one more miracle

Just for the record, this is what has stolen me away for the past month:



Those are my beautiful Mainz boys, Lewis and André, who are talented and tiny and perfect and the hugest BFFs. *sighs and chinhands* (Lewis is the one that's allergic to clothes <333) Sadly they're BOTH leaving my team next year, and they're not even going to the same place, so that's a little bit heartbreaking. But I love them, and I love them for bringing such a perfect year to my team, and I will continue to love them wherever their paths may take them.

I just wanted to share their cute little bromance with you. You're welcome. :D

Life is mildly crazy right now. I went from being only in charge of my own self to being responsible for training two new students in the lab! *flails hands* The high schooler is doing great - I've had her a couple weeks and she's really caught on fast, she's a sharp cookie. She also just graduated so technically not a high schooler, but still never worked in a lab! I'm very impressed. The other one is weirdly more tough; even though he's an MD-PhD student who knows his shit, I'm teaching him something he's never done and I've only done two YEARS ago, so we're kind of the blind leading the blind, oops. Also my boss isn't around right now and it's tough to figure out exactly what he wants when he's not, you know, here. So that's an adventure. Luckily he's a good humored dude with a sharp tongue and we spend half our time cracking up, so I think we'll at least have fun while we're mucking about.

Josh came over last night (Sunday) even though he had had a long tiring weekend with his family - I told him he didn't have to and he told me not to be silly. :3 We just cuddled and watched Serenity (his first time!!!) and it was amazing. \o/ That movie still makes me gasp and cry, it is my favorite in the whole wide 'verse. He really enjoyed it too, I am happy to report. :D Even though I sent him home at a reasonable hour I didn't get much sleep and was basically a zombie today, oops, and since he's a princess who needs 8 hours of beauty sleep he probably was worse off. But you know what? 100% worth it. And I may or may not be seeing him again tomorrow. (Can't stay away, omg.)

As for the OTHER man in my life - my daddy, hee - we just made plans to go out for a daddy-daughter dinner on Thursday! \o/ I'm treating him for Father's Day of course, and since it's Restaurant Week I get to REALLY treat him, yay. I don't know if I ever mentioned it here but my dad moved here last fall to live with his brother (lost job, lost house... yet he's happier than he's been in a long time) and it's amazing to have him around all the time. I love my daddy ever so!

Err that's it! Just trying to get back into this regular posting nonsense. And also trying to get back into the rhythm of flist reading! It feels really good to dip my toes back into your lives again! I'm really looking forward to rejoining this community, as much as I can. ♥

So one of my New Year's resolutions is to try to reconnect with LJ. I'll probably fail miserably, but I genuinely miss both the community and the amazing record of my life LJ was for such a long time, so I'd really like to get back into the swing of it. Twitter is a serious hindrance, and I have a whole other social life there, but I'm going to try my hardest. If you DO have Twitter though, please do follow me - I'm exsequar there too and always reachable. :) It's not at all about soccer/football anymore, I made a separate account, so if you're worried about that, please don't be! I'd love to talk to you. ♥

Starting small, I'm just going to make a Life post about my week and stuff! So on Tuesday I completed a reasonably large hurdle of my PhD program - the second year seminar. It's kind of a warm up for our candidacy exams but felt pretty huge on its own. Basically I had to make a 20 minute presentation on my research, presenting to people outside of my lab for the first time. This meant that I had to very clearly introduce the material for people unfamiliar with my field, present and justify my hypothesis, and present what data I have that supports that hypothesis before, as well as providing a coherent plan for my research moving forwards. I also felt I had to be very very comfortable with the literature because I could get ANY questions afterward. What this basically meant was that I spent 4 days with my family for Christmas, then immediately began spending 10-12 hours in lab every day, reading papers and putting together my presentation, as well as getting that last crucial piece of data. I bought a lot of frozen food and essentially lived in my lab. But it paid off, because my presentation went great! My actual slides ended up really pretty - including a model I built from scratch using Adobe Illustrator because all the old ones my lab uses are so ugly - and my labmates and boss helped me construct a clear, coherent narrative so it felt fluent and comfortable. Then I got a really great set of questions and was able to easily answer them all, with bonus references to the literature because I had spent all that time reading! I got lots of positive feedback afterward, and my dad even got to see it and was very proud. I'm so relieved to have it done, but I'm also really proud of how well it went. It was the first time I felt maybe I could really do this thing - that is, be a grownup. Not necessarily a scientist, but a grownup. It's a step in the right direction. ;)

I then spent the rest of this week turning that presentation into a poster to give at a conference this weekend in Chicago! It's a very busy week, yes it is. It's the same conference that I went to last year and I really enjoyed it then, so I'm happy to be going again, I look forward to it. I also get to meet up with some darling fangirls tomorrow night so I'm excited. :D After all of this whirlwind, then it's just back to the normal grindstone of lab research. Doing all of this work on making my project clear to others has made it clearer to ME too though, so I hope that I'll feel a bit more confident in my research as I move forwards.

Also super exciting is THE BUNDESLIGA STARTS BACK UP TOMORROW!!!!! *giddy wriggling* That's the German football league for the majority of you out there who are totally lost. :P It's been on hiatus since before Christmas and I have been DYING of boredom. I mean, it was good timing because I wouldn't have been half as focused on my work if it hadn't been on break, but now it's coming BACK and I couldn't be more excited. :DDD I get my beautiful baby Lewis and my badass Basti and hopefully both Mainz and Bayern kicking ass and taking names. I can't help it, I love Mainz, sorry to my Bayern girls out there. At this point I just want both of them to do really well. It's kind of inevitable that Bayern will end up in at least second, so I don't feel bad for rooting for Mainz to do the best they very can. At this point I would like to register a prediction for the end of the season, and we'll see how far off I am: Borussia Dortmund, Bayern Munich, Bayer Leverkusen, Schalke 05, Mainz. That would put Mainz in the Europa League next year, which would be a fantastic achievement for my little baby club. ♥ (And little Lewis has been hinting that he'd like to stay in Mainz for another year... oh please please pleeeease let it happen, football gods!)

In hilarious fandom-sports related news (yes that was a totally valid segue), Johnny Weir is coming to my Borders for a book signing. Lol. Lololol. I'm tempted to go just for the lolz but I should really be at work at that time, so I probably won't. Oh Johnny. Maybe I'll feel the force of his sparkling from my lab.

Speaking of sparkling, OMG THIS T-SHIRT. Dear My Chemical Cupcakes, ILU. (Danger Days is still, like, the best album ever. Well, after Three Cheers. But OMG SO GOOD.)

Last night I saw I Love You Phillip Morris!! I've been wanting to see this ever since I heard it was being made like three years ago. EWAN MCGREGOR!!!!! Ugh, he was so precious and wonderful, all blonde and earnest and Texan and sweet and I WANTED TO PUT HIM IN MY POCKET. I mean, Jim Carrey was great too, and it was a really good film, funny and weird and poignant and tragic. I enjoyed it a whole lot. But mostly EWAN!!! I now want to watch every single film he's done again. Yes even The Pillow Book. Ewannnnnnn. I miss him. *draws pink sparkly hearts*

I should probably pack for Chicago.... so I'll leave you with that. It felt really good to write an LJ post again, I'm not gonna lie, so hopefully I'll start being able to keep it up. Tell me what's up with you, darlings!

MICHIGAN MEN'S SOCCER ARE THE 2010 BIG TEN CHAMPIONS!!!


That's the Saad brothers in front! They are SO HAPPY about each other's existence, oh my goodness. ♥___♥

I tear up every time I think about how happy they were. SO MUCH HAPPINESS. I watched the game on TV with my dad, uncle, and roomie Emily, and what a game it was!! Michigan absolutely burst out of the gate with an early Soony Saad goal (who else?!), Justin Meram struck twice in the first half with absolutely gorgeous goals, and Hamoody Saad nailed a penalty near the end to seal a 4-1 victory. That's the highest scoreline EVER in a Big Ten final! Glorious soccer, all around, and I COULD NOT BE MORE PROUD. The soccer program here is only 11 years old, and the same man who started it, Steve Burns, is still their coach, so this is just the most fantastic reward for all his years of hard work.

ALL HAIL TO THE VICTORS VALIANT! :D :D :D

It's so amazing that the one sport I decided to follow at my new Big Ten school goes ahead and wins their conference immediately. Hahaha. Fantastic. ♥ I just wish I had seen more games this season! I will see ALL THE GAMES next season to make up for it. \o/

ONTO THE NCAA TOURNEY! I hope they do really well!

And just to cap off all the amazingness, I have just discovered that tomorrow the team will be at a pub watching the NCAA draw on TV, and FANS ARE INVITED TO HANG OUT. Um. Ummmm. You guys, this is like getting into a brand new TV fandom and suddenly discovering you can go hang out with the cast. WHAT IS BREATHING OMG. I'm obviously going to go because I would KICK myself if I didn't, but I'm terrified that I'll be super duper awkward. It's a bunch of undergrad boys! I am not an undergrad boy! IDK IDK. But I really hope to get to chat with Soony Saad, he seems like such a lovely guy and he's just so talented and I want to ask him about how he started following Liverpool and sdkjljskdf I'M REALLY EXCITED OKAY.

Also this weekend, Bayern finally won decisively, my roomie had a fun birthday party last night, and I got no work done! All in all it was delightful times!

Things!

THOSE MY CHEMICAL ROMANTICS ARE AT IT AGAIN!!!! I'm really kind of overwhelmed by how much I LOVE this, and how it's completely new and wacky and different and yet still so THOROUGHLY them. This band has changed so, so much since they made Black Parade, and I love that they've landed on this sound that stays true to their roots while blazing ahead into ridiculous, wonderful POST-APOCALYPTIC COMIC BOOK LAND. Did you see their hair?!???? The clothes??? The ray guns and the GRANT MORRISON and the dude in the roller skates and the helmets and the Mikey Way cheekbones?? EVERYTHING IS AMAZING. And the song bit is getting stuck in my head! I NEED THIS ALBUM LIKE OXYGEN. DO IN FACT NEEDS. Come to meeeeeeee musical geniuses of my heaaaaart! Ugh ♥

In OTHER news (I know nothing could possibly be that important!) this week has sort of... vanished without me noticing? I'm at a weird point in my research, one I don't particularly love, but I'm also no longer in crisis mode, so that's nice. (*ruthlessly squashes remaining qualms*) I've been trying to write a paper for my boss - a "research plan" for the next 12 months - and having a reeeeally hard time with it. Hopefully I'll be able to make serious progress tomorrow.

One VERY exciting thing that happened this week is that I FINALLY GOT A SMART PHONE!!! I know I am so behind the curve, but I had this adorable little LG flip phone with Verizon that was solid and functional and reliable and pretty much did everything I needed a PHONE to do. However, when the iPhone 4 came out, I was like ".....oooh. Do want." And started thinking about what my life would be like with a smart phone. Since then there have been more and more occasions where I've been like DAMMIT WHY DO I NOT HAVE A SMART PHONE (the worst of which was getting stupidly lost in Chicago on my way to Stargate Creation Con with musictoyourlips, sigh sigh), and so I finally decided to get one. But I did NOT get the iPhone 4, for various reasons, the biggest being not wanting to switch to AT&T. Instead I got... the DROID INCREDIBLE. And, you know, it is pretty incredible! I'm still learning how to use it, but I'm discovering new features every day, and overcoming frustrations, and pretttty much I love it. I also got this fucking sweet case for it, all red and black and sexay. His name is Bastian, of course! :D



So YAY for finally joining the 21st century, lolol. If anyone has the Incredible or Android in general and has any tips/warnings/apps I should download, please do speak up!

Still completely obsessed with fußball, nothing's changed there! Bayern has been frustrating but I still love them to pieces. The scoreless draw with Werder last week was beyond annoying - we should have played so much better than that. Lucky to come away with a draw, honestly. Then the CHAMPIONS LEAGUE started!!! I have a fantasy team in a league run by friends, and I was so excited to get the ball rolling. I took a couple serious knocks to my fantasy team - found out Drogba is suspended so had to transfer him, and then Berbatov wasn't even on the BENCH for ManUtd (a massive mistake, as they ended up 0-0 against the RANGERS, thanks a lot FERGUSON) but my defense did beautifully (thank you Bayern and Real bbs!) and all in all it was such a fun time to follow all the games on my beyootiful new phone! :D Bayern looked so much better against Roma, at least in the second half, and finally, on an exquisite, jaw dropping goal by our very own Thomas Müller, we broke through and ended with a deserved 2-0 victory. Yay Bayern! \o/ TOMORROW we play against KÖLN, aka Lukas Podolski's team. I hope it won't be super frustrating with Köln just sitting back on their heels. I hope instead it will be exciting and goal-filled and Lukas and Basti will make out hug at some point. Hey, a girl can dream! :D

Tonight was the dedication of a brand new soccer stadium here at UMich, so my roomie and I went to the inaugural men's soccer game! (There was a women's game earlier, but we couldn't make it. We're disappointed because it was a 5-0 trouncing by our girls! Go Michigan!) The game was 0-0 but the experience was so worth it. It was weird being among undergrads and community members and kids and all kinds of different ages, not just grad students! Some undergrads seriously make me want to punch them in the face, but over all it was a really cool experience. Reasonably good energy from the crowd, team is pretty decent, and it was awesome to see soccer up close and personal after watching it on my laptop for these past months. We'll definitely be going back to more games - especially since it's free for students! Go Wolverines!

This weekend I plan to 1) watch soccer, 2) write my paper, and 3) go to the Renaissance Faire with my cousins! Yay!

How are you, my darlings? Have you recovered consciousness after the shock of new MCR amazingness???

Yesterday was pretttttty fantastic, and I'm going to tell you why!

1. I woke up epically, ridiculously sore. Like, difficult to lift myself out of bed sore. That's not the fantastic part! The fantastic part is that I'm sore because of indoor soccer and every time I think of that it makes me smile. :D
   
2. SCIENCE!!!!1!!!1!11 Science totally WORKED for me yesterday, and I got this awesome amazing result that will guide my project into truly exciting directions. I am such a nerd but this was SO happy-making. I've been feeling a little blah on the science front lately so this was a highly welcome kick in the pants. It also means I get to start doing new and exciting experiment types, which is great cause I was bored of what I was doing before! YAY SCIENCE! I had a great brainstorming session with Jason (my boss) and we have sooo many ideas. *twirls!*
   
3. DIE NATIONALMANNSCHAFT! In the past few days, this amazing book has come to light called Die Spieler which is literally 200 enormous glossy pages of photographs of MY BOYS dressed up as old 40s crime drama film characters. SERIOUSLY. THERE ARE HATS AND SUITS AND OLD MERCEDES AND PIANOS AND CAKES AND PILLOW FIGHTS AND POOLS! STRIPPING IN POOLS! Um. They might have deviated from the crime theme a little bit in favor of NAKED WET FOOTBALLERS, but I am seriously not complaining. Unffffffff. One bit that should be delightful to any girl with a beating heart is the following clip, in which Mario says "Wow wow wowwww!" about Basti and Basti declares that "This is fashion!" Yes in English!
   
   
   ♥♥♥♥
   The only thing that sucks is that I WANT THAT BOOK SO BADLY but it is $55 with shipping from Germany. :((( I may cave yet...
   
4. Relatedly, all of my girls at loewsmiserables! (The fan community for the German national team.) Even though the World Cup is over, the fandom rages on with so much life and laughter and delight! I have made three posts there with over 100 comments of giddy glee and gifs and awesomeness. I love that place and I love our boys. <3333 It's really cool to feel so involved in a fandom - it's been a while!
   
5. Also relatedly, my #Ger girls on Twitter! I posted on Loews asking if people wanted a Twitter support group during the World Cup about 3 weeks ago, and what resulted was this super awesome group of girls with whom I have exchanged literally THOUSANDS of Tweets. It's been a blast. I love you guys. ♥
   
6. And the best for last... I went on a date last night! :D

So I already told the story about how a barista at my favorite coffee shop offered me his number but I ended up giving mine his later and blah complicated silliness! Well, we have been on two (~three?) dates since then! :D He (Matt) called me last week and asked if I wanted to go to dinner and a movie, and so we did, and it was quite nice. We saw Winter's Bone, the Sundance festival winner - a very stark and gorgeous film, I highly recommend it. Then we got dinner and drinks and capped off the night with a stroll by the river where we hung out on a bench at 2 AM! It was quite a lovely date, but I must admit that I wasn't feeling a zing - there were a couple things about him that rubbed me the wrong way, so I was having my doubts. But then yesterday he texted me and asked if I wanted to go out for dinner, and of course I wanted to give him a second chance so I said sure, and suggested this noodle bar next to his coffee shop that he loooves but that I hadn't been to yet. So I go to the restaurant and he's not there - turns out he locked his keys in his car, WITH THE CAR RUNNING, and is waiting for AAA. *facepalm* Lolz. He was only a couple blocks away so I walked there, laughed at him, and we hung out on the grass for a while waiting for the AAA dude. It was a beautiful summer evening so I didn't really mind! Then we went to dinner, and then to my house for a bit where I gave him my Empires and Gold Motel CDs because he's totally into little indie bands and I want him to LOOOVE them, and also my Dollhouse DVDs, aaaand everything was lovely! I think we were both a lot more relaxed this time and everything was just sweet and fun and he really makes me laugh a lot. I'm definitely, definitely fond and will be seeing more of him!

Now I can tell you a lot of the reasons he's awesome, since this appears to be continuing. So he's a super experienced barista at my favorite coffee shop, which = free coffee and also he's a coffee nerd, which I find AWESOME. He got his degree in "general studies" at UMich after transferring from a couple places, and that included mostly English but also Womens Studies (!!!!) and a bunch of other random stuff. He's from a tiny town in upstate Michigan. He loves Firefly and Arrested Development and knows way too much about way too many indie bands (though he's not TOO pretentious about it). He's good friends with most of the people in the local music scene. He rooted for Germany in the World Cup (mostly because his boss is German, but still!). He smokes quite a bit of pot but is smart about it, haha. He wants to get his MFA in POETRY. I just. How is he real! I looove that he's a nerd so we speak the same language, but he's a totally different KIND of nerd than I'm used to. It's extremely refreshing to spend time with someone who isn't a scientist!

SOOOOO that's my life right now, in a rather long winded nutshell! Soccer = awesome, science = awesome, fangirls = awesome, German fussballers = awesome, and new boy = awesome.

\o/