The "What Are You Up To" Post for Spring 2012 (Part 1)

 
     Every May with the end of the college school year, I turn around and take a look at how much I have or have not posted on this and realize that life is really full for me. Its a wonderfully complicated feeling.  I know stuff has happened that I should of taken time to absorb and remember, but as soon as I sit down it feels like the next thing comes along to get wrapped up in.  The biggest downside for me to this is that I don't tell other people everything that's going on, even if they want to know.  It's too tiring to keep trying to explain it all.  So friends, here's what's been going on. I'm still in the middle of some of this, and I won't be slowing down for at least 4 more weeks so rather than continue to shut you all out with minimal information because I'd much rather share life with you all, I'm writing it down.

     First off, I'll tell you about work in the lab this Spring.  Some of you may know this, but all last year my boss, Dr. Jeffery, was out of the country on sabbatical from teaching at the University.  He used the time to go do field research on many different cave organisms in the mountains of Croatia.  (Croatia is one of the richest parts of the world for caves and cave life.)  While he was gone, the rest of us here settled into our own rhythms and patterns of work that incorporated whatever else we had going on, like families, starting a business, or church. Then in January we got our boss back.  This is great and hard at the same time.  Its a lot like living without a roommate for a year and then trying to adjust to having one again.  We are all a little different from what we were in January 2011.  Some of our responsibilities have changed, some of our projects have changed.  So this semester as a Lab manager, I've been dealing with how to adjust my own workload and how the lab operates to incorporate having Bill back again.  There's a lot more to all this than I'm saying here on the Net, and it would make for a good cup of tea sometime, but suffice it to say, this has been a lot more work than I expected.

     One of the cool things about having Bill back is that I get to work on new experiments! Unfortunately I can't go into too much detail here until some things are published to the public, but I get to learn new techniques for dissecting tissues from adult fish and I'm going to be playing with some cave planaria (those little flatworms that you grow in Biology class in high school).  The technique I'm best as is staining tissue with specific antibodies that we can then change the color of to look at cellular structures under the microscope.  (Now that think about it, I could put that method up here, I might do that one of these days).  The dissection stuff is all new to me, so I'm studying up on what tools I need and the methods I'll use.  *laugh* Yum, fish guts!

      Having Bill here again is also getting everyone else to focus more efficiently on their own work, so things are also picking up for the second part of my job, being a Lab Technician.  Lab technicians can be one or more of 4 different types:  animal technicians, who specialize in the care and breeding of lab animals;  equipment technicians, who know how to use and maintain every specialized machine in the lab;  technical specialists, people who excel in one particular technique or method and so everyone in the lab relies on them for that specifically; and general technicians, people who make general stock solutions, perform basic tasks at the request of laboratory staff, order supplies, and so forth.  I'm a bit of all four.  I manage all our fish, equipment, and general tasks with the help of a few undergrad students, and then do whatever preparatory tasks Bill asks me to do so he can do his experiments.  When everyone else starts moving quicker on their own research, the amount of support I need to give increases too.  So while its great to have them be so productive (especially since that's how we'll get funding for the next few years), it can get kind of tiring to cover everything. 

     In April and May, the administrative part of my job tends to take over and I spend a lot of time dealing with paperwork.  That's because everyone tries to get things turned in before the end of the school year so they can do field work or specialty classes over the summer.  The end of June is also the end of the fiscal year for the University of Maryland, so there's a fair bit of accounting stuff to do as well.  This May is especially heavy because we need to re-apply for permission to continue to work with fish for the next three years.  This permission is called an Animal Protocol, and it is an extensive document covering all the methods, chemicals, and procedures we use to study our cavefish.  It goes into detail about how we house them, feed them, train people to work with them, how we keep records, what levels of pain we expect them to suffer and how we would alleviate it, the chemicals they might be treated with and their possible reactions, and detailed explanations of our research procedures if we are working with them alive. We are also required to justify why our research is valuable to humanity at large, why we want to use these animals in particular, and why we need the number of animals we are asking for over the next three years.  All this information is then sent to the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee here on campus, and they evaluate our proposal for compliance with all federal and state laws.  If we are approved, we are allowed to continue our work with cavefish for the next three years.  If we aren't, our lab essentially has to shut down until we get approved, and we can't publish papers with our results or get new grants during that time.

     I've invested a lot of time over the past 8 years learning all the lingo and detailing our methods, so I'm not concerned about being approved by the IACUC.  Actually, we are a model lab that they like to show off to the rest of the university.  But it is a lot of paperwork all the same, and prayers are always appreciated! This is something I strive to do my best in as much as possible, because it is one way that I can love on these people God has sent me to serve.  Excellence here may be the biggest ways they will know that God does indeed care about them and their lives, something I can't really say to them with words without any action to back it up.

     So that's all about work.  The other major part of my life is all the stuff going on at Cornerstone! I'll put that up in Part 2.

The "What Are You Up To" Post for Spring 2012 (Part 2)

I can feel the coffee wearing off, so I'd better write quickly...

     I would like to summarize all the stuff happening at Cornerstone this Spring that I'm involved in with this photo that I stole from my friend Annemarie:

      *laugh* You are looking at the new and reworked Underground, now called "Doulos"!  The word doulos is Greek for "slave" or "bond-servant".  It could carry the same meanings that the word "slave" brings to mind for us in English, of human trafficking and social oppression, but in the New Testament is it more used of a person who exists to do the will of his master and so is trusted by the master to care for the things he highly values.  In other words it is a position of surrendering one's own will, but receiving a task that implies great trust in return.  When Pastor Mark came to the young adults in January with his vision for a rebooted group, the number one theme was that we become people who SERVE, and do so in practical, tangible ways. In order to develop that kind of outlook on life, we also need to grow both personally and as a body together more like Christ.  So once a month we have a Doulos social event that allows us to connect to each other.  We also have a service event once a month, either for people in our own church or our community outside the church.  (This picture was taken at the latest event, where a bunch of us went to the Crofton Convalescent Center and redid some container gardens for them.)  And lastly, we have small groups to encourage discipleship and fellowship.

     I am now leading one of those small groups.  We're trying something new with it - a music-focused small group where we both study the Word together and train our musical talents in a group setting so that we can be equipped to then go out and serve with those talents as God asks.  Now I'm certainly no music teacher and I've got a long way to go with the guitar myself.  But I do know enough to kind of coach people thanks to being a worship leader last year, and we all have something to contribute to each others' growth so I think we can make our musical talents sharper.  That being said we are first and foremost still a small group, not a band or a jam session (though both of those things may come out of it). We study the same topics at the other small groups do just as intently and the main point is still to grow up together in Christ. My small groupies are encouraged to either serve musically with me as a worship band for the monthly Prayer Vigil or on their own however God gives them opportunity.  However I really hope that this combination of spiritual training and talent training can work, for the sake of making doulos culture a permanent part of how we all live our lives.

     The other place I'm planted is in the choir, and it has been awesome to be apart of it this past year!  God has really used us to bless a lot of people inside and outside of our church.  One of more exciting things to happen this Spring is that our pastor has gotten engaged! His wedding is in September and (perhaps wisely for his sake, since we'd probably prank the heck out of him) it will be held in a different state.  We've all met his wife-to-be and she's a gem of a lady, so I'm really looking forward to "adopting" her into the choir family. Which she will be, even if she doesn't actually sing in the choir.  Pastor Jason has been changing a lot already just in these past few months and I can't wait to see how much more his gifts and leadership will expand when he finally gets his full-time helpmate. ^_^  'Course growth for him means growth for us! We're already working on new songs that really broaden our skills and range.  Thanks to my membership in the choir, I'm also being dragged by my fellow members into a few new things that I won't spoil for everyone ahead of time.  All I'll say about it is "Prepare to be amused!"

    There are the other things I'm keeping busy with as well, like planting my porch garden for the summer and planning out some of my sewing projects for the summer. I'm determined that I will make to the beach this year and at least one baseball game, more if possible! And I'm working on reading some of the books I've borrowed off of other people so I can give them back sooner than a year from now.  But there you have the major things I'm up to.  And I'm going to go back to having my head in the sand for a bit, as much as I love you all.  Give me a hug if you see me but forgive me if I'm not uber-conversational until I get through May.  And now you know why. ^_^

Catch-up Post #2 - October & November 2010

October and November is best shared in pictures, I think. The major events were the Underground Masquerade Ball (for which I dressed as an MIB agent with my new friend Betsey Mitchell), the Bowling party, and the Ugly Sweater party. We really ramped up the practicing for worship band and the Christmas play so mostly I was just really busy running around. If you'd like to see more pictures than what I just posted here, the full albums are up on the Photo Archives page.


Underground Masquerade 2011

We ARE the Men In Black.

We had quite the collection of characters this year.

In which two members of an imaginary law enforcement agency protect the public by arresting a gnome.

In which the members of two different imaginary law enforcement agencies protect the public by arresting a key guido from the Jersey Shore.

The Ugly Sweater Party

Yes, it really was that bad.

Catch-up Post #1 - September 2010

I can measure how "busy" my life is by how long I leave my blog alone. Given that the last time I actually wrote anything here was last October, and that it is almost October again, I must of had a crazy busy year! Its been a good, full, hard one; I'm still processing a lot of it. I might post some of those lessons later, for additional comment. But first, here's a seasonal update for those of you who have been asking how I've been for months now.

In September, I started attending a new Underground small group called SLICK (Single Ladies In Christ's Kingdom) led by my good friend Shari Carew. She had a very strong call on her heart that God wanted to reach out to the single ladies in our age group and work healing and growth in our lives. She didn't think she was the leader type, but thanks to her willingness to obey we started meeting on Thursday nights. I had the opportunity to offer my apartment as our meeting place and I was unbelievably grateful to do so. See, even though I had been a regular attender of Cornerstone and a faithful servant in Underground for months, I still felt like I didn't really KNOW anyone well, or that they knew me. Part of that was due to the fact that I hadn't had any of my church friends over to my place for anything. My apartment is rather small for parties and such, but its perfect for small group. Once these women started visiting my home and saying how much they enjoyed being in my "space", I really began to feel like I was more than just "church friends" with people, and that I now had Christian sisters I could walk with in my life. That was the first healing I experienced as a result of SLICK - God used those first meetings in my home to deliver the final blow to the isolation I'd struggled with since my fight with depression began in 2005.

Also in September, our new worship pastor and choir director Jason Rose started to shape the choir into an actual consistent, contributing entity in worship and creative ministry. Can I tell you just how much I've appreciated that this year? When I first came to Cornerstone, we had a small choir for occasional music and then later a sort of "worship chorus". Unfortunately both of those groups kind of lost steam and petered out at time went on, primarily due to a lack of leadership. Since music is one of the ways I connect with a community, I was really feeling the loss of a "place" to fit in the church. Now, however, there was a place to serve in music with community, consistent expectations, and a vision for the future. I love that. Choir has become one of my anchors of connection to the church. Our first major project was to introduce a choral element to our production of "The Christmas Window". I do enjoy a challenge. ^_^

In Underground, I was asked during the summer to take over as leader for the worship band in place of my friend Mike, who got married in June. My guitar skills aren't that great but I had led worship before in college, so I decided to say yes. We really started to gel in September as each of us adjusted to a new practice schedule, new music, and regular team devotionals under Pastor David's guidance. It took a couple of tries before we figured out how to "get out the way of the Spirit", as the saying goes. But it is really true that when you obey and do what the Lord asks you to do, no matter how full of holes your service is, He shows up in amazing ways.

At work we adjusted to the loss of a few of our undergrads to graduation, and the addition of some new people to cover the work. Also my boss informed us that he would be taking a year off for sabbatical and spending it mostly in Europe doing fieldwork in the cave systems of Croatia, so we started working on the details needed for that to happen. The idea behind the trip came out of some data we had been collecting on the pathway L-tyrosine takes to produce melanin in the body, and the reasons why that pathway doesn't work in our blind cavefish. (One of these days I'll be able to talk about this project in detail on the 'net. Its really very cool.)

And that was September for me.

Stopping To Catch Your Breath

I was originally hoping that this blog would be a sort of anchor for my thinking and a place for family to catch up on what I'm doing, but looking at the rate I've been writing I can only say that I must be more caught up in the speed of my life than I thought I was. If I were a married young mom, I'd understand it...having little kids leaves little time for inner reflection. But as a single person I have to admit I haven't been taking as much advantage of the amount of control I have over my daily living as I want to. How many life lessons have I missed out on simply because I've let things carry me at their own pace? How much of God's voice have I not heard just because I let the world get too loud? While there are times when its inevitable to get caught up in what's going on, I really don't believe that its wise to stay there.

So today I'm taking the opportunity to sit down and think some about all that's happened so far this year. Since Christmas I've had the joy to see my younger brother get married and attend my first real "family" get-together at their home over Easter. I've welcomed a new co-worker from China into the Jeffery Lab and lost a dear friend to sudden heart failure. I've seen my friends Adrian and Jessie welcome their third child into the world and move into a new (huge!) house. I've had friends at church get engaged and seen some lose their jobs. I've met new friends during Underground outings, seen our fledgling worship team grow in stability, started a new research project for the boss, sent off one worship pastor and welcomed a new one to Cornerstone. I've watched three undergrad students graduate, tried to start my new porch garden and joined a new softball team. There is so much I have to be thankful for, both good and sad, that I can't believe its only May. (You can see a lot of what I've been up to in the albums I've added to the blog.)

I turn 30 this June. In and of itself that's an interesting thing to think about. I always get reflective when I hit the 5's and 10's, that's probably normal. While there's a lot of things I think I could of done better, in the end I think I'm satisfied that I've made it to this age as the person I am. God has done a lot of work in me over the years, but I know He's nowhere near done yet. And as long as that is true, I can't stay satisfied with staying the person that I am at 30. So then, the question is, who do I want to be now? Where do I want to go from here? While God gives the growth, we are responsible working on the development, the self-control, the investment of time into ourselves and others. In light of the person I want to be 30 years from now, how do I walk today?

I have hopes, of course. Someday I would like to be married and starting a family of my own. I'd like to make an income that covers all the bills with a bit left over for saving and for play. It'd be great to have a house I'd like to live in for years, with a black Labrador for company and enough space for a veggie garden, a study/library, and a craft room. It'd be great to serve at the same church for at least a decade or more. And in my career I'd like to become the kind of technician that can enhance anyone's research, a specialist in doing science well and in running a lab to succeed. The funny thing is, I think I've been learning that all of those things are things that God has to give me. I can't really make any of them happen on my own. I can prepare for them, invest in the internal infrastructure my soul needs to live fruitfully during them, study to increase my toolbox for them but I can't make them happen. Its kind of like my garden. I can plant the seeds, enhance the soil, and water them everyday, but unless God says "grow", I won't get any tomatoes for my salad.

While I can't make my hopes reality, I can make the person I wish to be a reality. God may have to guide the how (because I'm really clueless about that) and He certainly will guide the events of when, but the choices I make each day are the foundation of who I will be tomorrow. They'll either be a platform I can build on or a weight pulling me down. So if I want to be a woman of wisdom, relatively good health, and joyful humor in 30 years then today I should choose to spend time with God, do a little exercise, and give something in service to somebody that makes them smile. I'll choose to challenge myself a little at work rather than sitting on my current expertise. I'll choose to not freak out over my income but work on honoring God with my money. I won't go headhunting for a guy just because I'm 30 and still single. If I faithfully do my work today, God won't leave me hanging. He's not that kind of God, after all.

The Christmas Window

Yes, I'm horribly delinquent in updating this blog. A large part of that has been due to the fact that it fell on me to rebuild the lab webpage after all, and every time I got on the internet at work I've felt guilty if I didn't work on it. The good news is that after 3 months of pounding code and visual design, we should have something up and running come early January.

More importantly, this has had much of the rest of my attention recently because I'm participating in the cast. I hereby extend my formal invitation to all of you who know me and would enjoy seeing me try to waltz in a fancy dress with 7 other couples. Cornerstone Church proudly presents "The Christmas Window"!




From the Cornerstone website:

Friday, December 18th – Sunday, December 20th at 7:00 p.m.

Please bring a non-perishable food item as the cost of admission to support those in need in our community.

Come discover Tyler, a disenchanted little boy, who is trying to rediscover the miracle of Christmas before the holiday ends. Join us in bringing this epic journey of faith to life before time runs out and Christmas is over.

There you have it! Come if you can, I promise you that there will be plenty of neat things to see and enjoy in this play. I'd be glad to see you!

July 2009 a - Pre-Otakon Chaos

Friends, family, and fellow adventurers,

Now that my week has gone up in unpredictability, I've decided that its a good time to take a break, slow down, and think. I've neglected this blog shamefully for months so it seems like a good opportunity to catch up on things. Since I've got a horrid backlog, I've created posts for each month and you can zip to them using the links below:

March 2009
April 2009
May 2009
June 2009

I may not finish this all in one go, so please be patient with me.

The continuation from June is that our newly rewritten Animal Use Protocol was due in to IACUC by July 1st, which because of the holiday became July 6th (thank goodness!). So I spent the first week of this month finishing that and trying to prepare for the undergrad summer student we decided to take on in response to a request from one of Bill's colleagues. Drake arrived on the 6th and has kept my hands full. It will be a couple more weeks before I can just tell him to do something and let him at it, since he's learning skills right now, but he's very quick and somewhat more mature than the average college senior. Unfortunately he's also been the center of a lot of drama lately regarding housing here in College Park and he may not be able to stay for the rest of the summer. There are also some difficult things going on at home for him right now so there's a certain amount of drama attached to the whole thing.

As a result I am in this interesting position of trying to be adaptively flexible and constantly available, yet still have enough energy and time conserved to complete my own projects which require attentive focus. Usually I only have to do this sort of thing a couple times a year and never in the summer so I am rather exhausted by it all. And a little frustrated, to be honest. Summer for me usually means that the demands of others goes down, so I can focus on the things I've let go in order to deal with them. Instead it looks like I'm going to have to fight it out if I want to get my stuff done. >_< My ADD is having a heyday with the current state of things. I also haven't been able to take every Friday off this summer like I planned, which is disappointing (I've been lucky to get every other one). Its hard to change the nature of the job when you are the safety net for everyone else.

On a happier note, this weekend is Otakon! Dan and Karin are coming down to attend, as usual, and I'm really looking forward to spending time with them. I also am desperately trying to finish my costume for this year and I hope I make it. I'm having to relearn how to do paper mache for the first time since I was a kid! I will post pictures.

As far as Cornerstone goes, the Creative team is starting to prep for the Fall/Winter quarters. The choir should start singing again in August which I'm really looking forward to. It looks like we are going to have a very busy holiday season if the ideas the leadership have get off the ground, and I invite everyone to attend ahead of time! I'm sure its going to be great. Our next One Night is the last Saturday in August and they are always an awesome time of worship, though I'm not sure the choir will be singing in this one. And it looks like the little worship band I've joined in Underground will be starting official activities in August too. I'm still working on my calluses and my strum rhythm but I've got some great teammates so it should be great! The class I'm currently taking on Wednesday nights is on cults and very informative, especially about Islam. I'm also trying to get the church to support my friend Bryan at a missionary to Ireland with IVCF.

It's certainly been a very full first half of summer.

May 2009 - In Which Amy Makes A Little Experimental Progress

For the first two week of May, my job was to provide support and resources for one of our collaborating scientists who visited us to do some research in our lab. Yoshiyuki Yamamoto (aka. Yamachan) worked for Bill for seven years as a post-doc before starting his own Evo-Devo lab at University College London. In my opinion, he's the world's best hand at doing lens transplantation in fish embryos. He's also very good at micromanipulation techniques like microinjection, and wrote the protocol we use in the Jeffery Lab as our standard. This year he came to do some injections of shh mRNA into surface fish for Bill with a new microinjection method he's developed, and as a result Masato and I got the opportunity to see him in action first hand.

For those of you who don't know, microinjection is a technique wherein you use a very tiny glass needle under a microscope to puncture the membrane of a cell or embryo and inject foreign material into it. It looks much like the video below when you look through the scope:

The only real difference for us is that we are injecting tiny volumes of mRNA right when the embryo first starts dividing so that we can affect genetic expression from the start. This video show cells being injected into a more mature embryo called a blastocyst. The technique itself is fascinating to learn and I will need a lot more practice to gain the dexterity to be really good at it but you can do a lot of neat experiments with it, especially in developmental biology.

The only downside to the two weeks was that since you have to inject the fish right when the cells start dividing, you have to be around when the fish start spawning. And our fish spawn during the night. I'm not a big fan of staying up all night, I never have been. I also had to pull a lot of 14 hour days at work since just because I was learning a new technique didn't mean that I got out of managerial duties the next day. I had to be in by 9am at the latest, even if I was up 'till 2 the night before, for two straight weeks. Boy was I tired and cranky at the end of it all! The third week of May was supposed to be recovery time, but I ended up being too busy prepping for the major water pipe refit the campus went under during the last week of May, and the annual review of our Animal Use protocol was due then too. Oh! And I was trying out a new staining technique on fat cells for Bill to look at before he left to spend the summer at Woods Hole.

Seriously, I need a clone of myself.

April 2009 - Battle with IACUC, Round 1

When I think about it, April might be the calmest month I've had all year. Which is actually rather funny considering that half of that calm was probably due to sheer exhaustion from the conference. I started out this month by realizing that I seriously overshot my stamina, and being unable to take more than one day off to do anything about it. The choir gave our Easter production for Palm Saturday and Sunday and it was a decent success! Not bad for my first attempt at a modern worship musical, even one that was rewritten by our drama team. The drama peeps at Cornerstone, by the way, are simply just that awesome. ^_^ From there we began the inexorable march towards our bi-annual inspection by IACUC.

IACUC, for those of you not in the know, stands for the International Animal Care and Use Committee. This committee is under the administration of the University and is responsible for seeing that all animal researchers on a campus are in compliance with the public laws on using animals in research. They are not directly under the government, however the government audits their administration of the laws to the rest of us. That means we all get inspected twice a year for any violations in the lab and get basically audited ourselves. Fortunately for me, a lot of what they worry about are things that we do already simply because its better for our fish that way. So aside from some bookkeeping every year, this sort of thing isn't that big a deal for us. Usually.

This year started out like all the others and our inspection went smoothly. I did find it a little difficult to talk to the new head vet (he is very much an A-type personality), but we didn't have any major violations and I was left to try and get everyone's training records up to date. Its hard work convincing people that they need to prove they've had a tetanus shot, especially when half of your staff are students and the other half are internationals. The first group usually doesn't know how to ask for their vaccination records, and the second group has all their records in their home country! Needless to say, I made progress but didn't finish this by the time April ended.

I also spent a lot of time (between computer forms) setting up fish for Bill and his Developmental Biology lab. His teaching assistant for that class is my friend Skye Lesnick, who's a grad student. Skye was running the labs, trying to care for the fish, and becoming a first-time dad all at once this month! He's always a little hyper, as he has ADHD, and generally more bouncy than me but it was exaggerated a bit more than usual either due to exhaustion or happiness, I couldn't really tell. ~_^ Just as we finished up that portion of the lab for Bill, I had to begin prepping for Yamachan's visit in May. Bill asked him to come over from England to teach Masato (and me, if I wanted) a new method of microinjecting fish embryos that didn't require us to remove the chorion (or shell) around them. He was also doing some experiments for Bill, so I spent a week running around buying and collecting supplies. You don't want to waste someone's time when they are only going to be in lab for a short period.

Thankfully, Mum was kind enough to come visit and cook for me for a few weeks starting the last week of April, and I'm really glad she did because I was dead meat. Moms are really awesome like that. I finally started catching up on sleep and laughter while she was here, and the neat thing is that it just so happened that she was here in time to see me become a member at Cornerstone. It was really awesome to have a family member there for that, I wasn't expecting that to happen at all. God has a neat way of giving us just the things we need to keep us going when we're working hard, have you noticed? I have to keep reminding myself of that so I don't complain out of reflex.

March 2009 - Attack of the Scientific Conference

For me, the month of March was dominated by two main events: the first, the prep and packing required for the scientific conference Bill was to head for the world's cavefish researchers down in Mexico, and the second, my own preparation as a choir member for the Easter program and my church membership class. It just turned out that all of these things came about in the same month and it took an amazing amount of work. For the first two weeks I went to class and struggled with the baptism of the Holy Spirit as a necessary part of every Christian's walk (I'm still not 100% on board, but Cornerstone took me anyways) and learning the alto part for the Easter musical. I ordered banners and T-shirts designed by Spela for the conference, did laundry, packed luggage, and did as much paperwork ahead of time as possible. Since everything was right up to the deadline, it was rather nerve-wracking though more for Spela than for me, since I was just too busy to worry much. But by March 12, we had everything together and relatively in order and apart from Ben (the lab tech from Daphne Soares' lab) losing his passport to the driver's seat of his car, we had no trouble flying in to Tampico, Mexico.

From there we picked up our rental cars and drove 3 hours inland the hacienda-turned-hotel/health spa Hotel Taninul. Our lab arrived about 2 days before the conference began to set up the conference room and confirm all our arrangements with the hotel. Spela was invaluable as our only Spanish speaker, and aside from the fact that we had to bring our own projection equipment the conference room was clean and spacious. We had some tropical rain but that just served to keep the bugs and heat in check.



On Sunday, our conference guests and fellow organizers began to arrive en masse. We set up a table at the hotel entrance with badges and welcome packets for everyone and I spent most of the day at the table welcoming people as Spela worked as a translator at the hotel desk. We had a few mix-ups on rooms and the hotel has been doing so very well that we were not the only group to visit in large quantities at the time but in the end most everyone was confortably settled. I was constantly reminded of how difficult it is to not be able to speak Spanish as many of the other guests came up to ask us what we were there for. The ones that did speak English were really interesting to talk to and full of questions. I met two high school girls who loved Friends and Seinfeld, and was told by an older retired gentleman that I wasn't getting paid enough for the number of years I've been in the lab! That felt good to hear from him, even if I know that the budget this year will not allow for pay raises.

My primary function for the three days of the conference was to run the whole technical side of things, so for 3 days I was up early and rushing through meals to set up the projector, load presentations onto my laptop, and get everything in order for the conference talks. As a result I actually attended every talk given and learned a lot, even if most of it was over my head and I was braindead at the end of the day. I also directed people to various locations, offered first aid supplies, worked with the hotel electricians to find a way to run projector and computer without tripping the fuses, and generally did whatever I could to make things go smoothly. It was a LOT more work than I thought it would be and I had no problems falling asleep at night.





Of course 3 days of non-stop scientific jargon is hard for anyone to handle, no matter how advanced you are in the field. So we didn't just spend our time talking, we also had coffee breaks where we made new acquaintances, spend the evenings by the sulfur pools talking, swimming, and (for most of the attendees) drinking. Its kind of an odd thing that community among science people is done with alcohol involved somehow. I am fortunate that I have health problems that allow me to not participate in a socially acceptable way. We also had an afternoon off from presentations to visit the small number of local sites. The British contingent unfortunately had car trouble, but I think they made it to the Choy river eventually. Since the hotel has finally installed wireless internet access, almost every member of the conference ended up online at some point or another. Scientists are worse than teenagers about being online nowadays, in my opinion.













I used my afternoon to finally go visit the ruins of the Huasteca Indians that are located about half an hour away from Hotel Taninul. I know very little about them other than I was told that they are one of the oldest Indian tribes in Mexico and to this day call themselves "people of the fields". Their ancient ruins consist of elevated platforms made of thousands of small, smooth rocks, perhaps constructed to allow their cities (when they built them) to survive plain floods. The site we visited was well cared for and even had a few slabs of stone carvings that it looks like they are working to restore. I wish them the best of luck, because it looks like that art is carved in the indigenous limestone, which is very soft compared to other kinds of rock.







Once the sessions finished on the third day, we ended the conference with a last dinner together with Mexican food traditional to the Huasteca area. Very yummy. We also showed our appreciation to the organizers of the whole show by giving them gifts, applause, and a good ribbing. Megan and Katarina bought Bill a belt made out of a snake (he hates snakes, I discovered) and signed by everyone who attended the conference. He may not like snakes, but he was a good enough sport to wear it for the rest of the night. Overall the conference was a great success and hopefully over the next few years more and more people will become interested in cavefish as a model organism in the lab.







At this point, most of the participants began to make their way back home to whichever country they were from. About half stayed for the bonus day, which was a field trip to Pachon cave where most of our fish in the Jeffery Lab come from. I did drive folks up to the town of Pachon (my first time driving in Mexico!) and we all arrived safely and un-arrested by county border police. ^_^ We then split into two groups of about 10 people. My group first went to a cave up the road that was easy to walk into and quite impressive. That ended up being a brilliant idea because so many of our conference people have never been in a cave before, and this one was quite majestic.









We returned to the town of Pachon and had lunch while we waited for the other group to return from visiting Pachon cave. Once they were back, it was time to put on some more serious caving gear and hike the short distance to the cave entrance. Pachon cave is actually rather spacious and straightforward, and the only climbing you have to do is through the rock pile at the entrance.





Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the inside of the cave to post here because just as we reached the pool in the back, we heard a voice yelling at us to get out like NOW! It turns out that this past year, the local government has been blasting in that mountain range looking for limestone quarries during the afternoons. While not close enough to cause anything like a cave collapse, the blasts were powerful enough to regularly break the glass windows in the village and possible cause the rocks at the entrance to shift. The members of the second team found this out over their lunch and ran to warn us, so we had to leave the cave in a hurry.

The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful until we tried to get back to D.C. from Houston. The plane we were in experienced problems with the landing gear dropping out of their bay about 30 minutes after we took off, and caused us to drop a bit in the air. Since the pilots couldn't get them to retract, they decided to fly back to the airport and make an emergency landing. They did a fantastic job, and aside from being nervous because I've never been in a faulty airplane before, I felt perfectly safe. They had fire trucks on the runway just in case the landing gear collapsed as we touched down, but we were fine.





I really appreciate all the prayers many of you offered for me and for this trip to be successful. I truly believe that they were the reason that I never got sick, overly-stressed, or anxious the whole time I was in Mexico. Out of all the trips I've been on down there, this was the best I've had. I finally got a chance to feel like I truly belonged in the scientific community even as a technician, and that I was able to serve above and beyond the range of people I thought I could. I was even able to talk to older women in science, and got a chance to do a little talking about how faith and science might mix. And I also discovered that there are people older than me who still get all excited over interesting bugs or animals at the drop of a hat. I knew I would never outgrow that, so I feel much less of an oddball! ^_^ Thanks to this conference, I also feel much better about my right to be in Biology.





The bug, by the way, is a bona fide stinkbug. ~_^

A Short Update From Mexico

Greetings all! Here's the last 2 weeks in pictures.

For the last month my desk has looked like

(and trust me I felt like this too) as the lab has prepped to attend



So currently I'm surrounded by 40


who are all here to talk about
. Its been very informative for the half of the material I've been able to understand. Not a bad first scientific conference!

In other news, my second wisdom tooth may be coming in. Woot.

Vacation Ate My Brain

Hey guys!

I may not write all that often here, but I'm glad to find out that this site is serving another purpose other than helping me organize my thoughts...a place for old friends to find me. Hi Jonathan, you rock for tracking Tim and I down after all these years, and without Facebook too! ^_^

So here's the update on life as it currently stands. Fair warning, there's a LOT going on right now. First off, vacation was great! I did spend a fair amount of it in doctors' offices getting pills, tests, and shots, but I'm all set for Mexico now and at least this way I had something to do. I say that because I was about one month early for shopping for plants at the local nurseries, and I didn't go shopping because I was trying to be good. I did play a few hours of video games, but not as much as I thought I would, and I didn't finish up my computer cleaning because the project is just too vast. It'll take me a year, seriously! (Dang it for downloading all those ebooks and game remixes!) I did clean out my attic and move back downstairs, so my loft is ready for crafting/playing whatever, and I did pull out a few more of the toy figures I own to display. But all in all, that was it. By the time two weeks were up I was longing for my regular work routine but dreading the work itself.

I did go on Retreat with the Underground to a cabin up in the mountains, where most of us went skiing or sledding and the rest of us ate food and played Egyptian Ratscrew. Very entertaining. If you want to see pictures, they're up on the Underground Facebook page. I'm just posting this video here because it makes me laugh my head off. (Sorry D!) Its stuff like this that makes a group of people into friends, ya know?

Speaking of church, guess what's responsible for eating up a lot of time and brainpower at the moment! *laugh* I'm in the Membership Class for Cornerstone this semester of Life Pathways and we are currently going through the general doctrinal statement of the Assembly of God denomination. We have just hit...(you guessed it!)...baptism into the Holy Spirit, and the initial physical manifestations thereof! The poor Calvinist in me is sooooo confused. Quite apart from the question of whether I agree with their point of view, I just plain don't understand it! I knew that this issue was going to pop up at some point when I decided to make Cornerstone my church home, but I put off wrestling with it until this class when I could talk to people about it. So, now is the time. My first assignment for myself is to pull out my Strongs and go through the Bible, studying the role of the Holy Spirit throughout Scripture. Then I'm going to buy the book Pastor Mark recommended, read it, and make my own conclusions. Hopefully in time for me to have a class period still available to ask questions. Fortunately it doesn't sound like you have to agree with every little point to be a member of Cornerstone, so I doubt this is going to be a problem for anyone other than me and I'll settle it soon enough.

This week the Choir starts practicing for our Easter production, complete with music and 4-part harmony. We have a book to read for Choir too, one that Pastor Travis says has strongly influenced the way he does things personally. Well, we don't have to read it, but I asked for it when he first came on staff last year and I'm only half done, so I need to finish it. You'll be getting a review on it soon enough, I'm sure. Add to that the Life Journal I'm learning to use and this new lady Bible scholar who spoke a very good word to us on Sunday and I'm eager to read more of, and I've got a VERY full study plate. Its like being back with the Bible profs at GCC!

Which leads me to post a list of books I'm currently reading or will be reading soon, depending on when I receive them in the mail. I will be taking a fair number of these with me to Mexico, I'm thinking.

• The Life Journal, created by Wayne Cordeiro
• Surprised by the Power of the Spirit, by John Deere
• Anonymous, by Alicia Britt Chole
• Holy Discontent, by Bill Hybels
• At the Bench & At the Helm: A Laboratory Navagator by Kathy Barker
• Marketing & Selling Your Handmade Jewelry, by Viki Lareau
• The Physics of Baseball, by Dr. Robert K. Adair
• various garden books and magazines

Obviously the jewelry and gardening books aren't directly related to church, but it is thanks to Cornerstone that I'm thinking about selling my stuff at all. I would like to do what I can (without making it a second job) to reduce my credit card bill and start making a little more headway in savings. Its really bothering me right now that I'm going to have a number of expenses this year that I can't really absorb into my current income/savings, and I've decided that if God gives the go ahead (and there are plenty of roadblocks to overcome so it will be pretty obvious if He does) I'm going to try out my craft designs at Bowiefest this year in June. Talk about a little freaky!! I basically was thinking about it all during my vacation.

I mentioned Mexico just a minute ago, so I'll explain. This year, my lab is hosting the first ever Astyanax International Meeting for a number of astyanax researchers around the world down in Taninul, Mexico. Taninul is the "hotel" we use as a base camp when we go caving down there. It's pretty nice as far as Mexican hotels go, but it is in the tropical flatlands so there's no Internet, no phone coverage, not a whole lot of technical amenities like the hotels up here, and you may wake up to find a scorpion on the floor or a toilet that overflows (the pipes are pretty old). But the people are polite and kind, and as long as you're not expecting a tourist town (it stands alone in the country, the nearest town is 35 minutes away), its a nice place. I'm starting to think that Bill enjoys quiet, isolated places like this. The Marine station in Roscoff, France is much the same, except for the ghosts.

Anyways, through a number of interesting events the planning and prep for this whole conference has fallen squarely on the shoulders of the boss, myself, and Spela, who is the only one of us who speaks any Spanish. I'm responsible for supplies, technology, contact management, and purchasing, she's been doing the shirts, hotel arrangements, and transportation, and Bill is working on the abstracts, presentations, and general arrangements. I'm excited to attend as this will be my first real scientific conference, but I'm also going to be glad when its all over. The irony of event planning, I know. In the meantime, just because we're hosting a conference doesn't mean that work is off. Bill's got a lot of experiments planned for me to do over the next couple of months as we attempt to start doing work with results again. And in April we're due for the annual fun with DES and IACUC, always a part of my year I look forward to. (Karin, its like May and June for you. Woot.)

So that's what's going on, and what I'll be up to. I do hope to surface enough to be social over the next few months. After all, Spring Training has started and I have to inflict you all with my baseball/softball obsession, just to be consistant you know. ~_^

Let notice here be served, that I, Amy Parkhurst, am finally taking my Christmas vacation and will be MIA from the internet for two glorious weeks! I will visit my doctors and see my family. I will clean up my attic and finally put away my Christmas tree. I will plan my porch veggie garden, attempt to clean up my computer files, and after I've been a good girl and done all the things I need to do, I will play hours of video games to make up for what I haven't been doing the last 3 months! *cheers*

Unless the weather forbids, I will have to go into work for one late evening to teach the kids how to do in vitro fertilzation of the fish, but that's unavoidable due to the schedule of the semester and in reality no tech can get off scott free for 2 weeks without some sort of compromise. -_-

As for what I've been doing up to this point, besides working, I had an excellent visit with Karin and Jessie 2 weeks ago! We had a lot of fun mall trolling and all of us ended up with at least one purchase, shoes in my case. We were debating about having a cheesecake at Cheesecake Factory, but at some point we decided to take pity on Adrian who was watching the girls at home alone for the first time and brought some home instead. He did very well for his first time, I think. And Jessie sounds like she's ready to push for some non-kid personal time herself, so I feel free to kidnap her more often now. I've been laying off until she herself was ready for it. The weekend ended up being so successful that we girls are looking to plan another one sometime soon, maybe up closer to Karin's place this time. Anyone know what's fun to do between Bowie and Phillie?

Last weekend the Cornerstone Worship Choir gave its first "performance" for One Night and the Sunday morning services. I'm rather enjoying this! We had practice for 3 hours on Saturday and then sang the actual service for 1.5, which barely left me with a voice for Sunday morning but it was worth it. I did, however, use up most of my honey drinking cups of tea trying to sooth the vocal cords. I need to sing a LOT more in the car between One Nights, I think. Like PT said, things are just starting out and we'll probably be working the kinks out for months, but the feeling of singing harmony with a group of good singers to just create this fullness of sound, it's unparalleled! And definately one of my favorite parts of worship. We'll be starting work on the actual Easter production soon, so with Life Pathways classes starting up this week I am going to be seriously busy. ^_^

As I'm writing this update, I'm currently hanging out on a couch at my brother's place. He's still asleep at the moment, but he really worked hard this week so I'm not going to bother him. I had dinner over at his girlfriend's place last night and wouldn't you know it, she and I both like hanging candlebra on our walls! I really like her taste in interior decorating, it feels fashionable but comfy. I'm afraid I put a large dent in the jigsaw puzzle the two of them are working on, I hope they don't mind. I'm just really good at that sort of thing. ^_^; She'll be coming over today to watch West Virginia play basketball, which will be fun. I always like watching sports with people who enjoy it. I'll go to church with them tomorrow morning (Tim's back on Worship Team, which is awesome!) and then Tim will have theology class at 3pm so I'll drive back up to Bowie to make the Underground Superbowl Party at 5:30. I don't know who I'm going to root for, though I'd root against the Steelers just because Adrian is so avid in his support for them.

And that's it for now! I'll write about the saga of the Astyanax Meeting next time, I don't want to worry about it on vacation.

I am alive (mostly)!!

I apologize to those of you who have not yet received my Christmas letter. Working over the holidays while actually having a holiday has made it difficult to find time to use the internet, and so all of your addresses and Facebook notes have not been sorted through yet at this time. I am happy to report that so far I am having a much better January than usual. Despite the normal trouble with the lack of sun and cold, Cornerstone and my friends have been keeping me busy so I've had no time to go off and mope by myself. Worship choir has officially started for the year, Karin is going to come shopping with Jessie and I, the Ravens and the Steelers play each other this Sunday, the Inauguration is coming, the New Membership class starts in two weeks, and the Underground go on retreat in three. I am most happily exhausted.

Its also getting to be around that time for me to think about training for softball. My small stint of scrubbing fish tanks lately has me convinced that my stamina needs a serious boost. Unfortunately I'm a totally wuss when it comes to running outdoors and I have no money for a gym membership, so I'm trying to get creative. Anyone have any bright ideas out there?

The coworkers are slowly returning to the US after spending the holidays overseas. Masato came back very cheerful for a man with jetlag from Japan and 3 weeks of caring for the kids all by himself over there. I take it that the family was doing well. Spela should be flying in today, so hopefully we will see her tomorrow. Bill made a short jaunt to Woods Hole, but for the most part has been in the area working on something related to papers, presentations, or the conference we're hosting in March down in Mexico. Its just about time to go visit the bats again! :D

I myself am hoping to take my actual holiday vacation during the first two weeks of February. In typical Parkhurst fashion I'll be spending this week making doctor appointments for that time. Gotta get it done sometime. I also need to go see my dentist and talk about my wisdom teeth. I may have to get them pulled sooner rather than later, no matter how much I think I'd rather keep them.

I've started posting some of the backup of poems I've had on my computer, take some time to peruse them if you like poetry. And the latest flash of Armchair Theology is also below. I've been trying to get them up for a month now, despite the holiday chaos. I hope you enjoy them!

~Amy

Whooof!!

(That's the sound of someone collapsing on a moderately stuffed sofa, BTW.) So! Since my last update so much has happened that I honestly want a 3-day nap session. Visiting family is wonderful but exhausting. I can see why if you don't live with them every day you tend to just stay for a week or so and then want another vacation when you get home. There's a major tendency to pack too much into that short period of time because you know you won't have them around for very long, and at the end of it you're like "Ugh, I love you but go home already". ^_^ Sound familiar to anyone else out there?

Mum arrived safely and was a great sport about me working while she was here. We balanced things rather well by having one day of activity followed by a day of mostly loafing. She got thru it all with a smile, for which I'm really glad. I ate better than I usually do and we discovered that (of course) a major part of why my digestive system kicks me in the spleen is because my diet is singularly lacking in veggies and fresh fruits. I knew I was a horrid cook, but I didn't think it was that bad. At this rate I'm going to have to end up planning my meals for a change. *shivers* Tim came up for a weekend to visit my shiny new Assembly of God church and wasn't freaked, which I took to be a compliment on my choice of worship homes. We all had lots of great conversation too, and I got really tired of talking. (Just imagine! *laugh*)

Once Gen made it in to town we headed down to spend a few days with Tim and his roomies, which was a lot of fun. At first it was "Oh, only 4-5 of my friends will show up." Ha! We ended up with at least 15 fun-loving people who kept me up past midnight and introduced Mum and Gen to the Wii. That was a total hoot! Wii Sports might actually be something they could play together without Mum feeling too awful and Gen hurting her shoulder too much. Seriously, I want one now. *drools* But a new TV comes first. On Sunday we visited Tim's church and headed up to Jos. A Banks to get Tim a grand new business suit. Its kinda cool that I've got a bro who actually has an excuse to shop there. Tim the businessman! ^_^

Then on Monday (Nov. 17) we ladies cooked up a traditional Meleagris gallopa meal for the masses while Tim was at work, complete with Gen's special stuffing and plenty of pie. I remembered all over again why I stay out of the kitchen when those two are cooking and totally stuffed myself. Then on Tuesday before they left, they insisted that I set up my apartment for Christmas since I'd already had Thanksgiving. *laugh* Hard to argue that one, so I'm already in the Christmas mode, which is probably a good thing considering how long it takes me to get Christmas cards out the door. ;-p I'm just not saying it too loudly around Jessie since she insists that the Christmas season can't start until after her birthday on December 2.

Once my family got safely home, my work life decided to riot. This time around it isn't anything I feel I can't handle, just things that are a pain to deal with. One of our -80F freezers went down and we scrambled to find other places to store all our crude. The upside of this is that Bill decided to help me clean out all that crude and so our inventory is considerably lightened as of this afternoon. (His printer is still on the fritz and won't behave anywhere near predictably, of course.) As a result of all the cleaning I now have 5 bags worth of stuff to autoclave and dispose of, and 3-4 days of boxes/glassware/random implements of scientific investigation to wash and dry. Coupled with the usual holiday fishcare, I'm drowning in chores around here. Oh well!

I'm hoping that even though I'll have to work thru the holiday season and care for other people's stuff while they travel that I won't get too grumpy while doing it. I usually end up taking my time off in February once everyone gets back, but that's a long time to work while not everyone else is. Even the most well-meaning of folks can get grumpy doing that, I know, so I won't beat myself up too much about it. And I certainly have plenty of holiday stuff to do between cards and shopping and visits and such. I'm determined not to miss anything just because I'm scrubbing fish tanks, and to enjoy Christmas as much as I can. It is one of my most favorite times of year after all.

Other things that make me happy are planning a day to hang out with Jessie and Karin, doing the traditional shopping trip with Laura Linehan in a couple weekends, hanging with the Linehan/Leydorf crew for Thanksgiving (and eating more Meleagris gallopa), the release of a new Kingdom Hearts game in a week, and the fact that Moyashimon the manga will be released by Del Rey next year! If you ever wondered if its possible to write an interesting story around microbes that doesn't involve murder, oh yes it is. ^_^

Its November and that means the holiday season has officially begun (for me anyways)!

It has been busy busy busy the past few weeks! I'll do my best to give the highlights, but I may leave something out. To start with, work has been consistently motoring along since the 3rd week of October. I was doing one ascidian experiment a week for Bill until last week when he laid down the law and said "Finish counting those tastebuds NOW!" Heh. So, I did. And rather handily too, just in time for my mom to come out from California to visit my brother and I for 2 weeks or so. Unfortunately, the tastebuds didn't end on a good note despite my great efforts. The numbers look rather wierd on the F2 group, but its Bill's headache for now. He may ask me to go back and do more, he may not. I'm waiting around to see. But its probably back to ascidian work for the forseeable future.

In other lab news we're probably going to have a surprise Chemical Safety inspection sooner rather than later and that means I have to find time to clean out a fume hood and do inventory on all our stuff. Woot.

For Halloween I was press-ganged by some of the older ladies in the church into service for Cornerstone's annual Harvest Festival. It actually was a lot of fun working with them serving drinks, popcorn, and hot dogs to all the families that came for the night. I think we had over 1500 people attend. Its quite something. The Underground (20-somethings) group had a Masquerade party the Sunday before and we all dressed up. Pastor David and Renae pulled off Shaggy and Velma, it was awesome! We also had a geshia, a gangster, a sumo wrestler, Evil Red Riding Hood (complete with wolf head in basket and knife), and a #1 Guana Soccer Fan. I saw Michael Jackson's Thriller for the first time in my life, and was moderately amused. (All I could think of was watching Captain EO at Disneyland, that and the Moonwalker video game was my sole exposure to Michael Jackson as a kid.)



Jessie came over for a visit with her youngest kid, Lindsey (who now crawls over everything) just before Adrian's birthday to get advice on buying a PS2. We had a great time chatting and now Adrian is happily working his way through FFX. ^_^ Also I started prep work for distributing some of the wire jewelry I've been learning to make to the general public. A lot of the ladies at church like the wire ear bangle I discovered at Otacon, so I've learned how to make those now. If I actually do start selling anything, the design name of course is going to be "Amy's Oddiments". After all why mess with a good name?

As I mentioned earlier, my mum is out visiting me for the next couple of weeks and I am just thrilled about it! This is kind of her present for Tim and I this year, since neither of us can make it home for Christmas. This weekend, Tim drove up and spent Saturday and Sunday with us, and we all talked until the wee hours about everything. Boy am I tired!! I always forget that visiting family can take it out of you, especially if you haven't seen each other in person for a while. Tim is working hard and has been taking this neat theology class that he really is getting into. Through our conversations this weekend it was interesting to see just how different the two of us are. We are good for each other, we each have to learn how to listen and talk to a person different from ourselves. And since we're siblings, we can't give up on learning, especially because we are all the family each of us has out here in Maryland.

There are other things going on at church and such that I'll post about in a bit, but they all are making me think so I don't want to talk about them as news. For those of you who write back and forth with me, be prepared to see the semi-annual Update Your Address email from me soon. Its about time for the yearly Struggle of the Christmas Cards. ^_^ Later!

This was Daniel's comment about the debate last night, and I am highly amused!

Its been a full two weeks since I last posted, and I can't remember all the details to put them here, but I will fill you in on some of the more memorable things I've been up to. First off, Bill has me working once again on staining adult ascidian tissue with antibodies to see if we can stain some of the nerves. This is a "project" that we've been working on for about a year now, and things come in bits and pieces. The procedure takes me 3 days. Right now, I'm working on the third day of the second run of this experiment, and since Day 3 is full of washes I can't really do anything else but focus on the samples and goof off in the 15 minute bits in between. A full day of 15 minute bits can be tiring. Anyways we're hoping to get some good photos out of this run.

We had a breeding week last week where the fish actually spawned well, but for whatever reason no one used any of the embryos. *argh* Its weird how people complain and then don't plan for the results when I do something about it. Our color printer died and is in the shop. I'm buying a second one for Bill so he has something to work with if this happens again, and bothering the repair guys until we get it back (they've had it over a week now). As a result I've also cleaned up and sorted out the computer room: I'm still in the middle of deposing our old equipment that piled up over time, but it looks so much better now. And so much more managable. And we've started the planning for the Astyanax meeting we're hosting in March down in Mexico. I might have to build a webpage, I'm kind of hoping not though. I don't have the coding experience to set up a secure service for collecting registration payments over the web. *meep!*

Cornerstone is gearing up for the first part of its busy Holiday season with sign-ups for Harvest Festival. I'm seriously thinking of helping out there since its on a Friday night. Underground (that's the new name for the 20-Somethings group) is going to a corn maze this Saturday and hosting a Masquerade party in two Sundays from now. *grin* Actually PD has been calling me "White Mage" ever since he found my Otakon pictures. I'm highly amused! ^_^ I'm also giving rides to church to Miss Virginia who lives in the Senior Apartments not too far from my place, and my Reaching Outward class just finished this past Wednesday night. Next week I'm going to join the Financial Freedom class I think.

So between all that and work, I've been keeping myself pretty busy. I was coming down with a cold last weekend, but I think I drowned it out in the 14 cups of green tea I consumed over those 2 days. As a surprise on me I think I've been having caffeine headaches this week. Not really sure though. And is anyone else having a hard time getting up in the morning without the sun?! I'm not depressed, but I'm sure sluggish in the mornings. Wow.

Blogspot's a little slow this morning, I don't know why.

Well the latest news on the home front is that my glasses have now faded to the point where I am physically having trouble: dry eyes, headaches, no depth perception, stomach problems, sleep problems, etc. The situation has not deteriorated anywhere near the point I hit about 2-3 years ago with this fortunately, and my backups are already mailed to my father in CA where he will take them to the Irlen clinic and get them to boost the tint back up. I'm still safe driving and work is still possible (though more difficult of course), but why did my glasses have to go while I'm trying to finish my tastebud counts?! Its already hard enough looking through a microscope for 3+ hours in a row. *pbbbt*

Last night Danny, Luke, Kendrick and I went out to dinner/dessert to celebrate Kendrick traveling to Germany tomorrow. He's going as part of an Intervarsity outreach program there and I'm happy to say he reached his funding goals so he can go sooner rather than later. I'm really looking forward to what the Lord is going to do over there through him and how he's going to grow. He's been waiting a long time for this opportunity. 'Course we're all going to miss him horribly, but right now I'm just feeling more excited than bummed. Knock 'em dead, General! ^_^

My big bay window has started leaking again and this time Chris and I are serious about getting it fixed for good, so it looks like an adventure is beginning. I don't know how long its going to take before the problem is finally solved, but I'm getting really tired of having water dripping on my desk and computer. Ah household problems.

I uploaded some new pictures on Photobucket from the Mexico caving trip this past March so I can share some of the trip with everyone. Sorry its so late.


This is the team that went down to central Mexico in front of the hotel we used as our base. From the left front is Masato, me, Dan from American University and Spela. Behind Masato is Ed, Jon, Megan, Katarina, my boss Bill, and Jack. Ed, Masato, and Spela are my labmates and none of us have much if any caving experience. Everyone else are fellow collaborators and cavers from the Caving and Drinking Club Bill is a member of here in D.C. and they are all very experienced in difficult cave climbs and rescues. They all research some cave animal or insect. But most of all, they are all a lot of fun!


This here is a cavefish in its natural habitat. I forget which cave this is from at the moment, unfortunately. Being blind, these fish are naturally attracted to disturbances in the water which usually for them means that something they can eat has dropped in. They come investigating on their own, which makes them a lot easier to catch then their surface cousins. Ah, the best bait we've found so far for either fish is fresh corn tortillas. ^_^


This is Dan, Megan, and Katarina working with cavefish in one of the caves we visited. Our goal this trip was not to bring any fish back to the US with us, but rather to take fin clips to extract DNA from when we got home. Kat and Megan are part of a project working on dating the age of the earth from the different points of view of several science disciplines. Their part of it is to construct a molecular clock using the divergence of the various cavefish in Mexico from the surface fish ancestors as a base. But to do that, we needed a lot more DNA samples from a lot more caves than we had available here in the US, hence the need for a trip.


This pic is probably going to scare my parents (sorry!) but here's me in a cave. I didn't go down very far into this one since we had a couple of other amateurs with us at the time and I didn't want to slow the team down even more. The ladder is one of several ways you can descend into a cave, but is usually the one that requires the least equipment and so is the easiest for newbies to use. The drop was only about 20 feet so it wasn't that high at all. I stayed up at the top lip and took pictures. Or rather, Dan took this one of me. ^_^ He's threatening to make a caver out of me yet. I'm fine with that as long as he doesn't mind that I'm timid when I don't have experience with something. I get over it soon enough.

Let the fight for balance begin!! Ha!

Well in the usual predictable fashion, the week before I take a vacation is shaping up to be totally out of proportion as far as stuff to get done goes. Masato's wife has given birth to their second child, catching him totally off-guard (even though all of us were warning him that yes, if the baby has already dropped there's no way she's going to wait until the 18th to be born!) and the rest of us scrambling to catch his work load. As a result I did get to meet a new friend and colleague by the name of Joanna who is just starting out on an Astyanax research project for her masters, but it made yesterday very interesting. Today looks to be no exception. Even if I weren't trying to leave for a week, I'd be up to my ears in stuff marked "to be done ASAP!!!!" And the fish system sprang a leak yesterday, and its a breeding week, and this and that and you get the idea.

I'm actually surprised that I'm not spazzing out yet. This could be due to the frappicinos I've been consuming everyday (a method I don't resort to unless things are dire), or to some measure of grace I wasn't expecting. I plan to make use of it whichever it is. I certainly need all the help I can get. Come Friday I'm fully looking forward to sleeping through my weekend and watching mass quantities of Murder She Wrote. Nothing like a little murder mystery to take your mind of things. ^_~

I have an older neighbor by the name of Ms. Dorothy who lives on the bottom floor of my condo unit. She's 92, and I talk to her on and off whenever I'm home during the day. She's really sweet. Sadly about a week ago she suffered a minor stroke and is currently in rehab. I know her children to a certain extent and am watching her apartment for them until Ms. Dorothy recovers, since I live right there. I got to talking to her son-in-law Lee this weekend when he came to pick up her mail, and almost the first thing he said about her was that she's really worried about being a burden to her kids, because her body is getting old and not working as well as it used to. I've heard her mention this before, and you know, it struck me as kind of sad that she feels that way so strongly.

Its not that I don't understand why she might. After all, as an adult with children, she's been supporting herself and them for the majority of her life, and the idea of losing that independence probably really bothers her. It sure bothered my grandfather. I guess when you are a parent, its really hard to switch out of provider mode. Its part of what makes you a parent after all. I also understand that a lot of older people feel like they don't want to "hold their kids back" by "inconveniencing" them or placing a financial burden on them. For my generation, by the time our parents start to need some extra help we're having kids of our own to take care of, and our parents probably sympathize with how hard that can be. But now that my own parents are getting older, and most of my grandparents have passed on, I really think that by keeping us at a distance from their "weakness" and needs, older people are doing us a disservice.

Think about it. For most of us, growing up was a time where we were pretty self-centered. We had to be, since we were still figuring out who that self was. Once we graduated into the working world and started our careers, we tended to be self-centered because laying the foundations for standing on our own takes a lot of time and effort. If we got married, about the time we felt comfortable with our living patterns, most of us started having kids. And young kids take a lot of our time. Then comes the teenage years, the mid-life crisis, the college fund, and the weddings. Really, if older people try to keep us out of their lives for our "own good", what reason would we ever have to think outside of ourselves? What chance would we have to give back to those who've invested so much in us? And what opportunity would we have to interact with them and benefit from their own life experiences? Its a real tragedy to allow ourselves to push away our older folk, or let them do the same "for our own good", it really is.

I've lived my own life up 'till this point with the view that it is an honor to reach old age. So many people never get that opportunity. In my family, thankfully I've had plenty of examples of the value older people have, and what riches they can bring to the lives of others just by being "old". After all, God willing I myself will be old one day, I benefit no one if I deny that or the changes in my body and mind it will bring. I can't forget that no matter how "independent" I get I still need and depend on other people. I can't forget that the whole point of becoming "independent" is so that I have something to give other people. I can't forget that this life is hard, and my strength alone won't help me live it. Humanity itself is a social organism, and if you take away an aspect of that society the whole being suffers for its loss.

At the same time that I write this, my aunt is struggling to take care of her own mother who suffers from dementia and probably Alzheimer's. Her mom is very messed up, very angry and unfortunately abusive. Its probably easier for me to see some of the good things that have come out of my aunt's faithful care of her mom than it is for her, because I'm 3000 miles away and don't deal with it every day. But even her mom's life is adding value to my aunt's and through her, to mine. Without her mom having trouble like this, my mum and I would never of talked about what we would do if something like this happens to her. We still talk about it, because there are no easy answers. But the one answer we have come up with is to promise each other that Mum is not to feel bad about needing me should the case arise. We will work through it together. I haven't had the same convo with my dad and step-mom yet, but its probably coming. And sooner or later I'm going to have to talk to my brothers about it too. But at least I know that getting old is not something we should be afraid of, for ourselves or for our parents. Just like they walked through our childhood with us, we get to walk through old age with them. And we'll all be stronger for it, because we won't be alone.