So it's the last day of 2012

And, if I were to follow social norms I'd probably write a nice post looking back on 2012 and making resolutions for the new year. But to be honest, I don't want to do that. And really, do I seem like one whose main goal is to follow social norms? Plus, our traditional New Year's Eve celebration with my family and Mike and Ginny always entails some really nice reflection and reading of resolutions we made last year. And it truly is one of my favorite parts of our get-together. However, given the heaviness of this year's events, I'll save the reflections and tears for this evening and devote this post to....well I'm not sure yet. Probably a bunch of random things.

Like my absolute failure to eat a candy cane without biting it constantly. You know all those kids who could craft their candy canes into sharp points and wield them against their friends (or enemies)....yeah, that wasn't me. I guess I'll have to learn some other method of defending myself against the scary Christmas elves (ask me about the movie Rare Exports if you're wondering why I'd think any Christmas elves are scary).

Like my ingenious idea of the Modern Mixtape (previously known as The Mixtape of the 21st Century), which is going to stay only an idea until I figure out how to make someone at Apple/iTunes listen to me. Basically I want to be able to purchase songs on iTunes and put them in a specific playlist that has a self-determined cool title (i.e. Songs for your medial geniculate nucleus) and then gift that playlist unto one of my friends, via their iTunes account or a fancy little code they could use to download it. There it is, the one and only genius invention of mine. If any of you have an in with the bigwigs of Apple, please slip them a note on a napkin about this idea.

Like why the words genius and ingenious mean pretty much the same thing (albeit one is a noun and one is an adjective) and yet, according to other examples from the English language, it seems like they should have opposite meanings. Thank you English for the many exceptions to the already confusing rules.

Like the epic Christmas gift exchange we did the other day at Seyb Christmas. The brainchild of my cousin Hannah, we drew each other's names out of a hat and then trekked over to the big yellow house (my Grandma Audrey and Grandpa Darrell's "empty" house). Though it no longer houses the life and love it once did, it is nonetheless full of treasures and memories. We took turns (kids, then adults) searching the house for the best gifts for the person we picked out of the hat. We filled our bag(s) and then returned to Doug's house to exchange the treasures. It was a hoot and a half! I couldn't believe some of the awesome stuff that came out of there. I am pleased to announce I received a Wheatie's box from 1998 that had the Olympic Gold Medal US Women's Hockey team on it. A collector's item. Apparently Grandma believed that its value would increase exponentially. It might be worth about $5 now? But I'm pleased to own it :)

Like how Tucker might have been the real winner because he received a bag of change that Abby had found and I believe the total turned out to be somewhere around $60. Ha! I do think we all made out like bandits because we truly enjoyed spending the time with each other...and that's the real treasure :D

Ok, it's New Year's Eve and I have to go cheer for the Cyclones- it's the Liberty Bowl!

Thank you to everyone who has read this blog...you've given me an audience, which is more than I can ask for. There will be more insights, laughs and things I'm bound to learn in the next year.
Much love to you all and best wishes for a beautiful 2013.

-Rachel

Words and excerpts of life

I'm laying at home on the couch by the beautifully lit tree, listening to Christmas music. Nothing is going to move me save my need for tea or cookies. So be prepared, this one is going to be long.

Firstly, words.

(from a few days ago)  prophylaxis: prevention of or protective treatment for disease or illness. 

I find it odd that I never truly knew what prophylactic antibiotics or treatment meant. Now I do!

concatenation: joining two character strings together end-to-end

I'm learning about this in terms of computer programming! I know, you didn't realize I went to school to learn programming. Neither did I, but I'm learning it nonetheless :)

Now it's time for some stories. Let's call this, excerpts of life: specifically, of cars, of cookies, of monsters and men.

Of Cars

Two little stories. One is of how I searched for the my car in a parking garage the other day. 

1. I normally prefer free parking over $$ parking garage parking any day, even though the free parking entails a 10-15 minute walk to work (usually accompanied by a nice, cold headwind), but last Friday I had a lot of errands to run and wanted to make the most of the little time I had at work, so I begrudgingly parked in the very nearby garage. After a few hours at work I rushed to my car so I could return to my apartment and get ready for that evening's dinner party. This particular parking garage is especially confusing because there are two sets of stairs/elevators, A and B, but the only actual entrance is on the A side, while the entrance that gets me to side B is where the cashier and credit card machines sit. And although I have parked and walked up and down on both sides, I currently do not know how to get from one to the other. So whenever I park on the B side, I awkwardly walk where cars would be driving since I don't know where I should actually be walking. This fateful day, I knew I parked near the B stairs but I could not quite remember where. So I walk past the amused looking cashier (obviously amused because I look like an idiot, walking up the car lane), and then I walk up two sets of stairs and think "I must've parked on this level."  I walk to where I thought my car was...and realize it is not there. I walk to another possible area and no, it's not there either (turns out I had parked there a few weeks ago and the memories were blurring with reality).  Eventually I get the genius idea to hit my lock button a few times so the car honks. And suddenly I'm playing marco-polo with a stationary inanimate object. And I'm losing.

But I find my car. Eventually. One level above where I started. As I get in my car, finally the victor in this odd little game, some guy gets out of a neighboring car and I realize he witnessed that whole thing. And now he's chuckling. Probably because I'm 23, and not 80, which would be a much more respectable age for such behavior. 

2. Today I drove back to Newton from the Twin Cities, where I was visiting my friend Bess. It was an enjoyable ride as I metaphorically raced the storm that was inevitably going to hit Central Iowa like a ton of...snow...in the afternoon. (Ironically, I only saw snow for about 10 minutes. And that was in Minnesota. The Iowa driving was a breeze, for which I was very grateful.) Back to the story-- I'll admit it, I enjoy cruise control. I'm a bit of an oscillating driver, meaning my speed is usually proportional to the BPM of the music on the radio. And since I found this new station called BPM and it's basically high-paced remixes, I took great advantage of cruise control today.  I was cruising at a steady 75 mph on the 70 speed limit highway. (Although I hate illegal things, I feel okay about 5 mph over. I justify it by how many people pass me.) While I drive, I like to people watch as I pass people who are even more speed conscious than I am. As I pass this white suburban, I glance and smile at the man driving....ok, I may have also been bobbing my head to the radio during this glance. I wanted to think he smiled back but it was more of a "Kids these days...." shaking of the head at my seemingly reckless and youthful behavior.

So I drive for a few minutes, am at least 100 feet ahead of the white suburban and then I see a highway patrol car staked out in a NO U-TURN area. As much as I hate doing any illegal things, I hate doing even marginally illegal things in the vicinity of patrolmen even more. So I tap my breaks and slow to a comfortable 68 as I pass the cop. 5 seconds later I look to my right and there is the white suburban, whose driver is having a hearty chuckle at the situation he just witnessed. My cop-fearing behavior may have been just a tad too obvious, making my seemingly-reckless behavior a little more pathetic.  

You're welcome people of the world, for the amusement. I do try.  

Of Cookies

Let it be known, I love making Christmas cookies. Okay, I love making any type of cookies any time of the year, but especially now that the winter is a bit too cold, the days are dark far too soon and the snowstorms come with thunder (that part is just weird, I agree). This is a shout out to my girl Bess and her handy cookie-baking skills. I stayed with Bess for the past few days to enjoy St. Paul and see one of my (our) favorite bands' in concert in the hip downtown metropolis of Minneapolis (see next excerpt).  So Bess and I get it in our heads that we need to bake Christmas cookies (to complement the vast amount of brunch, pastries and coffee we had already consumed). Bess found a recipe for chocolate biscotti with pistachios, cranberries and chocolate chips...and I wasn't about to say no!!  So on Monday we gather the ingredients (from a grocery store, not from the woods, as I may be making it sound) and follow the directions to a t, measuring loosely as all good chefs do. And it's a grand success! I had no idea that you could make biscotti at home that tastes just like (nay, even better than!) biscotti that you find in cute little coffee shops. But you can, and we did, and it was little less than epic. Bess says she isn't much of a baker. But I beg to differ. As do those perfectly crisp and tasty pieces of biscotti. Well done, non-baker. I declare you to have baked successfully. 

And finally...

Of Monsters and Men

This original reason for my Minnesota trip was to see this particular awesome indie band, Of Monsters and Men, in concert at a trendy downtown venue in Minneapolis.  My mother generously gave me the tickets as a birthday present because this is one of my favorite bands, they are from Iceland and they don't have many shows in America---all reasons that the 4 hour drive was more than worth it to get to see both Bess and the band.  Although getting to the venue was a bit of an adventure...including a wrong exit, some handy mental compass-ing, a split-second realization of a one-way street, a Target sign to guide us and a girl in a fedora to assure us we were going the right way (indie concert = fedoras and hipster glasses galore)..... the concert was incredible! This band is great no matter what but in concert the depth and complexity of their sound was neigh unbelievable. The girl singer's voice is just the right amount of deep and the boy singer's voice is sweet and never overbearing. And then there is the trumpet, which adds a quality to the music that you just don't get with many other bands.  In case you are interested.....here's a link to one of their songs  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcPqLGSH_oM   Feel free to find the rest and fall in love with the band as much as I did :)

Okay, I will wrap this up soon but I just have to say...... in my humble opinion, them hipsters need to learn how to bust a move!!

No joke, I was thoroughly disappointed by the lack of dancing that occurred at this concert. And maybe this was because at my lovely height of 5'2", I was largely unable to see over the boys in front of me, but I truly think Bess and I were dancing more than at least half that crowd combined. Okay, there may have been a few heads bobbing (a.k.a. hipster glasses and slouchy beanie hats bobbing)...but that didn't even come close to the amount of jumping up and down and rocking out that we did. And am I embarrassed? Not one bit. I thoroughly enjoyed the concert and am proud to claim the "way-too-enthusiastic" label. For Of Monsters and Men, I'll be way-too-enthusiastic any day :) 

Wow, okay I am sorry this is so long but maybe you'll have extra time to read it during the Snowapocalypse that is settling upon the midwest right now.  Off to help my mom shovel! 

Stay safe, warm, and hug everyone you love :)  

-Rachel

It don't mean a thing...

If you ain't got that swing!

Normally I disapprove of the word "ain't"
But in this context...I highly approve.

I'm basically obsessed with swing dancing. I spent all day yesterday in Lindy Hop, Charleston, and Shim Sham workshops and it's been hard to think of anything else since. (This turned out to be not especially helpful as I studied the neurobiology of sleep, automatic postural control and the TRP family of receptors in heat, cold and pain sensation)

Anyway, I also went to a swing dance social last night with a live band, which was incredible. I haven't had that much fun in such a long time. Okay, I may have had that much fun on my birthday weekend, but this was still an impressive amount of fun. I think in total I danced for about 9 hours yesterday. So I guess I'm not that surprised that I woke up feeling about 30 years older, as though I had Charley horses in both my calves and one bad hip. I really was not expecting to be so sore!! But I think that's a good sign....or at least a sign I need to stretch before dancing like a lunatic from the 30's.

Besides just being in love with swing dancing, I've also recently become a big fan of making friends. I think I used to be terrible at it. And now I'm slightly better. And so it's rather enjoyable. But also, I have not met one single swing dancer that was not incredibly nice to me. I apologized kind of profusely after dancing with most of the guys saying I was sorry I wasn't more experienced and I couldn't follow better. They are seriously waved it off and said they hadn't even noticed. And then when I told one guy I was so sorry I stepped on his toes, he said "You weigh 98 pounds...I didn't even notice! And you won't hurt me even if you do :) "  So basically everyone was incredibly nice and they were better swing dancers than I've ever had the pleasure of watching.

All of this being said, I hope you won't be surprised if in the future my hair takes the shape of a short curled bob, I put on a vintage dress and I start buying a ridiculous amount of old-timey music. You'll know why.

Here's a little taste of my new-found love :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRyjW9delmo

And one from the good old days....meaning I think I was born in the wrong decade :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuLUOk--yxg

Goodnight!

My 8 LEAST favorite words of the day

So at some point there needs to be a post about how awesome my family and friends are and how I had such a nice thanksgiving and birthday because the people I love are incredible. But this is not that post. Because I really should be studying. But since this kind of relates to school, I'm granting myself a few minutes to share with you a list of words...that I really hate. I might not even explain some of them. I think you'll understand.

This list was inspired by reading the chapter on brain development in my textbook. I literally do not know of any other topic that has so many disgusting sounding words. Don't get me wrong, I am very grateful that we develop past the initial ball of cells. I just don't love the way someone labeled that process. Here goes!

8. nascent:  I actually really like the meaning of this one. "just coming into existence; displaying signs of future potential."  That's beautiful. But that word sounds like someone has a bad case of nasal drip.

7. angiosperm: this has very little to do with brain development but it was used in an analogy and I've decided I'm just not a fan of a word that combines a female's name with the name for reproductive cells. Actually, I'm not a fan of really any word combined with sperm.

6. mesoderm: this one is high on the list, meaning I don't hate hate hate it. And that's because it kind of sounds like a dinosaur. But not enough for me to really enjoy saying or reading it.

5. optic cups: while the definition of this may be self-explanatory, its placement on this list may be a little less obvious. It just makes me think of an eyeball rolling around in a plastic cup. So yeah...ew.

4. gastrulation: I read this word and I pictured gastric juices and intestines undulating together. In reality, it just refers to a single-layered ball of cells becoming a triple-layered ball of cells (including, you guessed it, #6 the mesoderm!)

3. neurulation:  despite my love of all thing "neuro" (neuropsychology, neuroanatomy, neurodegeneration, etc), I don't like the "o" being turned into a "u". again, reminds me of undulation. which is also not a favorite word of mine.

2. cephalic flexure:  this is kind of a cool concept...it's when the early brain bends for the first time, which occurs at the mid-brain. it's what lets embryos look a bit like upside-down seahorses. nonetheless, I don't enjoy saying, reading or hearing the word cephalic.

and my current #1 LEAST favorite word...................

1. invagination:  EW. I may be basically 8 years old but I just do not like that. The term refers to when one part of a structure is infolded into another part. So I want to know, why couldn't we just say that then? "Gastrulation begins as the local infolding of a subset of cells in the very early embryo."  That totally works. I'll start a petition.


Ok, now it's probably time to actually study...instead of fake study...which is what this is. But thank you of reading!  I hope you kind of enjoyed my dislike of words regarding development. By the way, in case I don't always make it very clear through my posting, I am actually learning a lot here in grad school. And I love it :)

Happy almost Friday!!

Recently encountered words

Magnanimity: virtue of being great of mind and heart  (used in an article about Phineas Gage (ask me or google him if you don't know who that is) to explain how his mother and friends responded when the doctor asked for Gage's skull)

comminuting: to break into several fragments, or reduce to a powder  (used to explain how the tamping iron affected part of the frontal bone in Gage's skull)

falx: a sickle-shaped anatomical structure

paresis: weakness (as occurs often as a result of damage to the precentral area of the frontal lobe-- the primary motor cortex)

witzelsucht: neurologic symptom of frontal lobe damage: an addiction to telling inappropriate jokes and, ironically, an insensitivity to humor

obtundation: less than full mental capacity, associated with reduced levels of alertness

corollary discharge: neural signal that indicates movement of the eyes, which allows the image of the world to remain still

Fun fact: Hoarding useless objects can occur as a result of damage to the prefrontal area of the brain. This behavior can persist even after interventions and knowledge of negative consequences.

Here's a good quote from my textbook:  "All neural roads lead to the frontal lobes." (Kolb & Whishaw, 6th ed.)

And now I'm off to get ready for the holiday!

Happy thanksgiving!

Grant writing and dragon chasing

I wanted to post last week but every last ounce of my writing ability has been used up lately by a grant application I'm writing that is due on Friday. At the massive length of...6 pages...I am very much looking forward to submitting it. 6 pages, you say? I know, it sounds short.  It's comprised of 3 different essays: personal statement, previous research, and proposed research - and each essay could be no longer than 2 pages.

It sounds great- 2 pages is nothing! But that's precisely the difficulty. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, graduate students all across the nation apply for this grant and it is extremely competitive. I have technically been working on it since the end of August, but I've really been putting excessive effort in since the beginning of October. And the deadline is almost here. I have revised my essays so many times (with the help of some wonderful students and professors who selflessly edited for me), and now, I have to laugh when I look back to my first drafts because they seem so poorly written. (It's kind of like how I feel when I look back to the essay I submitted with my application to Knox College. Yikes! My high school senior writing skills were definitely not as up to snuff as I thought they were.)  But I think that type of improvement is a good sign. It's hard to delete sentence after sentence, word after word, that I meticulously put into place, just to get down to 2 pages. Having my near-final essays, however, I see how helpful that tedious process was.

So what it is this opportunity exactly? Well, this is a 3-year grant that would be in place of the tuition support and stipend that I'm currently receiving from the University of Iowa. A grant like this really provides freedom, to pursue the research I want because, although I'll are working in the Health, Brain and Cognitive Lab, I'd be much more independent. The purpose of the grant is to foster developing scientists, particularly scientists that hold promise of benefiting society. Although one of the essays is a proposal of the research I plan to conduct in the next few years, the personal statement and previous research essays were also very important because, as so many people told me, I'm "selling myself as a scientist to the panelists." Everyone's applications will get reviewed by 3 separate panelists and will be given scores on "intellectual merit" and "broader impacts", so those were some of the things I had to emphasize in my essays. It's also a little scary to think that each reviewer will read my entire application for only 10-15 minutes, before making a decision. I attended a workshop at the beginning of the year focusing on this grant and all of the leaders emphasized just how quickly the reviewers have to get through the applications. For that reason, the flow of the essay is incredibly important because you don't want there to be any "sand traps" where a reader might get stuck.

So do you want to know what I proposed? I'll give a little run down :) I'm currently working in the Health, Brain and Cognition Laboratory (check this out if you want to know more) and, after a 10 week rotation in a neurosurgery lab, I plan to come back to this lab for good (i.e. for the rest of my graduate career). In that time, one of the things I'll be learning is how to analyze data from structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We, in the lab, have access to a large dataset from the University of Illinois, of an exercise intervention run with senior citizens in the Champaign County area. It was a 6-month intervention study, isolating the differences between aerobic exercise (walking), dancing and stretching and toning. They also assessed multiple cognitive abilities through various tasks and experiments. We will eventually be working with that data to understand specific neural changes in association with the interventions. Ultimately we want to elucidate the best types of exercise, so that those can be used to help prevent (or recover from) age-related diseases.

Hopefully that all made sense :)

And now for the dragons part. I just think this is so cool. I went to the gym Saturday night after returning to Iowa City from home (where I had a lovely time celebrating Abby's birthday!!) and I didn't have a clear idea of how I wanted to work out so I just found one of the stationary bikes and did a little warm up. I had noticed this particular line of bikes previously but had never used them, but they have a screen and are connected to this super cool video game with various courses and races. Now, I like a mind-freeing, only listen to music, get lost in the workout, kind of workout just as much as the next guy (and maybe more) but sometimes, to give yourself that extra motivation to work...you need some competition! The graphics are sweet, the scenery is surprisingly pretty, the other riders are fun to beat and it just was way more fun than I expected. Saturday night I think I "rode my bike" around a course with Redwood trees and a stream and then around another one by the ocean. I liked it so much that I went and did the exact same thing Sunday night, after a full day of studying, writing essays (for the grant!) and...this is the important part...not eating very much food. I hopped on the bike and warmed up, just like the previous night. I went through a half an hour or so of normal "race" riding and was feeling great. And then I found this awesome section called "chases". There was only one available but it was a game where you ride around grabbing coins and finding dragons of different colors for different points and finding special lanterns that either make you go really fast for a while or make everything extra points. And it was way fun. And I got way too into it. I just really really wanted to get those dragons. So much so that when I was on 16th gear and I had to suddenly go up a really sharp hill to get a coin, I just stood up and pushed as hard as I could to make it. I won't say it wasn't fun...because it totally was.  But the lack of food got to me or something and I think by the time I got off the bike and put my leg down by my knees I was about 5 seconds away from passing out.

Moral of the story?  Don't chase dragons on an empty stomach.
But I will totally be working out on those bikes again because that actually was super fun, besides almost fainting, of course.

That's all for now! Thanks for reading :)

Bedtime stories

So as it turns out I won't be able to tell you everything. And that's because there just isn't time. Nor is there a fancy tool to turn my thoughts into actual posts (that would be super cool!) because then I could just blog away while riding my bike or running on the treadmill. What a multi-tasking genius that would be. Then again, if I did that there'd be so many posts that I doubt anyone would ever read this again.  So, in thinking about the things I want to reflect on from the past two weeks, I'll henceforth do my best to pick only the best ones.

Oh and new words and definitions coming soon. I'm in bed now so this is not prime word-learning time (nor do I want to get out of bed to grab my word notebook).


First: Stories from SfN (Society for Neuroscience Conference in New Orleans)

The conference center was huge. Gigantic. It took at least 10 minutes to walk from one end to the other, and even more if you wanted to go up any stairs and continue the journey. They had lectures and symposia and mini-symposia and nano-symposia and baby symposia (ok, that last one I made up)  They also had enough posters to fill a football field. Each day. Twice. Each session had posters labeled A-Z, with somewhere around 20 in each letter group. And then there was AA-ZZ, again with 20-some in each group. And then, get this, there were AAA-ZZZ, with more in each group. I literally could not get my mind around it. Tuesday afternoon was the best poster session for me. There was a whole section in the "Cognition and Behavior" theme that was titled something like "Individual differences and training effects on cognitive functions." Right up my alley!  I talked to a bunch of people, asked questions about their projects and then also got to meet a lot of the people from the University of Illinois who know my PI (principal investigator--the person I'm working for), Michelle. It was really awesome to just chat with them about a project that they have developed and run, but that I will be helping with the analysis for.

Besides all the academic stuff, there were also socials that were organized by SfN and, luckily, were in the hotel we happened to be staying in. The first night we wandered around being "social crashers" until we came upon the Alzheimer's Research social, where we found some new orleans masquerade masks and candy. We also spent some time in the "Ingestive Behaviors" social, where a lovely Australian boy struck up a conversation with us simply because we were wearing the sweet masquerade masks.
The second night, much to my surprise, was a really awesome graduate student and post-doc reception. Now, I expected some food. And some alcohol. And some music. And there were all of the above. PLUS DANCING. There was a lot of dancing. I stayed the entire two hours, sweating pretty much through my shirt and messing my hair all up, but it was so worth it. Not only is it awesome watching neuroscience geeks (myself included!) bust some moves, but I also got to swing dance, salsa and just jump around. One of the best parts of the nights was when I was salsa-ing with myself (yes, there was still a severe lack of dancing partners that actually knew ballroom), and a nearby guy says "Where are you from?"  Amidst the loud noise and inhibitory ethanol particles affecting this boy's brain (a.k.a. alcohol), I had to say "Iowa" about 6 times. Each time he said back to me, "IowA? IOwa? Eiowa?" Finally, realizing I was getting nowhere I said "the midwest." Still nothing. "Here! America!"
"OHHHHH" (that one worked) "America! From here? Excellent"
--pause--
then he says, "but how are you such a good dancer then?"
Come to find out, this boy was from Brazil. I wasn't even dancing with him, but I guess we were just dancing salsa near each other and somehow I made myself seem less American than I truly am.
In terms of Salsa, I was pretty okay with that :)

Other fun things I did in New Orleans:

Grouplove concert at the house of blues  (it's a lovely little indie band and a great music venue)
Ate alligator sausage, jambalaya, gumbo and, of course, fro-yo :)
Walked down Bourbon Street and some streets in the French Quarter. For the record I did NOT like the way too revealing strip club storefronts. More than once either a lady in lingerie or a pregnant lady attempted to entice us inside. No thank you. However, I DID like this awesome little artsy street with a small plaza, which was totally full of people selling homemade goods. The best part? Right in the middle, there were pieces of sidewalk chalk laid out and people had just gone to town and drawn whatever they wanted. I couldn't help myself, I had to write SfN in pretty handwriting and some squiggles. My friend drew a cat. And then we walked a few feet away and noticed some neurons and a beautiful synapse!! Other neuroscientists had been there! That was lovely.
Listened to some really good live jazz.
Walked along the beautiful waterfront.
Laid in my hotel bed, ate cheese and crackers and read papers for lab (that was about the extent of work that I got done the whole week- haha)
Drove through a horrendous storm on the way home (yeah, this was not so much fun as just rather eventful)

After arriving home at about 4:45 am on Thursday, I slept for 2 hours, got up and went to class and was surprisingly more alert and invested than I am many other days. And that's saying a lot because I love that class and am pretty involved every single day. All in all the day went well and it wasn't until that evening that it all hit me and I crashed ridiculously early. And then the next day I had an early meeting, went to work and then headed to Knox for homecoming :)

Homecoming was lovely because I got to see friends and professors and the cute little room in the library where I studied Saturday afternoon. It was really nice being back, but it also made me realize how happy I am being where I am now. Knox was fantastic and it served me well. I will always love visiting, but I realize now that I have used up my time as a student there. And so it feels right to be moving on.

Skip forward one week and I got to go to a fantastic concert with two of my friends from Knox. It was at the BlueMoose Lodge here in Iowa City and now that I know what a great music venue that is, I'm definitely going to try to take advantage of that more often. And then, like very youthful college girls, we watched a chick flick and fell asleep on the couch.

Forward one more weekend (this weekend!) and I got to go home, cheer for my beloved Cyclones, see my mama and kitty and my sister and brother-in-law, and randomly introduce myself to a boy whose music videos I've seen and admired on youtube (That certainly took some courage! but now I can cross it off my new year's resolution list :)

And now it's Sunday, feeling like it should be after midnight, but thankfully it's not! Falling back one hour always does me well. Then again, so does eating my mom's delicious food, sleeping in the same bed as my cozy kitty, laughing with my sister over the awesome computer games we had years ago and also seeing my church family.

Homework is pretty much done and I have a busy and early morning so I better get to sleep. Stay tuned for an exciting edition of "Words Rachel didn't know!".

Happy daylight savings time to all and to all a good night.

Life of flies

So I'm studying, like any good graduate student, and I open my window because, well basically it feels like summer out. But also, it's October. Meaning my window has not been open in weeks. I go back to studying, window open, nice night air blowing in and I realize there are two ridiculously excited flies buzzing around my room. Apparently, from what I can gather, they had gotten stuck in between my window and my screen. For weeks. And they were not happy when they got out. It was like a 2nd grader who had been stuck in his desk for too long and then the recess bell rang. Amusing, but almost scary. So I drop my studying (who can focus with two hyper flies taking over the room?) and I'm swatting at them with my classy yellow legal pad. But they're flies. And they have a million eyes so I can't get them. Giving up, I return to my study of the molecular mechanisms of the auditory sense. Before I know it, one fly is in hot pursuit of the other. He/she chases the other he/she into my light fixture. Here's when it gets weird. They buzz around in circles as though they are the coins that kids drop into the fun circular donation tub where you watch it spin around and around until finally plunking into the bucket. And then you do it again (giving them more money) just because you like to watch it spin. And then the first he/she fly tackles the other one! And the previously excitable rhythmic buzzing noise becomes a very odd, stable buzz that dies out. Not quickly though. Rather slowly, in fact. And basically I'm pretty sure they both fried on my light bulbs because the buzzing finally stopped altogether but I am not about to stand up on my bed just to check out the state of that couple. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Obviously I'm kind of procrastinating now, but based on the number of things I could add to this post, I'd say I'm using up most of my self control by only writing about that little story.  Someday I will write about my trip to New Orleans, the graduate student reception where I danced with neuroscientists for 2 hours straight and then my trip to Galesburg for homecoming. Someday. In the meantime, enjoy the summer-y weather tomorrow!

PS. The post title is in reference to the book and soon-to-be-in-theatres movie Life of Pi. Check it out.

Must be doing something right

So last night at ballroom dance class, as I got into waltz hold with one of the leaders, the following conversation ensued:

Him:  "You look like a scientist. Are you a scientist?"
Me: "Yes, I actually am. How could you tell? Or was it just a lucky guess?" (It wasn't like I was wearing lab googles and a pocket protector or anything)
Him: "You just look and seem like you would be a scientist. Biological sciences?"
Me:  "You're right again. Neuroscience."
Him (obviously pleased with his accurate assessment of my academic interest): "Oh so you know Dan Tranel!" (Dan Tranel is the head of the Neuropsychology clinic and one of my professor and all together awesome and a little intimidating.)
Me: "Yes! He teaches one of my classes. He's fantastic!"

And then we talked about Dan Tranel the entire time we waltzed.

The secondary point is what a small world it is (although it honestly wouldn't surprise me if Dan Tranel had some connection to pretty much everyone in Iowa City), but the main point is that I'm actually incredibly pleased that somehow, even without conscious attempt (because it is something I would try to do...if I had thought of it), I managed to give off the scientist vibe. I really don't know what it was about my belted red jeans with the tucked in button-up shirt, accessorized with my gold ballroom shoes, but the fact that I seem like a scientist to a complete stranger, even when I'm completely out of my natural laboratory habitat...well, it weirdly enough gives me an added boost of confidence in my career of choice.

Then again, maybe it's in my perfume. Whoever would've guessed "White Citrus" really has a secret ingredient that smells like science.

Ok, this was admittedly an odd post. Hope you enjoyed it nonetheless. Goodnight!

Hemodynamic

: literally means "blood movement", in reference to the study of blood flow or circulation

I just wrote this word into a grant application so I figured I should truly understand what it means. For me, it's referring to the way the fMRI records the ratio of oxygenated blood:deoxygenated blood. While we don't exactly know what this means, it is (now) a commonly used way to study brain activity.

Speaking of which, I participated in a pilot trial for an fMRI experiment the other day and then I got to see my structural scan! So, the structural image of my brain. I got to see my brain. It made my day. If you find that at all interesting, you might just be a neuroscientist at heart :)

That's all!

"If you are going to make a mistake, make a big one."

These classic words of advice were oft-spoken by one of my elementary school music teachers, Mrs. Bryant.  In no relation to music whatsoever, I followed her advice to the T Wednesday night.  Let me start at the beginning and give you a run down on every single embarrassing thing that happened on Wednesday. Be prepared...it's a lot.

Wednesday morning: For the last few weeks I've been going to a hip-hop exercise class at the CRWC (the big, fancy, awesome gym on campus). It's not very far from my house, and I usually ride my bike but this Wednesday I needed to go get groceries right after, so I had to drive over. Ok, I am from a small town. We don't have to pay to park. Ever. You just park where there's a spot and you only get a ticket if you parked where the curb is yellow or if you parked in the teacher's lot and you're not a teacher. And even then I highly doubt you'd actually get a ticket. Anywho, there is a parking lot right by the gym that you have to pay for and then there is metered street parking, if you prefer that. Normally I do prefer street parking. But I was kind of in a hurry so I decided to just try out the lot and suck it up and pay for it. Everything went well until I had to leave. There are multiple exits to this lot, but only one is the "public exit". Apparently all the others are VIP exits, or something like that.  The "public exit" has two lanes that lead to the outside world. One was obviously a cashier window and the other just had a small box by it. For whatever reason I thought it was just one of those self-checkout things, with a swipy thing for a credit card. So I pulled up to and then sat for minutes upon minutes (ok it was probably like 30 seconds) and stared at this box. I came to the unfortunate realization that it was not for credit cards. It was for some fancy-pants secret card. Which I did not have. The girl in the cashier booth opened up her sliding window and asked me if I had that fancy-pants secret card. I told her I did not. She said I'd have to back out and come around to the other side.  Nooooo problem. Except that there was a ridiculously long curb/median in between the lanes. Why? Why would they put that there? It made my embarrassing moment multiple times more embarrassing because I had to slowly back out of that long lane (and yes, I did run into the curb. Twice) and then drive up to her window. To top it off, as I paid her my $2, in quarters, I dropped one of them on the ground. This brought on a rather sympathetic look from her as she said "It's ok. I will get it later. You can just go."  Thank you, cashier lady. I really did not want to get out of my car and pick up that quarter. That was enough embarrassment for those 10 minutes, thank you very much. 

A little bit later Wednesday morning: Hy-Vee on a weekday morning doesn't have too much potential for embarrassing one's self. Yet somehow I managed.  In the cheese aisle, I maneuvered my way past a Hy-vee worker who was smiling, pushing boxes and chatting with some other workers further down the aisle. As I start scanning the wall of cheese to figure out what I need, the aforementioned worker turned to look back into the aisle and said "Need some help?" I thought she was talking to me so I instantly responded "No thanks, I'm good." It took me a good 3 seconds before I realized she had been asking the other workers, the ones she had just been chatting with, and not me. I'm pretty sure she chuckled a bit before walking away, and it wast rude or anything, but nonetheless I think I turned a not-so-lovely shade of pink. I wouldn't be surprised if all the friendly smiles in that aisle at that moment were a result of my eager response to a question not even directed to me. 

I realize these things (and the ones I decided not to tell you about) are all fairly small, insubstantial moments of embarrassment. But never fear, I told you earlier that I eventually did make a big mistake and I stick to my word. So here comes the big shebang.

Since I had just gone to the grocery store, which meant I finally had more food than cereal and goldfish,  and I didn't have night class until 7 pm, I figured it was the perfect time to make a legit meal. I wanted to stick to my usual pasta and chicken, but decided to be a little adventurous and try and make a marinade for the chicken so it wouldn't dry out if I left it in the fridge for a few days. I found a simple recipe made of red wine, olive oil, scallions, garlic and salt. And since I had 3 out of these 5 ingredients, it was a perfect match. I poured the red wine and olive oil in the saucepan to get it boiling and, as the recipe told me, boil it for 10 minutes. At the same time I was cooking pasta, cutting chicken and slicing a tomato (with different knives! Don't worry.)  The marinade did eventually start to boil so I stirred it a bit and then let it boil, thinking the alcohol would mostly evaporate and it'd turn out perfect. Except then it exploded. And not a little explosion. A huge, splattered-red-wine-all-over-my-kitchen, kind of explosion. Thankfully I was not standing close to it, so I only got a few hot drops on my arm. But my cupboards, stove, floor and ceiling were not so fortunate. 

The weirdest part, besides me not understanding exactly how it exploded, was that it had been on the back burner, which is underneath the shelf that holds the microwave...so how on earth did that cursed oily liquid manage to curve around and splatter my high cupboards and ceiling?? I just don't understand.

I was able to make the floor less red-wine-y, so now it's just oily. And I wiped it off every horizontal surface and off most of the cupboards. Unfortunately the textured ceiling is still proving to be an obstacle. I just bought a magic eraser, so I'll be giving that a try during my one-woman cleaning party that is supposed to happen after I write this blog. Otherwise I may end up pulling a Michelangelo and repainting my entire kitchen celling. That sure sounds like a fun Christmas vacation project.

So there you have it, the story of how I succeeded at following Mrs. Bryant's advice. At least I didn't catch anything on fire. That was last weekend...when I almost burned down Emma's birthday cake. You're probably assuming I just almost left it in the oven too long. But you would be wrong. I actually almost burned it down when we were lighting it and she was about to make her birthday wish. The bigger the flame, the more likely the wish is to come true. Right? 

I will end on a good note because right now it sounds like all I do in my life is make mistakes. Last night I successfully made adorable mini stuffed peppers. No burning, no explosions and they tasted delicious. And all around success.  Oh and on Thursday I presented one of my research projects at our lab meeting and it went even better than I expected. So I guess that also kind of makes up for the whole kitchen-explosion thing :)

As always, thanks for sharing in the overall excitement that is my life! 

Happy weekend. Stay warm. 

So you can teach an old...Rachel new tricks

In all fairness, I realize I am not exactly old and it is maybe a little silly to implicitly refer to myself as a dog, but stick with me. The metaphor fits. I think.

Tonight I learned 3 new ballroom moves within 30 minutes. I had grown so accustomed to only dancing the moves I already knew because in the last 2 years because I have not had a ballroom lesson taught by anyone other than, well...me. I signed up for the Intermediate American Smooth lesson with the Hawkeye Ballroom Dance Co on Monday evenings, and this was actually the first Monday that I've been able to make it. When the lesson started and he announced we'd quickly review the 2 new moves from last week and then learn a new one, I got that little panicky feeling of "Everyone knows these moves and, of course, I've never even heard of them!" My palms probably got a little sweaty but I geared up to  learn them as best I could. And what do you know, it appears Rachel has her groove back because I picked them up immediately and furthermore, totally fell in love with them. The 3 new moves were in Waltz and I had just forgotten how much I love gliding across the floor, feeling (even if it's mostly a self-bias) rather graceful. It truly is rewarding to gain fluency in a particular move or step and then it's even more rewarding to be able to silently cooperate with another person to make that move even more beautiful.  And that is what a lot of tonight felt like. And then there was that old guy who was honestly just adorable and was so happy to be dancing that I didn't even care our feet weren't lined up and our rhythm was a little off.  More power to him :)

I feel a bit lame for the shortness of this post but I am trying to take care of myself so these allergies don't have as much of a chance against my immune system, so I suppose I better get to bed.  More to come soon.  My life is bound to be interesting enough in the next few days that I'm sure I'll be inclined to fill you in. Tusind tak for reading!

Goodnight, moon.

The lack of understanding of armamentarium put me in a state of exigency

I haven't had new words in awhile, so here are the two most recent (from 5 minutes ago when I was studying for neuropsych and found them written on a random page which had been forgotten until now):

Armamentarium: "the set of resources available for a certain purpose." In my case, this was referring to the set of neuropsychological assessments tools used to assess those who had experienced injury, insult or was seeking evaluation for some other mental condition

Exigency: a state of affairs that requires urgent thought or response

This is the life: learning something new everyday. 

Some Cyclones, some Hawkeyes, some amusing sights and a Billy Possum

Last night, I snuggled into my bed, watched an episode of the office and then pulled up my blog to write a new post. Before even typing the first word I realized all I had to say was what an awesome day yesterday was, and I figured that wasn't interesting enough for anyone to read about so I shut my computer and fell asleep. This morning, a whole 8 hours later, however, is a significantly different story. That might be because I should really be doing homework. So naturally my inclination to ramble about my thoughts has exponentially increased.

First and foremost, the CyHawk (Cyclone-Hawkeye: Iowa State: Iowa) game was last weekend.  I was rather torn, given my lifelong devotion to the Cyclones and my newfound title as grad student at U of Iowa. So here's how I attempted to remain fairly bipartisan...

And in case you can't read that in the mirror...

"Beat the other team" -courtesy Raygun

I'll admit I felt a little stupid taking self-photos but I wanted one for the blog and I was all by myself at home and there was just no other alternative. So it was all for you, blog-reader. All for you. 

 Prior to me taking those all too awesome and not at all lame selfies, this next photo is what I awoke to at 7:30 am last Saturday, and the exact same thing, only with more talking, yesterday.

Inflatable Herky. Guess you can't go wrong there.

Last Saturday my day consisting of tailgating, a.k.a. walking around my apartment, Melrose Drive, and the stadium trying to find a place to sit and eat food. I hung out with Cassie, one of Abby's friends/bridesmaids who lives in Iowa City. We finally made our way to the home of a friend of hers and then we just ate great food, sat on the garage roof (see next pic) and enjoyed the atmosphere.

Yesterday I did end up going to the game with two of my cousin's friends (who are, I hope, now my friends too!) and beforehand we all just hung out in my apartment with Abby and Kyle, who also came to IC for the game.  It seriously was such a blast.  I can't quite imagine doing this every weekend....okay, what I did I can imagine doing because I drank one beer, ate a bunch of food and went to bed at 11:30 pm.  However, I cannot imagine doing what most people do on game days. Haha.

Okay, now for the real reason I wanted to post this morning. Here are "Things I saw and laughed at while on my morning run the day after a home game" (drum roll please)

1. My landlord. At 7:15 am. Starting to pick up the trash and DJ equipment, which had been left out all night. Seriously, if I was a bad person (and I had friends to help me carry things upstairs) I would have a new computer, sound mixer and large tv right now. I waved at him.

2. A guy picking up his lawn beer pong table...and peeing into his bushes. Thank you for that.

3. A girl, decked out in Iowa gear, leaving a boy's apartment. Aw yeah, get it girl.

4. A husband and wife eating breakfast on their back porch. Adorable. Seriously, that one I'm not making fun of, I really think that's adorable.

5. A guy walking through our parking lot, picking up multiple trash bags full of cans. He's gonna make a nice lump sum of change on that. I approve.

Okay, I will end with one of the greatest sentences I heard on my podcast while I ran. I also laughed out loud at this. "The Billy Possum never even made it to see Christmastime, which is a special kind of tragedy for a toy."

So my newest obsession is listening to podcasts while I run and bike. My current favorite is called 99% Invisible. If I've spiked your interest enough, check it out at http://99percentinvisible.org/.  The episode I just referred to is #40: Billy Possum. 

I really have to go to work now, a.k.a. make breakfast, drink coffee, shower and then do work. Happy Sunday!!

Windshield washing

Straight from my random thoughts journal:

"I hope road trips don't go out of style, because of gas prices and all.  I want to eventually be able to take my family on road trips. Also, always wash the windshield when you stop to get gas."

That's actually my favorite part. Washing the windshield. When I was little and we'd be driving to Grandma's or a vacation, or really anywhere further away than central Iowa, I remember dad washing the windshield when we'd stop to get gas. And in my little kid eyes, it looked like magic. He was so precise and it was always spotless when he finished. I really have no idea where my obsession with this action came from, but I vividly remember being entranced as he scrubbed the windshield and then dried it, row by row, one half of the windshield and then the other, pausing to shake the water off the squeegee thing after every row. I just loved how spotless it made my view. Everything looked so much brighter and more pleasant after my dad was done with it. Right about now I could definitely go into a really lovely metaphor about how washing our metaphorical windshield can make life look brighter. But I won't. Because that was never my intention. I literally just wanted to remind myself to wash the actual windshield and to enjoy the car rides.

Apparently it's the most exciting weekend in Iowa City...

And I'm drinking orange juice, sitting on my exercise ball, writing in my blog. And I am totally content.

Sorry it's been so very long since I've updated. Multiple times this week I've inner monologue-ed blog posts in my head...while riding my bike, while I should be reading articles for classes, even while showering. But for whatever reason, none of those incredibly exciting posts have actually come to transcribed fruition. So it's about time.

Remember that post that was "a whirlwind of honesty"? This will be a little like that.  Now you can't say you haven't had a fair warning.

The last two weeks have been odd. Two weekends ago, on Saturday, I had the good fortune of having my boyfriend and his family visit Iowa City. And then on Sunday I had the really terrible fortune of realizing I needed to break up with him. As a general rule in my life, I avoid break ups as much as possible. This, in the past, has translated into me being in weird "fake" relationships, because it seems like the break ups just aren't as painful. Well this was a real relationship, and hence, the break up was indeed painful.  It was a terribly hard decision to make because a lot of things about the relationship were irrefutably good. This charming, caring boy had been there for me during one of the hardest times in my life. He made me laugh, he choreographed a really sweet dance that I got to be in, he kept me company during some of my longest nights of studying as I tried to graduate. All in all I am incredibly grateful to him for being there.

But even good things must come to an end. And I knew that was the case when I started to not feel like myself. I felt like I was compromising what I always dreamt of having because there wasn't as much communication, mutual respect, or understanding as I wanted. And perhaps at a time when I wasn't still reeling from losing my father, I could've handled all of that. But the "what if"s aren't important. Because I am still reeling. I am discombobulated and jambled and confused and heart broken from having to learn to live without the person I got one of my X chromosomes, and so much more, from.

And so I broke up with him. And thus began the downward tail spin. I don't exactly know what happened but within the span of 36 hours after said break up, I felt like I hit rock bottom. Now, I might be exaggerating. There are plenty of other things that could go wrong in my life, and I am grateful many of them haven't, but I at least hit faux-rock bottom. I was distracted, unpleasant to be around, surprisingly nauseous, constantly suppressing tears and being annoyed with that funny feeling you get in your throat when you try to stop the tears. The future looked bleak. I felt so lonely without constantly texting him random comments and being a part of conversations that spanned whole days and yet barely said anything. It was all just so strange.

Because I felt like dealing with this breakup should have been so minuscule compared to the huge loss I experienced a few months ago, I think the utter surprise of feeling so hurt and lonely just compounded my emotional experience, which was already shaky, given my current grieving situation. And suddenly it all turned into mourning my father in a way that I had not done yet. Because before I always at least felt like I had that one person to go to. Now I know, beyond a doubt, that at any time of the day or night, I have tons of people I could call or message and they would talk, listen, sympathize and tell me comforting things. But because we, monogamous humans, are made the way we are, having that one person who has a special, romantic interest in you, is just different from all the other relationships. And I see now that I put way too much reliance on having that relationship make me feel better. This is not to say that I did not mourn this past spring, while I was at Knox. I did. But this break up just made the feelings rush out again and surround me in a way that I had not quite experienced before.
I hate the phrase "hot mess". But, man, I was a hot mess. I guess when a relationship is really worth it, the end hurts.

So here's the inevitable silver lining. I eventually picked myself up from that faux-rock bottom, dusted the faux-rock dust of my pants and gave myself a good talking to.  Am I totally over it now? No.  Do I want to be? No. I am lucky I had a relationship that was worth enough to be upset over its ending. However, it is time to move on in the sense of "being me." Allow me one cliche for the evening. I need to find myself. I don't know where I lost me, but in the hustle and bustle of readjusting my life, in so many domains, I did manage to somehow lose track of who I am and who I want to be. And now begins the challenging task of refiguring all of that out.  I want to be a hard-worker, passionate, caring, generous, thoughtful, energetic and loving. I want to re-start waking up before the sun (multiple times this week!); I want to regain the strength I had during my first years in college; I want to stay focused and driven while working in lab and I desperately want to stay on top of my insane amounts of reading.  Success in all these areas is perhaps not entirely realistic, but at the very least, it is still helpful for me to recognize them as goals of my current life.

Woah, I did not mean to spend this entire blog post being all sappy and relationship-centered, but my eyes are dozing off and I'm going to start typing really weird stuff if I do not wrap this up quickly.  I promise to have another post soonish that will be way less emotional and way more "words, and other interesting tidbits, from the daily life of Rachel Clark." If you did make it this far, thanks for sticking with me :)

Oh and happy Cy-Hawk rivalry game tomorrow!! Maybe I'll post a picture in the next entry of the outfit that I have I picked out especially for tomorrow's event. My main strategy is to accessorize with yellow/gold.  Can't go wrong there!

Cardigans and jargon

1. I bought new cardigans. Two of them! (Re: the middle of Aug. 15's post)

2. New words of the week

dysarthria: impairment in the motor-speech system that results in difficulty articulating

malinger: feigning illness (in the context of using neuropychological assessments to determine if one is truly impaired or is "faking it")

gliosis: growth or production of astrocyctes in areas where damage has occurred in the nervous system

masticatory: relating to the act of chewing (often times a description of abnormal behavior rats engage in after brain damage or surgical tissue resection) 

interictal: the time period or interval between seizures or convulsions

congener: organisms within the same genus

3. I don't have a third thing.

Oh I guess this can be my third thing: I survived my first week of graduate school (and enjoyed almost all of it), think my classmates are super rad and have gained one pant size because my legs are so much bigger from all this bike riding. Weird.

Happy Saturday!

The thin line between a bamf and an idiot

First and foremost, I apologize profusely for the implied swearing. I do my best not to swear often, but sometimes nothing else seems to fit the bill well enough. This is one of those times. If you prefer, instead of what bamf actually means, feel free to imagine that it means "big and manly female". That will work.
Also, before I start, here are two things I learned today:
1) It's hard to ride a bike in wedges. You know, those shoes that pretend like they are heels, but really aren't because they are more practical and more comfortable. Super cute. But unfortunately, not bike friendly.
2) Wearing a backpack, no matter how light, exacerbates the sweating that occurs pretty much anytime one rides a bike. Jeans have the same effect, to an even greater degree.

Now on to the story...
Today was quite the busy day as it was the first "morning meeting", which is a 7:30 am meeting every Monday and Friday with various presentations, which is attended by neuro grad students, clinical faculty and physicians, lab techs and the PIs of other labs. (PI stands for principal investigator and it's basically the person in charge of his or her own lab)  Ok, so I was at morning meeting and then I started working in my rotation lab. I finally have papers to read and understand!
Skip forward a few hours, to when I left lab to eat my lunch quickly (pb and j sandwich, rice cake and fruit salad...dining like a king :)...and then I had a chiropractor appointment. I got a random neck injury on Friday and I've been waiting for it to get better and it just hasn't healed completely so I went to get it checked out at this new place.

I left right from work so it was me, my bike, my backpack and my iPod, setting out on this adventure. Google maps told me the office was about 3.5 miles away from downtown, which was accurate. Google maps did not tell me, however that most of it was uphill and also across I-80. Well, it did tell me that part but I didn't realize there would not be a legitimate bike lane or sidewalk on both sides of the road that overpassed the interstate. So there I am, in cute grey wedges, my nice jeans, a nicer-than-a-tshirt top, backpack safely bucked on, riding my bike alongside cars going at least 35 mph, if not faster. I was slightly intimidated, until I remembered that I did the equivalent of this nearly every day in Denmark. Then it was a piece of cake.

I made it safely, though when I arrived I was unfortunately much sweatier than I would have preferred. But despite my embarassment, I was rather proud of the accomplishment.

Apparently riding your bike for 6 miles-round trip gives one plenty of time to think. Here's what I decided to think about. I believe there is a fine line between being supremely awesome and taking the day by storm (a.k.a. being a bamf), and being a total idiot. And I've decided this line, today, was my helmet. I know this sounds super dorky but hear me out.  I gotta admit it, riding in jeans and wedges was not my brightest idea. And was more than a little bit uncomfortable. BUT since I had my backpack tightly buckled across my chest and my helmet securely fastened on my head, at least I looked like I knew what I was doing. I looked ready for adventure, albeit poorly dressed for said adventure. Who knows what all the Iowa City-ians thought as they drove past me, swerving to the other lane to avoid hitting the crazy biker on the side of the road, but I'll admit I felt somewhat invincible. Invincible and sharply dressed. Not a bad feeling.  But that's when the realization came that if I would not have had my helmet to show just how dedicated I am to not screwing up this brain that I've worked so hard for and my backpack to show I mean business, I really would've just looked utterly ridiculous. Don't you think? So that was my exciting experience of the day.
And what, might you ask, does a bike-riding bamf do when she gets home from her adventurous day? She naps.

I'm not usually wrong. But when I am...it's about this.

When I was younger I was convinced that I'd be a very good loner. I could live in the mountains, in a gorgeous house surrounded by beautiful landscaping, complete with stainless steel appliances and the coolest shower available...Oh and the most important part, in all of these fun fantasies, I'd be all by my lonesome. I dreamt of spending my time working out, doing academic work and then sitting in a hammock, simply relaxing. Obviously this is a ridiculous proposition. And I knew it wasn't actually going to happen. But I thought, naively, that living like that would make me very happy.

And some of it would have.

But after some major thought, I've decided that after about the first week, I would be miserable. Because I like people.

And maybe that's the major game changer. I didn't used to like people. I mean, I had friends, whom I liked. And I liked some other people. But I didn't used to glean quite so much enjoyment from just being with and talking to people, as I do now.  

I'll still admit I don't adore every single person I encounter. But I do give each person a chance, and I think I give people a lot more credit than I used to. And they totally deserve it. I think I just used to be too cynical. I'd say it's a new and improved me that (as often as I can) starts with a general like and appreciation for each person. And I've found that's a much better way to live. 

Just something I've been thinking about lately. 

On another totally random note, today I decided to buy some new notebooks. One is for "Words previously unknown by Rachel". It's basically a dictionary of words I encounter that I don't understand. Even if it's a word I recognize, if I am unable to come up with a reasonable definition, it goes in the notebook. Then, when I have the chance, I'll look up the definitions and fill in the blanks in the notebook. I got so lucky as to happen upon a cute little A-to-Z notebook that has beautiful typefont background of a letter on each page. So the words just get written on the correct page and then I don't have to do any more rearranging or anything. It is pretty fabulous. There must be at least 15 total words already, most of which I just learned this evening. And thus begins the process of expanding my vocabulary. 

Secondly, at this same cute store, I bought two little blank page notebooks. These are my "random thoughts" notebooks. Whenever I have a totally random thought that I feel should be remembered, or at least acknowledged, I'll jot it down and date it. For some reason I had multiple of these thoughts today. I think it was because I drank a cup of coffee this morning (thanks to my coffee-making-and-drinking roommate Katie :), so that I wouldn't fall asleep at the workshop (success!)  However, that extra jolt this morning did lead me to a slightly more distractible state of mind.  Here are just two of the jotted down ideas from today...

~ Buy more cardigans

~ need to dance.  find a way. 

~ remember to tell Katie about the dream about Scooter (my cat)

~ buy a notebook for unknown words  (Success!)

For whatever reason, it is strangely satisfying to see what could have been a fleeting thought become a physical entity that exists on the perfectly white page of the pretty pink notebook.  It's just nice.

Think that's all for today. I've been biking a lot these days so I'm a bit more worn out by the time I get into bed at night. Which is now. And therefore, goodnight all :)

P.S. (see title of post) I'll admit it, I am wrong some other times. I don't know about what yet. But I know it happens.......occasionally :)

Today's agenda

Today's Agenda: Monday, Orientation Week

-Official first meeting with program director and fellow incoming students. Status: Check

-Keep myself busy/maybe be productive between meetings. Status: In progress.
Here's what I've done thus far.
           Ate lunch in hospital lobby, tried to get connected to internet to work on this online class I need to complete. Failed- no internet connection.
          Sat in a coffee shop, drank iced tea and started the class. But then I got hungry and felt it would be inappropriate to eat my homemade sandwich inside the cafe.
          So I walked to the public library and sat outside and tried to connect to the internet. Another failure.
           Finally I came inside (where I currently am) and tried to continue watching the videos for the course but it keeps freezing like 4 minutes in. So now I'm just writing my thoughts because what else am I going to do until this next meeting in an hour? Well, I do have one idea. But I probably don't need to get in the habit of getting fro-yo every single time I'm downtown.

Next-

-Meeting to register for classes. Status: In one hour. I think I have them figured out. We have 2 required classes (Foundations of Neurobiology and Foundations of Neuropsychology), an optional molecular/cellular class which I may take, and then possibly space for one elective. Then we have lab rotations and research work on top of that. I am pumped though because I got approved to work in Michelle Voss's lab (who I've been talking to and hoping to work with since about February of this year) and I was also assigned an academic mentor and a grad student mentor as well. I was very pleased when the director said Melissa Duff (who I worked with last summer) could be my advisor and my student mentor is a girl I met during Interview week who is friendly, a little crazy, really fun and apparently quite successful and smart. So basically, I have a dream team of academic advisors/mentors/lab professors :)

After that meeting I will be done with meetings for the day so I'm going to head home and finish this online course (which has not worked at all in the twenty or so minutes that I've been sitting here writing this) and I think my roommates and I will rearrange our living room, because we now have an awesome couch!

Oh, speaking of my apartment, my 3rd roommate, Lauren, moved in yesterday. She was the one who originally found this apartment and then had a profile online that I found. She is incredibly nice (as is her family) and I'm thrilled I got so lucky with these two great roommates. All three of us seem to get along well already and I can't wait to hear how their first days today went also. Maybe I'll post some pictures of the apt once it gets finished.

I better head back to my bike so I can get to the other side of the river for my meeting. Happy Monday, everyone!

Short and sweet

This has to be short because I am pathetically tired after my first real day of anything academic, but I'm forcing myself to write because 1) I do actually enjoy it and 2) I don't want to get in the habit of putting it off. Today was indeed my first official day. Kind of. I'm taking part in a workshop on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri), something I have very little experience with, but a considerable amount of interest in. I was for sure the youngest and least experienced person there, which is simultaneously overwhelming and relieving. I kind of feel like it's okay that this is all going way over my head because I'm just a lowly first year grad student. I can't really be expected to understand all the jargon and programming details, can I? Then again, it is a little scary seeing the breadth and depth of stuff I will hopefully be familiar with in just a few short years. The day consisted of 3 lectures in the morning (I'll admit it, I was dozing a wee bit by the third one. Perhaps coffee is in my forecast tomorrow), and then two workshops. One of which I followed decently well (super cool imaging program called Slicer, for any of my nerdy friends) and the other, during which I got lost about half way through and spent the rest of the time just trying to fake it till I made it. All in all, I survived. And felt a little grown up in the process.

However, I have to admit this morning was not the perfect morning for my epic appearance on the graduate school scene. Here is approximately how my continuous 3rd person pep talk went...all in my head of course. (I'm "graduate student", in case that's not clear)

Well graduate student, here you are. Setting off for your first big day. In a nice shirt...and gym shorts. That's ok, you look super cool. Thank goodness the rain has stopped just in time for you to ride your bike. You forgot to grab your seat cover? Well you'll have a wet butt, so good thing you are going to change into your jeans when you get there. Just don't ride too fast, otherwise you'll get all sweaty and out of breath and you'll look silly for the rest of the day. You know everyone will judge you if your makeup smudges and your hair is a little frizzy. 

Ok, you're half way there. You realize you are taking the least efficient route to get there, right? Why on earth did you just ride in front of the hospital instead of crossing at that light? You should know this area better. It's ok, just smile, grad student, and everyone will think you know what you are doing. They have no idea that you don't have a clue and that you feel ridiculous. 

You made it to the right building and your bike is locked up, great! Wait...how about you do that again and actually lock it to the post this time, eh? That'd be helpful.  (Opps)

Nice work walking up those stairs that went who knows where, you smartypants, and even better job walking back down them and standing there awkwardly until someone else "neuro-y" walked by so you could follow them up to the room. They have no idea you almost went the wrong way...3 times!

At least you've made it to the right room. Oh no! Everyone is wearing khakis or nice pants. Crap!! Feeling a little silly in your jeans now, aren't you? Well, at least the men aren't wearing ties.

Okay...you can relax now, nervous grad student. You've made it to the workshop, you have a name tag, you have a computer to sit at and...lo and behold...someone else is wearing jeans too :)

So that really was my train of thought this morning as I did pretty much everything wrong before finally making it successfully to the right place. I guess the whole nervous thing is to be expected and honestly, I doubt anyone else noticed any of my little mistakes (except that janitor who chuckled when I walked up the stairs...and promptly back down them). Overall I have to say the day could've gone much worse :)

I better get to sleep now so tomorrow's lectures get a little more attention from me then the ones today did.  Let's all hope for some more adventures tomorrow...otherwise what am I going to ramble on here about? Goodnight.

Day 2 of grown up living

I won't write much tonight because I traveled far and wide to a little cafe with wi-fi (shout-out to JavaHouse)...(oh and to downtown Iowa City, which is awesome on a Friday night! It's rocking with outdoor dining, a grilled cheese stand and live music.)  Anyways, I managed to seat myself nowhere near an outlet and I'm too proud to move from this spot now that I'm here. I have approximately 1 hour and 32 minutes of power left, but I doubt this place is even open that long so maybe I will write until one or the other happens, computer dies or they kick me out. Haha. 

I hope everyone is doing well tonight. I have survived day two, actually day 3, of being in my apartment. Sleeping last night went much better now that the air is back on. The only disconcerting thing was the dream I had that included a really insane frog/owl/pterodactyl creature that I'm pretty sure spawned off the real life giant fish species that is living in the pond behind our apartment. Apparently my subconscious thinks those fish could sprout wings and make it up to our apartment to torment me. Nevertheless, I slept well in my new bed and awoke to realize the fish in the pond really are just fish. I spent my day organizing my room, getting my hair cut, going grocery shopping, putting together an IKEA coffee table, vacuuming and baking (brownies and puppy chow: perfect "break in the kitchen" food :).  So far it appears I really enjoy being "Holly homemaker" (I don't think that's a real saying, I just made it up), even if it is just for me. But the boyfriend (Mr. Quintin Gittemeier, from Knox) is visiting this weekend so I did actually have a real reason to come up with delicious meals and make the apartment look as good as possible. 

I really want to write all about my meeting with Michelle (my soon-to-be lab advisor), but I don't have enough time so maybe I'll write a post before bed tonight and post it the next time I get internet. All I can say for now is, it really made me excited to be a part of this Neuro program and for the upcoming research opportunities! Okay I sound like a big dork so I better stop.

Thanks as always for reading :)  

Words from the dark...kind of. On the adventures of growing up and moving

Hello all!

I've been considering returning to the world of blogging for some time now. And now I figure, what more appropriate time could there be than this? This time being me on the cusp of adulthood, having just moved into my new apartment, off campus, at a new school, with my own bedroom and my very own new queen bed.....and no electricity. Good thing I charged up my computer before I left home this morning. I don't even have internet right now...so in what feels like a very 'old school' style, I am writing this on a "sticky note", which is mac's version of notepad. But it's more fun because you can change the colors and drag the boxes all over your screen wherever you want. This one is blue, if anyone was wondering, and it's a giant box in the middle of my screen overlapping my itunes. 

Now that we got the important stuff out of the way, let's talk about why I am sitting on my new bed, sweating like a pig, in the dark, ready to throw in the towel and go to bed at, let's see....10:04.  Wow, no wonder people got so much more sleep before indoor lighting. There's nothing else to do when it gets dark! So, like I said, I just moved in to my first big girl apartment today. It's in Iowa City, close to the stadium, in this kind of wooded area, right behind a gross green pond which has huge fish that look like gators. It's a beautiful apartment though. 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a lovely kitchen, wooden floor dining room, living room and a delightful little balcony. I found this apartment by way of University of Iowa's online roommate finder and I am living with 2 girls who had already decided to lease this apt and were looking for a third. Much to my pleasure, after a few emails back and forth, they deemed me worthy and told me if I wanted the apt, they'd have me. I was thrilled and jumped at the chance right away. One of the roommates also moved in today. A very sweet girl from Minneapolis who attended Iowa State. So far I'm a huge fan. She likes adventuring, is very studious, likes to keep things clean, and has a great sense of humor and a get-it-done attitude (all this I can tell from meeting her twice and watching her haul all her stuff up our 3 flights of stairs). She also had a few good friends to help her...so at least I know she has friends :)  I haven't met the other roommate yet. She went to William and Mary and is originally from Virginia, near Washington DC. Ironically, my college roommate (and best friend) was also from that area. Lauren (roommate #2) is moving in on the 12th. Hopefully Katie (roommate #1) and I will have the apartment all settled in and looking spic and span by the time she gets here and brings her awesome huge couch (yay!!).  

Wait, back to why I have no power....When I signed the lease two weeks ago, the property manager had told me to just call the electrical company (Mid-american) a few days ahead of time to make sure they know what day service should start. So on Monday (two days ago) I give them a call and am told that the previous residents just had the service turned off, so in order for it to be turned back on, a service person will have to come flip the breaker. No problem...or so I think. "Which day are you moving in?" She asks. When I say Wednesday she says, "well, it appears out schedule is booked (eek!), but here, I can override it and give you an appointment time of 7 am-8pm. So, you'll just have to be at the residence to let the person in during all of that time. We can call 30 minutes ahead of time."  Well....I wasn't planning to move in until 10. I was not about to leave Newton at 5:30 in the morning to be here at 7 am "just in case" they could come then. And I probably wouldn't have even had a key. "Okay so maybe we can just make an appointment for Thursday," she says, when I explain the predicament. "Thursday is also full. It appears we have some times open on Friday."  Friday didn't seem quite soon enough for me to get ac, a fridge, hot water and a lit kitchen so we finally agree to do the 7am-8pm thing on Thursday. That means that sometime tomorrow, don't know when, we will get electricity back! I do have to leave at 11 am to go meet my new advisor/professor/lab rotation (which will inevitably be the subject of the next blog post), but besides that I guess I will be keeping myself busy in my hot, dark apartment.   While I am talking about the whole power deal, I have to give a shout out to the graduation gift that allowed me to shower this evening. Mike and Ginny (family friends) bought me the most adorable bathroom accessories set. It's all rubber ducky themed and I'm in love with it. I have a shower curtain, towels, a duck with umbrella toothbrush holder and a duck soap dispenser. Along with a few just-for-funsies duckies, two of which light up. Who would've guessed how handy those would be for my very dark (and very cold) shower. It was nice little ambiance lighting :)  Oh and I hadn't hung my shower curtain up, so it really was an interesting shower. Thank you Mike and Ginny, for making it possible for me to not go to bed in my nice new bed all stinky and sweaty. It was truly a treat :)  

I will probably go to sleep soon (what else can I do without power??) but I will first say that I am comfortable and happy in this lovely new apartment, and it's all thanks for my mama, Abby and Kyle. Mom drove the explorer to IC for me, all loaded up with my furniture and other essentials and then helped haul stuff up the stairs. She even packed us a fun lunch that we ate picnic-style on the living room floor. Abby and Kyle drove from Waverly (their new home) and helped unload and transfer all of my stuff. I sincerely could not have gotten some of it without Kyle's muscles and it was also just nice to have the two of them see where I'm living and help figure out how to organize my room. I'm glad I am not living too far away from them- and I hope they come visit me often (hint hint ;)  

I think I'll call it a night now. I'm hoping my phone doesn't die before morning so my alarm will be able to go off, otherwise I'll probably wake up to the sun. Another cold shower in the morning, perhaps? Thanks for reading my first post as I'm returning to the blogosphere (that is most definitely not a real word...but I think that's allowed when blogging, haha)  Goodnight!

Words I spoke at the funeral

Dear all,

The following is my eulogy, which I read today at the funeral. The only hard part about writing it was that I had so many more memories I wanted to share. Dad was so good at making them. I hope it makes you laugh a bit, I think he would have :)

"I can’t begin to explain how much it means that you all are here. I just have a few things to say about the man my father was and the legacy he left, though that will never be fully played out because I am certain we will feel it in new ways every single day.

Many times, in reference to our game plan to kick my dad’s cancer in the butt, my mom would say "We are swinging for the fence!" (my mom is particularly fond of sports metaphors). And well, even though what we really wanted was a home run that would bring dad’s health back so he could stay with us, Heaven has gotta be beyond the fence. Somewhere wonderful beyond the fence. And we are so grateful to know we will see him again.        

In recalling stories about dad, there are a few themes that come up again and again. How much fun we had with him, how much we trusted him and how proud we were to be his daughters.

As Abby wrote, our dad was a competitive, fun-loving guy. He did not let that darn tumor get in his way. In a blog post a few months back, when I was home in July, I wrote “We are staying really positive, but we are also on edge, just waiting and watching and praying and hoping.  On the bright side, I played tennis with him a few days ago and although his motor skills have definitely been affected by the tumor, he still had some serves that aced me!”  That’s my strong, amazing dad for you.

         Dad loved being outside, working, playing golf or tennis or just enjoying. When I was younger, he built a beautiful patio behind our garage. I remember one summer night when I was in highschool, we decided to borrow a projector and dad rigged it up so that we could watch Star Wars on the back of the garage. We all sat out there in lawn chairs, with blankets and pillows and a fire burning in our cast iron fire pit.

         Abby also mentioned how adventurous dad was. This was particularly evident when we would ride our four-wheelers down at the farm. He taught me how to ride and then put me on my own four-wheeler and let me just follow him as we went up and down hills, around the lakes and through the tall grass, always stopping to point out deer or the shark fish if its fin was skimming the water as it so often did. Two summers ago, we were out riding on the runway, seeing how fast we could go and dad told me to stop in the middle and watch him. He went a ways down towards the lake and then turned around and came back, riding close to the edge of the runway. Only once I saw his four-wheeler dip down and then bounce up a little hill did I realize what he was showing me—he had figured out how to “get air”. And he just laughed and laughed and laughed. I was nowhere near as good as he was at first but we did it over and over. Heading towards the lake, turning around and starting in first gear, speeding up to about 5^th gear and then once we reached the little dip we’d scrunch down as close to the handlebars as we could so it would go just a bit higher in the air. And mom had no idea (which was smart on dad’s part)

When I was younger, we would travel back and forth to Donnellson, Des Moines, Logan and also on longer trips, specifically the one we took to New York. Dad would be in the driver seat of our big grey Astrovan, mom in the passenger and then Abby and I all sprawled out across the two middle seats, piled in with coloring books, snacks and blankets and pillows. I sleep in the car, all the time. But I remember when I was little I would be so tired, nearly unable to keep my eyes open. And for whatever reason I was convinced that when I closed my eyes, somehow dad’s eyes would close too. And I tried so hard to keep them open because I felt guilty that I was sleeping and he was driving. I would fight to keep them open, picturing him getting tired at the wheel. Despite my desperate attempts, I would inevitably fail and fall into an untroubled sleep, rocked into dreams by the gently moving car, that was faithfully steered by my father. And he always got us home safely. I’d wake up as we pulled into the driveway, surprised at how much time had passed while I was asleep. But never surprised that we made it. Because I trusted him. I trusted him to get us there. And he always did.

Some of you have heard this next part, so I’m sorry to be repeating it. I wrote it after being home at Easter.

“I've always known I was blessed to have Sam Clark as a father. His real name is Robert; that's what I always loved telling people because it was like having a secret. I know him better than you, I'd think in my head. I don't even know if the story I tell is accurate; I'm sure it's tainted by years of me revealing my little secret to people who met my dad. "Yeah. His name is really Robert, but one time when he was little, the neighbor came over and asked how the kids were doing. My grandma responded "Oh Donna and Mark are in the other room and baby Sam is napping." She just randomly said Sam, or so my story goes. And it just stuck. I think I change the story a little bit every time, but I enjoy it very much nonetheless.”

The past few days we have been watching home videos. The good old videos, playing on the nearly-ancient vcr. The kind that dad filmed with his giant video camera. A lot of the videos were of parties or holidays or other gatherings. But some of them were just dad and us. He would turn on the camera and just set it on the tripod or carry it along on his shoulder while we did normal, every day things:  playing hide and seek, eating hot dogs and jello, pulling tissues out of the box while mom wasn’t watching and him teaching us to talk. To most people, those things are mundane and less-than-extraordinary. But to dad they were opportunities to make memories. Who knew how much these would come to mean to us? Because to us, when we watch those, every moment is a chance to hear him laugh, talk or see his twinkling eyes.

I miss my father- his idiosyncrasies, his laugh, his wit, his thoughtful eyes and that facial gesture he made when something surprised him. We will all miss him very much. 

That man. He knew how to make memories. And he knew how to love. And I will forever be a better person because of how he raised me.

Thank you all so much for coming. I can’t express or even fully comprehend right now how much it means to us. Though the hole in our hearts can’t be filled, it’s nice to have such warmth to comfort the part of us that remains."