Over the limit.

Its Thanksgiving break and for college kids everywhere that means it time to go to the dentist, doctor, etc. Nothing ruins a good break like getting your gums skewered... or a visit to THE DOCTOR. Yeah, no fun to be had there. Plus that whole getting weighed thing... after weeks of eating complete crap because we're out of food with any nutritional value but too lazy to go to the store. Vegetables? ha!

But scoffing at vegies no more! Not that this will be terribly successful with Christmas on the horizon--cookies, glorious cookies!--but I was about a pound over my "limit." And going on a cruise in about 150 days, I'm not playing that game. So I'm going to eat tastey, healthy things and actually move. If only I ever worked out... or really moved at all... I'd be in good shape. So, uh, home people, if you see me eating cookies over break, scream "YOU HAVE TO WEAR A LITTLE BIKINI IN FIVE MONTHS!" at me and steal the cookie.

Twenty-one

Happy birthday to me! Turning 21 on a Sunday, oh boy! And to top that off, a Sunday that I was away at an American Cancer Society conference and during which I have 3 tests in the ensuing week, it wasn't such a 21st birthday. That's alright though, I'm going home to renew my license this Thursday after the last of those lovely tests and Jamie and I are making some "purchases" then. Yay, West Virginia alcohol availability!

But today wasn't a total bust, especially considering past birthday luck. Of course, there are the handful of sleepover meltdown disaster parties from before my mom made the rule that no more than 2 or 3 people could spend the night at a time. Good rule, that rule because it is definitely not a sleep over until someone cries or you all end up hating each other and glaring across the classroom/lunch table for about a week. Sixteen takes the cake though. I pretty much didn't have any friends and thus, was not planning a party so my mom had Sarah Culler (friendship on the way out) and Sarah Nicholas (friendship on the return) have a surprise party for me. Too bad everyone was kinda mad at each other or not really friends. Awkward much?

Tyler and Nate's Weekend Adventure

It was Siblings Weekend here at Duquesne and since my actual sibling is both too old for this and just generally sucks, I got kids that aren't actually even related to me to come! Ty and Nate came down for Friday night and all day Saturday. Good times...

First, they were really impressed with me living downtown and in a skyscraper. I guess if you're like 6 and don't ever really go downtown (Cleveland is set up a lot like Pittsburgh and Ty's hospital isn't really downtown, its a little away from there like Oakland... but with less bums.), large buildings and such are pretty impressive. And bridges, let's not forget about those, bridges are COOL! It must be nice to live somewhere that is both flat and doesn't require crossing several waterways to get anywhere more than across the street.

Then on Saturday morning we had brunch in Towers (Ty, the eating machine, was very impressed with all of the food. It was pretty much heaven.) and then went to play scientist in my lab. We played with dry ice in the sink for a while since that's amusing to anyone with a pulse, not just kids, and then we did an experiment. Nate's obsessed with acid now for some reason, so I lied and said my RNA loading buffer was acid (that was about the only thing I could find that looks cool... its bright blue... and wasn't really dangerous). So we pipetted some of that into water and vortexed it in little eppendorfs... very scientific and studious of us, haha. Then we looked at dead things in jars.

And then we were even more scientific and went to the Science Center! We did the photo booth, well, attempted it at least. The dark picture is Nate's cheek after he dove into the camera. The Omnimax movie freaked them out :-( so we had to run out of that after about 5 minutes but otherwise, they thought it was a really neat place. Especially since we got to make (and drink, of course) ginger ale in the kitchen theater... ooooh! aaaaah! And the gift shop, oh the gift shop... we bought shark teeth and diamonds (aka $5 chunk of amythest).

And finally, we ate... a lot. Jamie was really shocked when she came back from the library around 9:00 on Friday night and found us eating 10lbs of chicken nuggets. I'm certainly not kidding when I say Ty is a hungry, hungry kid.