Football and Thanksgiving review

Well, is everyone feeling fat and sassy?? I certainly am!!

I'm also feeling conflicted....conflicted because at this moment UVa is loosing miserably to VaTech in football.  That's right, my alma mater is loosing to my...er...current mater?  I'm not a huge football fan, but I can get into college football sometimes and this game hits close to home on many levels.  Where do my allegiances lie now?  Totally split.   I have so many fond memories of UVa and there are some fabulous things about that school (like the 11 amazing libraries, or the gorgeous buildings and gardens)....but there are also some sucky things.  For example, how the Wahoo fans leave the stadium in the third quarter to go drinking when their team is down 28-0.  Tech fans would be frothing at the mouth, channeling every decibel they could at the field.  Unfortunately, I find rooting for a dominant team boring, but I have to respect the Hokie fans for their dedication.  Like tailgating before 9am for an 8pm Thursday game (witnessed while on my way to class).  While I knew Tech would probably win today, I had hoped the game would at least be close.  There's something about a hard-fought win that is sweeter for the champion and more noble for the defeated.  There's always next year......

Thanksgiving in Blacksburg was a nice, simple affair.  Good food, good company.  I got to give my Dad a tour of B'burg today - including the new lab!  He was a trooper (I know seeing new biosafety hoods isn't as exciting for the non-lab folk).  He even went with me to visit the pony, who is back out to pasture though we're still fighting the nasty skin infection.

Not surprisingly I have managed to not get as much done before the coming week as I had hoped.  Ergo tomorrow is slated to be spent in seclusion, working.  I'm too easily distracted at home, so it's off to the lab or library with some caffeine early tomorrow.  I'll have to warn everyone, please don't be surprised if I don't get a post in for the next week or so....but I'll try to squeeze one in as a study break :-)
 
On a different note:

In musing about the holiday and on being thankful, something stuck in my head.  I was listening to an old episode of Radiolab about "the self".  Literally, it was a radio show about the neurological and psychological basis of the perception of "self".  Within the larger show, there was a story about a woman who suffered a significant brain aneurysm and upon recovery had a very different "self".  The woman's daughter told the story from her perspective, and ended with the following thoughts:

"My mother's illness, like a death or an accident, was one of those moments when time stops.  When normal disappears.  When you marvel that everyone else in the world can still laugh and go to the movies and complain about the weather.  That's an explosion.  In those moments, you can see life happen.  It has clarity and meaning and purpose in the midst of its horror and pain.  But then those moments pass and you're consumed by the trivia of daily life once again.  Sometimes, when I'm overwhelmed by the task of making my way through the world, I try to focus on the fact that the electric bill does no matter.  The idiot driver glued to their cell phone does not matter.  The mind numbing day job truly does not matter.  But welcoming the strange and the different, being open and available for my husband, my friends, my family, experiencing love and laughter as often as possible; that's what matters.  Because it can all be taken away in one, brilliant flash."
Hannah Palin

I love Thanksgiving more than any other holiday because it is meant as this reminder - to set aside the frustrating minutiae of daily life and be thankful for the good things we have.  To open our arms and hearts to those around us and to celebrate.  To appreciate what is here, now.

I loose sight of these things often.  If I only had a larger house, if I only had a sound horse, if I only had smaller thighs, if I was only more active, if I only focused harder...Nothing is 100% good (no matter what the ads say), but we need to remember to embrace what we have.

Somehow, I need to find that balance between embracing my here/now while also planning/hoping for the future.

That lesson is soooo much harder than grad school!

Poor, neglected blog!!

Oh dear.  I am NOT a responsible blog owner.  (Thank heavens I'm better about being a responsible pet owner, but that doesn't really help you guys.)

The long absence is due to two unsurprising things:
1. School has been nuts.
2. None of it is remotely interesting to anyone other than myself.

It's getting towards the end of the semester, ergo all of the classes decide to crap on me at once.  This coming week is Thanksgiving so I don't officially have classes, but I'm still working in lab and meeting with some other students to deal with group projects.  In the two weeks following, I'll have two final exams, a paper due, two group presentations, another paper, and a final version of my grant due.  And the week after that I'm trying to schedule my first committee meeting to get it out of the way.  Oh, and my antibodies are all in so I need to be in lab doing my experiments too.  Oh, and the lab might start moving in two weeks.  

And did I mention my Dad is coming to visit??  Yeah, I'm the idiot that told him it would be a good idea to come for Thanksgiving.  WHAT was I thinking??? Thank heavens Dad and hubby enjoy spending time together, since there might be more of them hanging out together while I'm holed up in the library than I had originally planned.  I'm going to scramble these last three days before he shows up to get as much done as possible so we can have at least a few chill days before I'm swallowed up by school again and the two boys are left to their own devices.

Speaking of hubby, he's been up to no good:

BEER BREWING!!!  I haven't mentioned his brewing hobby previously because, well, he hasn't done a ton between all the moving crap and not having all the equipment.  He finally got a brewing pot and proceeded to fill our tiny apartment with the aromas of chocolate malt and Willamette hops.  Actually, he might have filled the whole building the the aromas, but nobody complained!  (Side note: hubby was looking at brewing gear and came across a grain mill called the "cereal killer"!! *snort*)  What's currently in the carboy, burbling away?  A porter kit that he's going to add some dried black currants to (courtesy of Dad).

Brewing beer has always struck me as being too much like making a very complicated solution in lab.  There's a lot of temperature measuring, timing of ingredients and stirring.  However, much like science, hubby is pretty darned good at it, and as I get to enjoy the fruits of his labor, I'm not complaining!

Beyond that, the furries are all doing fine.  I actually got out and RODE my horse today!!  She's trotting and cantering around her field on her own, so I decided she could pack my butt around for just a little bit.  The short version is that Dax once again proved she is freakin' amazing: went all over new unfamiliar territory in blustery weather BY HERSELF (well, with me aboard but that doesn't count as company to most horses).  Yes she was scared and needed to be pushed along, but she was a trooper and listened to me.  We even opened gates from horseback and she. was. perfect. Still lame, but perfectly behaved.  Unfortunately the crud on her hind foot (the scratches) has gotten worse, so she's stuck in a stall for a couple of days to be treated....it's kind of sad, but I don't mind because it gives me an excuse to be at the barn twice a day!!  I'm on the hunt for a new/cheap place to board her seeing as retirement/rescue ideas have fallen through or dried up.  More on that later.
 
As for me, doing ok.  Still feeling kind of off kilter in my new role as student, not feeling very organized or like I've got the crazy juggling act of classes-research-wifey down, but not feeling like a total failure either....just not at the top of my game exactly.

I'm also OVER living in the tiny apartment with four bikes in my living room.

I JUST WANT TO BE SETTLED SOME WHERE, TO BE UNPACKED AND FOR STUFF TO HAVE ITS PLACE SO I'M NOT WASTING BRAIN CELLS DEALING WITH THIS CRAP!!

Life is busy enough without constantly struggling with clutter or always trying to figure out where things should go (biggest example right now: my class crap.  I don't have a desk of my own at home to study at and it's a problem.)  I'm also running into more and more incidents of wanting/needing to use things that are currently in storage.  When we packed up and left Crozet, we thought we'd only be in the apartment for a few months and packed away things accordingly.  Oops.

Even after all of my previous posts about the whole house vs. apartment life style stuff, I realize:
1) hubby and I are nesters.  We want to live in a place where we and others like to spend time.  I want to decorate for holidays and have enough room for a friggin Christmas tree.
2) We both have gear-heavy, space-sucking hobbies: think lots of bikes, all the tools to repair bikes, power tools to build stuff, horse gear, beer brewing 5gallon carboys, 5 cases of beer bottles, lots of kitchen crap for Catsie-cooking-craziness.....

Do we both need to get out of the house and be active?  Yes.  Do we want to lead a life style in which we are engaged in our community in some way?  Yes.  Do either of these things negate the two previously mentioned facts?  Nope.

Do I want my cake and want to eat it too?  You betcha.