she blinded me with science

in lieu of pictures, since my book hasn't changed locales for a while, i give you a portion - roughly 25% - of today's science reading. unless you have a BS (and who doesn't love BS?), or an extreme love of protein, you'll probably need a Thinking Cap. don't say i didn't warn you.

• transformation station
  
• protein love
  
• prokaryotic transcription
  
• protein prognosticating
  
• bacterial conjugation

for future reference, this is proof of my extreme geekitude.

ok enough with the work, people

since i'm over the 10,000 word mark, i'm trying to keep writing and these oodles of work tickets are not helping. neither is packrat, now that liz has shown me the folly of my former ways. damn you, internets!!

choose your own fairy tale adventure

my version had King Charles the Superfluous. fun way to kill 5 minutes and (at least for me) walk down memory lane. i *adored* those books.

um...

it's been a slow day, work wise. i actually *did* have work this morning, and a bit at lunchtime, but since i'm a little speed demon, really i've only worked, hmm, an hour today. throw in some blogreading and facebook time, and you'll see i still had plenty of time to write. today's count so far -- and it's only 243pm, people -- is 1307. that puts me at 8974 words total, and while i am happy to be making such uninterrupted progress, at the same time...apparently i can't handle doing the same thing for hours on end. i am interrupting myself, this very post a perfect representation of my inability to focus.

oh and i KNOW i already wrote about this before, but hey, bloggers have to whine sometimes, don't they? so nyah. i wonder how long i can put up with this weird schedule.

while i'm here, in other news...

- if any of you hold Good Vibes (or PrayerTix), feel free to send some to min. she is having more stupid doctor trouble.
- my eyes love attracting pollen like a presidential candidate loves wooing superdelegates.
- i work with a very nice group of people, and yesterday i found out one of them reeeally enjoys my bill moyer podcast collection. and yes, carol, that's your fault.
- this place has a love of safety signs that cannot be denied or left unmocked. i suspect a post about them lurks in my future.

ok back to writing...time for a little molecular biology, woo!

the power of boop

running an errand at lunch, a white sedan behind me had the name and picture of betty b00p airbrushed onto the hood. as you can see there, this is still odd, but at least it's tastefully small. the one i saw pretty much filled the entire hood of the car. not really what i expected to see when i adjusted my mirror.

so...what message or image would you airbrush onto your car, if you had the time, inclination and, let's say, free cash to do it? i'm thinking something along the lines of R0N PAUL 08. because i also saw him at lunch, in the form of a forlorn sign littering a corporate courtyard, and i think the ol codger could use a pick me up.

someone around here is having beef stroganoff

and it's not me.
*growls*

spring at my house

looks thusly, according to my mediocre but still powerful cameraphone:

and in the strange but true department, yesterday on facebook i found a friend who came to our wedding, 11 years ago, because she's a friend of dharma! really this was a friend of min's, and they lost touch after we moved from montana 10 years ago, but still, that was really damn trippy. and cool.

hoping to see my parents today, and hoping my dad's leg is doing better. this infection of his isn't letting go. bleh. think good thoughts, think..

winter is cold for those with memories in my book

well, it is, despite the mixed weather seen here and on my desktop:

pretty, no? word count's up to 7667 as of this afternoon - woo!

the audacity of faith

me and my faith been gettin reacquainted lately, in a roundabout way. it's mostly through reading [1] [2] [3] [4], of course, but also through discussions with family and friends. for example today, as i was reading a magazine that a coworker gave me because of an article on the relationship between hope and fantasy stories, given because of an earlier discussion on science fiction, creativity and staving off boredom, the latter being a perennial topic of interest round these parts.

coworker euphemistically warned me that the mag was put out by a religious school. naturally this put me in an intrigued but defensive state. was i going to inadvertently read something homophobic? proselytizing? boring?

gilly on the boring count, and the actual article in question was rather tepid. but the featured article was on the author of this. indeed, the whole issue was centered around hope, such that i wished they'd gotten an interview with ob@ma, audaciously hopeful sort that he is. but suffice to say, this mingling of hope, faith and the particular intersection of western christianity with my own noggin has really got me thinking... what do i really believe? why? and why should it really matter?

because let me tell you, i am a hodgepodge of faiths. i'm my own spiritual melting pot. i'm sure i can attribute a lot of that to my parents, but not because forced a variety of sunday schools down my throat the first 11ish years of my life. no, it's because they encouraged me to think for myself. which means that, by the time i got to college, started living a little, taking religious classes, and learned that the bible is not really what i've always thought it is...

well, it put me into a crisis of faith that i've never quite recovered from. but over time i realized, it wasn't my faith in god that was shaken -- it was my faith in religion. and as any thinking person can tell you, religion is a construct of man. spirituality, my perception and relation to the divine as i perceive it -- that's really the only thing i can rely on.

and yes i am perfectly aware of how fluid that is, but it's *mine*, thus i can rely on it with absolute conviction. however, my amalgamated set of beliefs - and you'll note i'm not detailing them here - are starting to skew my view of religious statements to such a degree that i'm feeling a little startled.

for example, reading about a woman feeling confused after reading about gideon and moses, looking for god to give her a sign, trying to obey god's commands. my initial thoughts, in order:

1. ah, i remember being devoted and reading like that.
2. how silly! does she really think god wrote those commands?
3. this sounds a little pretentious.
4. wait, it's ok. she gets to god her way, and i get there through mine.

i suppose there's a term for this kind of uberfaith (other than uberfaith), and while it tends to create cognitive dissonance, ultimately i find it too stimulating, i believe, to proceed in any other way. that said, if any of you feel like sharing your own views on this obviously personal topic, i'd love to hear them.

then again, since i've already admitted to being an amalgam, this really shouldn't surprise you.

sumatra es yourmatra

or so today's photojourney would like you to believe...

ps. zee latter locale vill be en zee buk.