SO MUCH SNOW!

This is the Halloween weather of my childhood memories- snow up to my knees and lots of wind! I hear we had 20" by 9 am this morning, and I do believe we are well over two feet now.

I took a second snow day today. The roads weren't bad, but the blowing snow was and my commute is notorious for white-out conditions when everything else is sunny and calm so... not in the mood. Work and school have been crazy, and with wedding planning and being sick I've had no time for anything extra. So, instead of catching up on school work or doing dishes, I went out to the horse rescue today and trudged through the snow to pet each and every little velvet nose. I haven't been out there since the first week of August.

The mustangs from Nebraska look like horses, not shadows and skeletons. They don't look like yearlings, but they look healthy. I wonder how badly stunted their growth was from spending their first 6-8 months of life starving. Maddie, the 5 or 6 year old mare who came to us in January near death and looking like a starved yearling, reached 13 hh last month! She looks great, like a real, grown-up horse! There's a new skeletal horse up front, I would guess early 20s but everyone looks pathetic in this weather. He was enjoying his hay, and whinnied when I walked up. Who could let such a sweet horse get like that?

In the months I was gone we had two deaths, one I knew about (34 year old QH mare, Codi) and one I found out about today (28 year old hackney pony, Jack). Both were well loved, and Codi at least spend several years living the dream before passing peacefully into the next realm. I feel bad for Jack, though. He didn't get the retirement he deserved until last fall, and thinking of him out in the snow with no shelter for all those years makes me sick!

A few other new horses, including a mini in sad shape back in iso, a paint mare with a foal at her side, and a huge roan gelding in Codi's old pen. Two horses who had been in foster homes are also back, they both look great so I'm assuming it's the economy's fault that they've returned. Bobby looked depressed, I think he was really enjoying life as a beloved pet!

I need to get back on the feeder list, I miss it out there!

Work is insane. We won our grant, so I get paid a whooping $500 this semester for 20hrs a week of work, which works out to a little over 50 cents an hour. Another way to look at it is I'm paying $500 less this semester to go to school. I don't know how I could get this necessary internship experience if I didn't have external financial support! I am seriously considering getting a teaching license in biology and working in a middle school for five years just for the student loan forgiveness that program offers!

I realized that I said something the other day along the lines of, "What is more important than curing cancer?" and then laughed. The people I was talking to gave me a weird look, and I realized that what seems rhetorical to me is also rhetorical to them, but not in the same way. My sanity is more important to me than curing cancer, as is my family. I think many people in the lab would say that beer is pretty important, their kids are the most important, etc. I guess, to me, curing cancer is not what our work is directly about, and staying in the lab all hours isn't really going to make much of a difference in how long it is before we have a cure. If we don't enjoy our own lives and take care of the people who matter to us, then we lose grasp of why we want to end this awful disease in the first place.

I think a lot of people will be disappointed when the first cancer cure debuts, because it's highly unlikely that it will be universally effective. Cancer is a disease of the genes: Just like how everybody's genes are unique, each cancer patient has a completely unique disease. Our understanding of genetics will have to explode before we have a universal cure for cancer, but until then we can keep working on understanding how cancer cells work so we can attack them more effectively.

Fun Times with Kitty

Cultural Irrelevance

Mike and I have been having some scuffles with our insurance company as of late, so when my uncle Peter recommended we switch to the one they use, we checked it out. Surprisingly enough, we could get far better coverage for far less money so we called them up and got started.

After talking to Mike and getting his car and our condo approved, the agent called me to approve my car. We were planning to go to the Taj (JefCo's massive courthouse) on Monday to get both cars put in both names, so I told the agent this and asked if we could do a joint policy. Apparently, we have to be married or demonstrate "intention to wed" in order to have a joint car policy. He seemed more embarrassed about having to tell us this then I was surprised by the seemingly outdated policy. I asked him what we would need in order to demonstrate commitment similar to "intention to wed" and told him that lack of commitment isn't the issue- we've had joint finances for over a year and have no qualms about co-owning cars, condos, etc- but since we don't belong to a religion that celebrates marriage and we don't feel our families care all that much, it's culturally irrelevant. He said he'd ask his underwriter about an exemption and get back to us today.

The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, in spite of the agent's apologies and clear willingness to help us get around this clause.

• This is the third time we've been denied the coverage we want because we're not married
  
• We could save $700+ per year on car insurance by being married
• It would cost us $30 to go to the courthouse and become married
• We seriously considered going to the Taj yesterday and getting a license
  
• The fact that we seriously considered just doing it should tell you something about how seriously we take that piece of paper
  
• If my uncles applied, having been together for 20 years and co-owning everything, they would be denied coverage because they are not married
• Suddenly, I understand a lot more about how fucked up the legal issue of marriage is and how it really has nothing to do with religion or ethics
• 50% of marriages end in divorce, so how is "intent to wed" proof that we are committed to each other for life?
• I'd also like to point out that we've been living together for longer than the average American marriage lasts
• We are going to two weddings and a wedding shower this weekend and I need to not be bitter

In other news, I was feeling so useful at work until the Czech post-doc panicked about his samples being above -20 C for too long and promptly undid several hours of organizational work during his freak-out. I was following the exact directions given to me by the head of the lab, but el jefe is in New York this month and I had to take the blame, no excuses. It also sucks that I completely understand the Czech guy's problem with what I was doing, so I feel guilty about following directions blindly and ignoring my own common sense. Today I need to go in there and attempt to re-stack identical, unlabeled boxes in the order in which they were origionally stacked. It's extra fun that the boxes are now in three seperate freezers and have all been moved around by people using things out of the two back-up freezers so I'm not sure I'll even be able to identify the boxes that need to move vs. the boxes that need to stay. FML.

Okay, I'll Wear Gloves...

If it comes in a special bottle wrapped in a thick plastic bag and is stored buried in sand in a super thick paint-can-like container, I'm willing to buy that it's pretty damn toxic.

I spent a good part of my day pulling boxes of 1 ml tubes (think half the size of your pinky finger) out of the freezer and trying to interpret the writing on top of each one before they began to thaw. Reading other peoples' handwriting is bad enough when it's not a series of seemingly arbitrary numbers, letters, and symbols written small enough to fit on a tiny round sticker, and having limited time with each box made it super fun, but I did eventually update and correct the stock catalogue.

Lab work is super glamorous.

Bleck

Tired, grumpy, tired a bit more, worn down, amazingly not sick (yet), getting pale again from being inside all the damn time.

Let's see if my sister has any cool pics on her laptop, shall we?




Okay, good portfolio shots.

Anyhow, yeah. Mike's sister, Melissa, is visiting. She's awesome and very laid back and sweet, but it's always a bit stressful to have house guests. Plus, Organic Chem is at its peak, my sister is visiting from Tasmania (hence her laptop being here), and I just want to go outside and do something active but my brain is too weary to properly coordinate my limbs!

From My Phone:

The one I love.

The place I always want to be come Summer.

The thing I miss most from May through October.

"Lolrado" Weather= rain pouring down from clear blue skies.

Kitty Heaven, Fruit Hats

Soooo Happy!!! Chin Rubs Rock!!

Isn't he just the cutest little wrinkly rat creature ever???

And, same dress different day... The awesome "wig" I found the day I had my head shaved.