one more miracle

Oh my god. *________* Best celebrity tweet I've gotten in ages. LIEBGOTT LOVES NIX, YOU GUYS. Heeee!

Tumblr is really obnoxiously addicting and I kiiind of wish I hadn't joined? BUT THERE'S SO MUCH PRETTY! I started following too many people though, and people reblog each other a lot so things get redundant, and AHHH TAKING OVER. So not okay. BUT. PRETTY. Also there's a lot of love out there for one Jacob Pitts which makes me everso happy. <3

It's also a really interesting venue in which to stretch my Photoshop muscles - I really, really love working on larger canvases, layering images and colors, so that's a whole lot of fun. I just made something I sort of love a whole lot, so I thought I'd pop over here and share it with Livejournal, my first and TRUE love. ♥


(Click for hi-res)

My first idea was just to layer two of the pretty parachute shots on one another, but then I came across the picture with the flames and went hmmmm... so I threw that on top and LOVED it. So I tweaked and textured and I'm really happy with the outcome. Paratroopers! ♥ Do let me know what you think! :)

Today I have been beyond unspeakably exhausted. It was really unpleasant actually. I barely made it alive through lab meeting. Note to self: GO TO BED instead of fucking around on the internet. This is an ongoing problem and my life would be MUCH BETTER if I actually managed to go to bed at a human hour instead of delaying it all the time. My average bedtime is 2 AM, and I wake up at 7 AM. Not really all that healthy! If you see me on Twitter at a stupid hour, yell at me? :)

Anyway, after lab we went out for drinks at happy hour to celebrate one dude getting a postdoc, one paper getting published, and the arrival of two new members of the lab (including me! :)). I hung around for a while and chatted, but did I mention I was tired? So I bowed out a little early and went to Borders, which was VERY fruitful. I bought Eugene Sledge's widely lauded book, With the Old Breed. From what newredshoes has said while reading it, I know this book is going to get me right in my heart. I'm both thrilled and a little nervous. (I still haven't watched last night's episode of The Pacific, so please don't spoil me!)

I also bought GUY GAVRIEL KAY'S NEW BOOK!!! :DDDD I've been following his blog a bit during the publishing process and EEE I am so excited. The summary looks intriguing and fascinating, as always. I CAN'T WAIT. I love him sfm. ♥

I just finished watching Pretty Persuasion, a movie with a crazy-recognizable cast in general, but I watched for RON LIVINGSTON and STARK BUNKER SANDS. Heeee. Overall, it's a weird, funny but disquieting film. Not the greatest thing I've ever seen, but entertaining. It helps that the star is Evan Rachel Woods, and she plays fucked up so well. (She was hands down one of my favorite things about True Blood season 2, which, incidentally, I finished but didn't post about. Oops?)

Sadly, Ron and Stark didn't interact at all, so we're left only with this:


Literally the only time they're on screen together. Whatever, FEEL THE AWESOME.

Because I thought this might be relevant to some peoples' interests, I have a few more caps of Stark as Beverly Hills prep school kid and Ron as nerdy/creeper prep school teacher! ( I approve of your life decisions, Stark Bunker and RLiv )

You're welcome. :P

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.