So, 2007, Adios

It's been an eventful year.

2007 will, no doubt, be remembered mostly for LOLcats, which rapidly developed into LOL everything else. Ah, culture. So easily overwhelmed by cats with words.

It was a year of mixed blessings in science, I have to admit. In the plus column, I got a paper in PNAS, a major triumph! In the minus column, I have now been scooped on everything I proposed to do at my prelim. Ah, well. I have other projects. (I'm starting to see the wisdom of Jorge's system.) Hopefully, the first half of 2008 should see a couple more papers hitting the presses. I'm starting to feel like I need to wrap things up and graduate.

Anita discovered the local zen dojo, and has quickly become a hard-core zen woman, meditating and firing arrows all over the place. She's only shot herself once. (And completely refused to make the obvious "becoming one with the arrow" joke. Sigh.) In fact, she's off to a late night New Year's zen party even as we speak. It's good to see her with something to do other than work.

New bands were discovered (by us, anyway), and we struggled to stay up late enough to take advantage of some of Madison's music scene. Jonathan Coulton is lots of fun, and Trampled by Turtles (along with a rocking Old Crow Medicine Show concert) gives a fellow hope for the youth. We also caught both Ravi Shankar and Solas at the Overture Center. Good shows all around.

Nearly lost in all the excitement, Anita and I did manage to get married in June. So far, so good! Seriously, though, thanks to everyone who came. It was great to see everyone, and the whole weekend went better than we could possibly have hoped. I only wish we could throw a party and get all of you together again without having to be all freaked out about getting married.

It seems to be marriage season - Sarah's all engaged, the next door neighbors are off getting married at this very moment, my coworker Jeff got married this past September, and now I hear that Abbie and Joe are finally going to make it official. Something's in the air... Perhaps we're getting old.

And so, on to 2008! Let's hope the politics is less depressing (hah!) and that life continues to be good. All the best to all of you! See you soon!

The home stretch...

We had a lovely dinner last night with our old friend Autumn, who we haven't seen in ages. Turns out that not only were we getting married, but she and John were also organizing their "commitmentpalooza", which amounts to approximately a wedding. We had a good time swapping pictures and tales of adventure. They took a commitmentmoon to Malaysia and Laos for 3 weeks, which makes our 5 days in Hawaii (1 month to go!) seem downright pedestrian.

We went to Inka Heritage, the new Peruvian fusion restaurant on Park St. It was good! Lots of nice seafood. I had a fried bass sort of thing, sprinkled with calamari and mussels, with a sort of tomato-base sauce. They also make a mean sangria.

Next time I may have to try their seafood soup. Described on the menu as "100% aphrodesiac!" They also had aphrodesiac rice with a couple of dishes. I wasn't quite prepared to cope with that much aphrodesiac last night, sadly. If it had been 50 or 60%, maybe.

Whew.

Another Holiday Season(tm) successfully avoided! It's really amazing how little Christmas crud a person has to be subjected to if they're willing to turn off the radio and not go into any stores for most of December. On the other hand, Anita's parents did send us the first two seasons of the Muppet Show as a Christmas present, so I shouldn't complain too much. :-)

It's been a nice couple of days. The HPLC robot and I got a fair amount of work done, I wrote my very first useful computer program, we watched two episodes of the Muppet Show and "Six-String Samurai", and Anita demonstrated amazing skills of wifery, making homemade fried wontons, Japanese curry, and daifuku mochi while (simultaneously!) doing laundry and dishes. I think I may be obliged to go out and kill an antelope or something now. Or possibly stand on a rock beating my chest and frightening away other, lesser males. Ook!

Hope you all had a nice weekend, too!

Best Laid Plans

Had big plans for today - Anita's off at early-morning zen class, so I was going to zip into the lab, screen some clones, get the HPLC set up for tomorrow, inoculate for overexpression screens, be home in time for lunch, ta-da! Not so easy, though.

Got all bundled up, went out into the bluster and found my car completely frozen shut. The locks are OK, but the doors are completely iced up. It feels more likely that I'll pull the handles off than that I'll get the dang doors open. Sigh.

So here I am, drinking tea and dinking around with the internet.

Hope you all are having a nice morning.

P.S. Substantial end-of-the-year post is on it's way. Stay tuned for all the excitement of a life in science.

Fun Weekend

Went to see Jonathan Coulton at the Majestic Theater Friday night, which was more fun than it had any right to be. It's a great old theater, and the music was a hoot. A geekier crowd you've never seen in your life. A good time was had by all.

Now, if only I could find the chords to "Mr. Fancy Pants" somewhere... (Dan, in my role as geek enabler, I have to point out this little device.)

The opening act, Paul and Storm (funny, he doesn't look like a "Storm"), were also pretty funny, and sang the roof off the place. One song in particular that they did will appeal to the former Cornell Ag School crowd...

Ooh!

Here's something to play with:

Digital Library of Appalachia

Lots of audio clips of old-timers, including "Rabbit" Muse, finest of the American blues ukulele players... (Which is what I was looking for in the first place.)