Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Hike Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Amount of Hike Completed: All 3.5 miles!
Temperature: low 60s
Wavelengths Present: Nola, Kathy, Kristyn

Today is a freaking awesome day. If every day was like this, I would have no problem getting up at 6:03 am.

As usual, per a Wednesday, the morning began with a hike. Seeing as I was a little late for the 6:45 arrival time, I jogged from my car to the entrance area. Admittedly this was not the best idea, as I was exhausted by the time I reached the entrance - who knew Stanford Ave was a gradual incline? Once we got started hiking, I realized how hard the jogging is going to be on me. With two days of rest, I had no problem jogging again Monday morning; one day of rest between Monday and Wednesday, however, didn't seem like enough. I pushed through the pain, though and made sure that we only took one pause during the whole hike. I also decided that today, I'd try to run 2/2 intervals; that is, run the length of two markers and then walk the length of two markers. While I definitely did not do this the entire hike, I think I made progress in lengthening the time I spend running. What's slowing me down, though, is the pace of the walk that I take after running - it's kind of slooooooow. I'll have to work on that; it might help to have a recording of Alissa's voice in my ear pushing me to go faster.

The first good thing of the day happened during the hike. Kathy was able to identify the source of a problem she had been having in lab, a problem she had been plagued with for a few days. What can I say, the Dish gives you clarity!

As we were walking down the hill near the Gerona gate, Nola, Kristyn, and I ran to reach the bottom. Kristyn and I were giving suggestions to Kathy as to how to go about fixing the issue with her program will jogging along. All of the sudden, in a blur of grey & burnt orange, Kristyn sprinted past Nola and I. She sprinted so fast that her keys came falling out of her pocket! We were all in a fit of laughter as we reached the bottom of the hill and started our way up the last big hill of the hike. As we were trudging along, two women coming the opposite direction 'chastised' us for having too much fun. I 'apologized'. They thanked us for brightening their day, and we walked on.

When I got home from the hike, I took a lovely warm shower and then settled into my devotional. Today was a particularly good day, devotional-wise. I hate to admit this, but I kind of suck at reading the Bible by myself. I much prefer the small group Bible study; usually, other people have much more insight into the deeper meanings of each passage, or their day-to-day applications. My contributions in small group can be summed up as follows: "This caught my eye (insert verse). I don't know why. It's just interesting. Yeah, that's all I can say about that." It's rarely helpful to propelling further discussion on the matter. But boy, do I soak up the little tidbits of insight and wisdom from my peers. Today, however, I was in the zone. I felt like I found a way that the passage applied to my life, and it really spoke truth to my life. I spent a good portion of my time journaling about ways this passage has affected my life. Since I'm in the Psalms, I used the passage as a model for my prayer for the day. I wish every devotional could be like today's.

Things aren't just good at home though; things have also been falling into place at lab. There's only about a week left with my undergrad in lab. I've felt a little bit guilty because things haven't been working out exactly as I had planned for the summer - but to be honest, when do things EVER go as we've planned? To be honest, I felt like I failed him as a mentor. I shouldn't have felt that way. After all, there's no way for me to control whether or not experiments will work out; if I could, I would have graduated a long time ago! All that changed today, however. We got our sequences back for the construct we had been trying to clone all summer ... and we have positive clones! Five of them to be exact. Tying up the remainder of work he has to do during the summer should be pretty straight forward. When my boss stopped by lab to do her daily walk through, I got to share the good news with her; she smiled (a rarity), and said that I'd gotten a great amount of work done with Danny this summer.

Later on today, I was warming up my lunch - leftovers from the progressive dinner this weekend - and the excitement of the day caught up with me. Me being me, I jumped around a bit and did a little dance in the empty hallway. At least, I thought the hallway was empty; I turned around and was face to face with one of our post-docs. He gave a chuckle and said, in his slightly broken English "You excited." I blushed and nodded. And then I continued to dance.

That brings me about to now. But the awesome-ness of this day has just begun. I've got minimal experiments to do today. Then, I get to go shopping with Jasmine for food for IV. Then, I potentially get to grab some new music to listen to. Then, I get to clean my room (go ahead, make fun of me ... but cleaning is how I clear my head!). Then, it's off to the airport to pick up one of my best friends from undergrad.

I hope you all are blessed with as awesome a day as I have been!