one more miracle

Thank you crediniaeth for the adorable Peep bunny virtual gift!! I am nomming on it happily. :D You are so sweet! <33333

I just finished watching the Buffy series finale (well, last two episodes) (for, to clarify, the 80 billionth time). So many tears!!! ;___; Willow's transformation is still one of the most striking images I have ever seen. "Oh. My. Goddess." SRSLY TEARS. But man, my Buffy/Angel OTP heart still beats so. fucking. hard. When he appears and her face is just glowing and they kiss all sexy and beautiful and just kind of gaze at each other for a while? sldkfjlksdjf my heart grows like 20 sizes. And then I rewind and rewatch and it grows ANOTHER 20 sizes. Seriously, I love them with alllll of me. ♥___♥ The cookie dough speech is so ridic but also so lovely, sigh. I love themmm. I also love Faith and her mountain of issues, and how Robin starts to help her through them with a bit of tough love, they're very much great together. And Giles and Xander and Dawn and Spiiiiike and Anya and Andrew and LITTLE FELICIA DAY and everyone! Man, I kind of really really love this show. Still #1 in my book.

Also tonight, I received a most spontaneous invite from Francisco to go to the movies with him and Steffen and Kate, and I was very excited about this! Because I have been home and quarantined and sad and unsocial. So we went to see How to Train Your Dragon in 3D, an animated film from Dreamworks. It was very, very adorable, and included a lot of awesome dragons. It was kind of extremely weird in that the human characters were supposed to be Vikings, but the adults had Scottish accents while the children were American (seriously? um) so I had to seriously handwave that, but a major benefit of the Scottish thing is that CRAIG FERGUSON IS ONE OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS. I had no idea and I totally called it during the movie! I looooove him ridiculous amounts. <3 So yes, another fun, lovely movie from those wacky animation folks!

Then I kind of really wanted to have some time with Francisco and watch either Inglourious Basterds or Band of Brothers, both of which we've been wanting to do for a while. But a girl in our program had organized a night out at a bar, and both Francisco and Steffen wanted to go, so I said okay. We went to the bar, I couldn't even drink cause I'm on penicillin, and we just kind of hung out for a while. It was nice enough, but I just don't feel super duper comfortable in that friends group, at least not like I can let go and totally be myself. And without any alcohol at all, that was kind of accentuated. So I stuck around for about an hour and a half, but eventually I just left. I was kind of over it. It was one of those unfortunate cases of feeling kind of lonely in a crowd. I don't know if Francisco's uncomfortable around me right now or what, because of the whole lab issue thing, and it's all just kind of awkward. One way or another, things will be resolved on Tuesday (Francisco and I are both meeting with Jason separately), and I'm kind of scared.

I am currently listening to Backstreet Boys thanks to yet another video of Marines dancing and being ridic. I think this is my favorite find of the whole day (thanks to wordsalone!):



And I'll leave you with that. ♥

And the verdict's in: I have strep throat. /o\ At least it's treatable?

I knew it felt like strep... it's been so many years since I felt that horrible, clawing pain, but it was unfortunately familiar. Now I just hope none of my roommates get it or my coworkers, since I struggled my way through a full work day yesterday. Oops :-/ At least it's near the end of the week. I'm only missing two classes and I think our tech can finish my ongoing experiment tomorrow. Does mean I have to move back my meeting with Jason... sigh.

Oh and do you want to know the cherry on top? Today, while I was curled up in a miserable ball at the clinic, I GOT MY PERIOD. Ahahahahahwhat. Body, what the fuck did I do to YOU? Oh, started exercising again? Well wah wah! Big baby. >:( F. M. L.

I hope you are all having much better Thursdays than me. Though I am using my newfound free time to watch Life, Southland, and old episodes of Dollhouse (Topher and Adelle all drugged up! Priceless!). Also, the throat lozenges and tea and ibuprofen have conspired to make me feel a lot better than I did this morning, so I was even able to drive to the pharmacy to get my penicillin, and now I'm eating chocolate without wanting to claw my throat out. \o/ It's the little things in life, you know?

In NEWS OF AWESOMENESS, I have almost-concrete plans to go back to Dublin! YAAAAAY! With Cary and Emily, two of my American friends from my year in Dublin! YAAAAAAAAAAY!

*does the boogie dance of I'm-going-back-to-Dublin-YAY* You WISH you could see this dance!

For all newcomers to this here corner of the internet (I'm so sorry to the vets! At least I haven't rambled about Dublin in the recent past?), a brief recap: from 2007-08, I spent 9 months studying abroad at Trinity College Dublin, studying chemistry/biochemistry. I lived in a posh apartment in downtown Dublin, met dozens of wonderful Irish folks who became literally some of my best friends in the world, met 4 American girls who formed a very close pod of awesomeness and with whom I still keep in touch almost daily, had more life experiences than I have in my other 20 years of life combined, and kinda-sorta-maybe fell a little bit in love... with the city, with a boy, with the person I discovered inside myself when I was there. The before and after photos of my soul would be striking - Before Dublin (B.D.) I was withdrawn, shy, lonely, and wracked by self-consciousness and self-doubt, but After Dublin (A.D.) I was confident, assertive, bold, and happy. I emerged a different person, complete with a whole new passel of friends who accepted me completely for who I was. They still keep me going on a day-to-day basis.

I cannot say enough about the transformative and joyful nature of that experience. I have said loads in the past - if you are at all curious, my "dublin" tag has all the dirty details (including the sordid accounts of eleven ~encounters with Irish boys. Mm hmmmmm ;) My first kiss was from a red-headed Irish boy in a pub while drunk on Guinness during my first week in Dublin - top THAT) and my "dublin - missing" tag has all the nostalgia and reflection. I have often gone back and read those entries in order to recapture even just a fraction of the joy I felt while writing them.

SO ANYWAY, I went back to Dublin last May, and it was everything I remembered and more. I've resolved to make Dublin returns an annual thing whenever possible, a biannual (as in, every other year) thing when not. This year, I was going to try to go with the 4 American girls mentioned above. Unfortunately, a couple people have fallen through, but it looks like 3 of us are going to be able to go at the same time! We'll only overlap a couple days, but they'll be a GREAT couple of days (I haven't seen these girls since August 2008!!!) and then I will stay about a week longer to see my Irish loves (most of them are still there doing PhDs, Masters, or working). It is the MOST EXCITING EVER and I am practically vibrating out of my skin with anticipation.

THE CAVEAT: This plan hinges pretty sharply on whether or not Jason accepts me into his lab. If he does, I am 95% certain that he will totally okay this plan and everything will move ahead smoothly. If he does not, the problem is twofold: I will have to work hard to find another advisor I want to work with, and also I have absolutely no way of knowing if that person would be amenable to me taking a week off to fly to Europe during my rotation.

SO. In short. I am so fucking nervous about Jason's decision I could puke. The ramifications go FAR FAR beyond my trip to Dublin. If Jason accepts me, I will have a wonderful graduate experience and get to do science I am truly excited about. If he doesn't - I honestly don't have a clear alternative at the moment. FML.

I just emailed Jason about setting up a meeting. It's likely the meeting will occur within the next week or two.

Everyone cross all of your appendages, pray to whatever deities you believe in, and send good vibes my way, will you? ♥

I'm a little >:( facey at the world right now. Not for any real reason, just minor school stress. We have an exam on Thursday, which I haven't studied....um, at all for, and it's probably going to be really hard, and fml. Then I also am supposed to have something written for my group project by Thursday, buuuut idk if that's going to happen, given the aforementioned test. I should have done both things this Sunday, but I was like OMG A DAY OF REST THANK GOD and just watched True Blood and Life Unexpected. /o\

Speaking of True Blood, THAT HORRIBLY TRAGIC THING THAT YOU WERE ALL TRYING TO AVOID MENTIONING JUST HAPPENED and I am all ;___; and >:((( because HBO WHY YOU GOTTA PLAY ME LIKE THAT?

I just had a fun discussion about tattoos with my two Adorable Co-workers (one is a fellow grad student (I shall call him G), and really quite hot, and also funny and friendly and ugh stop being so cute! the other is the Cute Undergrad whose cheeks I always want to pinch - I shall call him M). G showed me and M the outline of his new tattoo that he just got all over his calf - it's a really cool design with all these things from ~SCIENCE~ all intertwined, like the DNA double helix, chromosomes, nucleosomes (the organizational substructure of DNA), all this really neat stuff in a very cool artsy way. It's completely nerdy and COMPLETELY AWESOME. M adorably asked me and G what the pain is like with a tattoo. I showed him mine ('think happy thoughts' on my ankle), which turned out to be a bad idea because ugh my skin is so dry and I haven't shaved in forever. /o\ But he was sweet about it.

It's nice having two cute boys around, you know? :D Yesterday, the first thing M asked me was "Did you see the Pacific?!" This is the boy who borrowed my Bill and Babe book and told me that he really likes Doc Roe's accent. SIGH TINY CHILD WHY SO TINY. :P He hasn't seen TP yet (can we call it that? typing out The Pacific every time is tiresome, but I don't want to call it toilet paper /o\) but he's real excited to, bless him.

Now I need to study. I woke up today feeling about as animated as a sack of rocks - combination of bed too late and somehow waking up in the wrong part of my cycle, PLUS daylight savings time. Means that it's going to be real hard to get work done today, which suuuucks. /o\ FML, seriously. Meh, I bring it on myself.

Happy Tuesday, ladies and gents. ♥

I had an awesome time seeing my two college best friends this past weekend. I spent Thursday night and Friday with Rob - we went into Philly Friday, saw Under the Sea in IMAX at the Franklin Institute (I REALLY wanted to see the Body exhibit, but tickets were almost $30, WTF, and we didn't really have enough time to justify that kind of money), had lunch at the Reading Terminal Market, and wandered around. We met up with MICHELLLLLLE, my lover, and took her out for dinner at an awesome Mexican place. Then Rob went back home and I spent Friday night and Saturday with Michellllle. Our time consisted entirely of: being in pajamas, ordering in Thai and pizza, and watching the entirety of Band of Brothers (well, eps 4-10 since she'd seen 1-3). IT WAS GLORIOUS. Michelle is my most favorite person in the world, and being with her is actually more relaxing than having time to myself, which is kind of the only person I can say that about. And now she's finally seen all of BoB! And knows just how completely Nix and Winters are married! Yay! It was fun. I still cry at the very last bit: "But I served in a company of heroes." ALKDJFLKSJD WINTERS. ;____♥

Anywhoodle, that was grate and I am very glad I got the chance to see pretty much everyone I know on the East coast, including dozens of high school teachers and college profs, and my parents of course. Good times, good times.

Now I am back at the grindstone and it's mostly okay. Just got an unexpected deadline dropped on my shoulders in lab and I'm a little freaked out because I'm really really not sure I can generate the results in time, but um. Deep breaths, it will be okay.

What I really wanted to post about though was a piece of potentially quite bad news I got today. My dearest darling Francisco, one of my two best friends here at Michigan, is currently rotating in a lab that he thought he was going to join. However, the professor has been offered and has accepted a job at the Scripps Institute in Florida. And here's the kicker - he's thinking about going with her.

I was seriously devastated when I heard this news. I mean - he's my Francisco. Over the past few months, he has quickly become someone very near and dear to my heart. He and Steffen have become my little support network, the people around whom I can truly be myself. And the thought of losing Francisco makes my heart ache in a very real way. I don't know if it will actually happen, and believe me I am doing my very best to suggest alternatives to him, and to make enormous sad eyes at him to guilt him into staying. The thing is, he really doesn't want to move to Florida - his family's in Chicago, he's already started to find a home here, etc. But he feels like there's no other lab for him in our program. I have to believe that isn't true, but the other lab he might like to join is Jason's, aka the one I have my heart set on, and Jason only has so many funds, and a lot of students interested........ yeah, it's kind of a problem.

I'm really really worried about this. My heart literally goes all clenchy and my eyes get hot and teary if I think about it at all, and I just. I can't deal with the thought of losing him. I'm not going to examine those emotions too closely right now - I just know I need to try my best to keep him here. Because he belongs with us.