because one of them underwent a sex-change operation.
I don’t pretend to know much about “transgendered culture,” and I put it in quotation marks because I doubt that a bunch of people can all be lumped together that way. Someone queried why any woman would want to marry a man who was once a woman. Well, whenever you enter a new relationship, do you sort through all their baggage? Or do you accept that you have a past, the other person has a past, and that together, you’ll create a future?
Perhaps more infertile women should consider marrying men who were born with female anatomy. Sorry, that was flippant. Incidentally, in my genetics class, we’ve been learning about the different permutations of sex chromosomes as well as the phenotypes that arise when you have an XX male (the paternal X carries SRY, or sex-determining region of Y) or XY female (the Y is SRY-). There is so much biochemistry that already guides what we are that I don’t begrudge people their socio-anthropological differences, either. I’m not sure if that last sentence made sense. I’ll have to think on this.
At any rate, I just turned on “Regis and Kelly,” so I promise I’ll stop posting this morning!
Dang it…soapy smell again!
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November 4, 2008 at 10:17 am (Awkward, College, Picture, Posted by Cindy)
Tags: Add new tag, grad school
I’m back already (as though this were synchronous communication, like instant messenger…)! I left a voicemail. I know, I know. That’s kind of anticlimactic. We’ll see how that goes.
Sidenote about anticlimactic:
I went to see BJ Novak perform stand-up at Cobb’s Comedy Club earlier this year. Because I was sitting on the balcony (great view!), I couldn’t hear everything the people on the floor were saying. At one point, though, he stopped and said, “What? That was anticlimactic? Man, I have the smartest hecklers. That wasn’t a ‘You suck!’ no…*puts hand on chin* ‘That was anticlimactic.’” As Joyce would say, hee!
—
At any rate, this was only intended to be a brief update on the Professorial Phone-Call. I should really do something productive with the rest of my morning (I have class at 11). This is the beauty of Daylight Savings Time–or, at least, Fall Back. (I typically think like the tonal quality of “autumn,” you can’t exactly “autumn back,” can you?) The first couple days after, you feel rejuvenated, and don’t mind getting up early-ish.
This is nothing like last week, when Joyce woke me up at SEVEN IN THE MORNING (I don’t care if you’re on the East Coast; you should know what time it is in California) to ask me how to play mah-jongg.
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November 4, 2008 at 9:48 am (College, Posted by Cindy)
Tags: grad school, phone
I used to be much more talented on the phone. There were times when conversations would hit the 4-hour mark and keep going strong. Not so anymore, my friends. Now, my phone calls have purpose. Now, my phone calls terminate quickly. Now, my phone calls are to make plans.
Oh, except for those long chats with Joyce about irksome lab partners, the drawn out conversations with Allie about our days, and the gabfests with Wes about life and love (but usually things much more mundane). Even Mikaela, with whom phone calls shortened dramatically when (a) we started living together and (b) she left the country, has seen a revival in long phone calls (she’s back in the country but living on the other side of town). It’s odd.
My point is, though, that I was once quite the Chatty Cathy on the phone. Socially. Now, I’m calling to find out about the bills for my plane tickets, and people are calling me to urge me to vote one way or the other. Oh, and…I’m about to call a professor at Northwestern…whom I was supposed to call two weeks ago. In my defense, we didn’t set a specific time, and he knew I was sick. Here’s hoping I reach him, and the conversation goes well, and I find out more about science
GO VOTE!
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November 4, 2008 at 12:24 am (College, Life, Posted by Cindy)
Tags: election
I looked at my “Facebook friends” page just now. The default category they show is people who have recently updated their status statements. With the exception of two, everyone (maybe 100?) on the front page had something about the election tomorrow! I’m hopeful for our future.
BaROCK the vote. Also, NO on 2, 4, 8 (Who do we appreciate?)! One person was voting for McCain and Yes on 8, but everyone else was for Obama and No on 8. Thank goodness, although I do think that’s reflective of the Berkeley and Cleveland populations more than America as a whole.
*Fingers crossed*
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November 3, 2008 at 11:50 pm (College, Life, Posted by Cindy)
Tags: Love Actually, Passive Aggressive, procrastination
…crastinate.
That’s one midterm down; two to go. (And the GRE in Biology.) So, I should be studying. What am I doing, though? Procrastinating, of course.
- We popped in Love Actually. Erin accused me of starting Christmas early; I swear I’m not! I bought the DVD quite awhile ago, and everytime I go home, Lee Mama asks me why it’s just sitting around. So, I finally brought it back to Berkeley, and what better time than the present?
- I love to waste time on the Internet. Mostly, it’s blogs. But, a current favorite is Passive Aggressive Notes.
Because no one should run out of ways to procrastinate.
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