All good things (like spring break) must come to an end

Me and my sister's dogs, isn't Spencer (the black and white one) so chubbo? It's so cute!

Ryan and his speeding ticket.

Rainbow welcoming us back to the bay area!

Wednesday I had lab meeting, followed by a talk with Gill. He didn't seem particularly happy with my progress, and was a bit worried about finishing over the next two weeks (at which point I should be switching over to the Batzoglou lab). I spoke with Russ the next day who suggested that I should just go ahead and begin working with Serafim sooner, which Gill agreed was right as well. So I will still be meeting with Serafim next week, and jump right into the work! I will also only be taking one class. It just seems right to do it that way.

On Wednesday night we went to dinner with Tiffany, the accepted student from Duke. She was out here for a Google scholarship weekend. She is still deciding between Harvard Systems Biology and our program. They are so different I am quite surprised that she is struggling. She said many people she knew were going to be in Boston, so I am wondering if that is weighing heavily on her decision. This seems like it should only indicate that there is something pretty important that continue to draw her toward Stanford. We will see! I hope she just goes with her gut in the end, but as I mentioned before, I think it's pretty important to go with the choice that leads to fewer distractions, although having distractions would likely make you more immune to these.

On Thursday night we went to dinner for our friend Hye Jin's birthday (I've known her since 6th grade) and also got to see another friend since back then, Hannah! She just started school in the bay area as well (everyone comes here eventually)! We went to this Iraqi place called Yaya's, and basically got the waiter's number for Beth, and left hers for him as well. He called while we went out afterwards! He seems like a total sweetheart! He's from Sonoma! He put up with our antics pretty nicely.

Friday was Julie Schnitzer's going away party! I'm particularly sad that she is leaving. She was the very first person I met when I got here at the beginning of the year, and she took the time to sit down and show me how the Marguerite worked, and what the best way was to get to the bookstore. She was also telling me how she lived in San Diego and just made me feel completely at home and happy! She's not moving terribly far but it will be sad not seeing her on a daily basis! She claims she will be around so I hope to get to see her at times :)

Mark Musen made a funny!

As usual there was food and wine available there, but there was so much left, and the uncorked wine cannot be taken away, so it is given to the grad students (of course). Amar Das pointed out we had a great life at BMI! We have free food and wine, constantly, showers in the bathrooms, couches, desks, a plasma TV, what more could we ask for?! We lead pretty cushy grad lives! So naturally we took the leftover food, and I ate it (at the right, I'm serving the tray to my fellow BMIer Kaustubh Supekar). The best part was when Rosalind Ravasio brought the wine bottles over to David, Genaro and myself. How could we let the lovely wines go to waste?! Besides, what better way to make students productive than by bribing them with food, wine, and televisions :).

David with the booty!

Ryan and I went up to the city that evening for a dinner with Julie's sister who is in town (I called her MiniFitt and her friend Megan, MiniFittFriend-Jule's last name is Fitt). We had a pretty good time, but had to get back at a relatively decent hour. However, the next day I tried to do some work but just ended up recovering from the last week, month, quarter. I will be getting my cell phone on Monday which is highly necessary! I really hope to be refreshed when classes start, at the moment I am highly unmotivated. I am finishing up some work for a publication with Ben, and doing a literature search for Serafim, but at least I only have one class!

In recovery under the supervision of Nurse Scoots.

Finally, Sunday was my cousin Micah's "12th" birthday party. I says that his actual 12th birthday was cancelled and so he will not celebrate his 31st. I got some dirt from my aunt, who does not remember why exactly it was cancelled, but said that Micah was naughty somehow, and so that was how he was punished. The birthday was a nice barbecue in the park in San Mateo. It was really nice, with tons of friends of Micah's, some of Vincy's family, and of course Ryan and I. We got to play some Bocce ball, and eat some delicious food, and there was also this massive cake covered in sugar!!! It had big balls of frosting of top of it. I didn't eat it but I was thinking about it the whole time! Paula, one of Micah's friends (who is actually considering doing a professional MS from BMI!!!!!) pointed out that there is a place that does Bocce ball and dinner around the area! We are planning on going it should be SO much fun!

We also went on the Monkey bars, which turns out to have been my downfall. We had fun swinging around and everything, but this morning I woke up and I am basically immobile. My back hurts TERRIBLY! As a sophomore in high school, during the tennis season, we were playing a game against a local high school and I tried to hit an overhead smash, which somehow totally killed my back! I couldn't even stand up straight! So my mom took me to the doctor's office who basically gave me some super strong ADVIL and sent me home. It has been mostly okay since then. It definitely is not a perfect situation, so I do Pilates to strengthen my "core" and take some strain from my back, but of course as I have been inconsistently able to sleep 8 hours, I often find myself lagging on these exercises as well! Which is terrible!

Ryan setting a bad example

So now I am feeling the consequences! The doctor prescribed me the same pills again. I was offered a shot of some pain killer, which could make me loopy, so I was not interested. Ryan swears by percocet which he had after an operation, but I took Vicodin once after getting my wisdom teeth removed, and unless it is TOTALLY necessary, I will avoid it at all costs! All I did was sleep!!! Although that is basically all I can do at the moment anyways! We'll see...I have a class tomorrow that I cannot miss, so I will go in for that, and hopefully I will survive!!! Mostly...I just cannot handle being home like this all day, I feel like I'm missing out on the whole world. I also have a lot of work to do. At least it has made reading papers easy. For my work with Serafim he wanted to me to read 2-3 papers, it's more like 6-7 at this point!