in a senti-mental mood

kie: on my bed, since i am too lazy to bring up my desk chair from downstairs.
kiel: a cold sam adams hefeweizen in my hand. life is good.
kio: gin blossoms: hey jealousy

firstly let me apologize for the dearth of entries in the past month. it's been busy.

yes, i know what you're thinking. it was summer! how could you have been busier then than you are now? well i was pretending to be gurkan for about 6 weeks. i screened 1056 colonies of a sucrose binder library, and assayed a few clones for kd's.

also i've been running in preparation for the marathon realy, in which i agreed to run. my leg will likely be 6.1 miles. recently i hit an 8:00 mile. not bad for a fattie.

blogs are about anecdotes. so here's one:

i was running up past one world café, a hippie vegetarian cafe/bar, and a man in a truck was unloading naked juice, some hippie drink that they sell there. anyway, i'm running by *pant pant pant* and the guy in the truck goes to me, "hey! green machine?" and i go, "um... ok..." then he tosses me this green health drink out of the back of the truck. i grab it mid-run and continure running with a "thanks!". it was just like a commercial. weird. on my way back, after i had drunk the somewhat viscous contents of the fruit/vegetable/algae slurry, he was like "how was that?" "great! thanks!" i don't know if he is encouraged to do that by the company, but it really hit the spot. although at that point (about halfway through my 2.5 mile-or-so run on a 95 degree day), i probably would have drunk cow semen had it been properly chilled. isn't that weird, though?

i went to myrtle beach with my parents the first week of august, along with alex. if you don't know alex, my foster brother, here is a brief description. he's small. at 11 years old, his 70 or so pounds of muscle and bone barely fill out his 4'6" frame. he's at that age. you know, when girls go from "ew!" to "ooh..." and the voice prepares to jump from tiny tim to barry white several times a day. he knows everything. words like "duh" and "retard" some out of his mouth as frequently as "the" and "and". but there are still many aspects of the world which he doesn't quite understand. as such, he is loaded with questions. for example:

alex: so we're learning about puberty in school.
tom: yeah...
alex: and they said that like you start to like girls, and your voice changes and stuff...
tom: yeah...
alex: what else happens?
tom: um, can i tell you sometime when we're not in a restaurant?

another good example:

(on seeing an anti-abortion billboard)
alex: what's an abortion?
mom: (brief, not very detailed explanation)
alex: why would somebody do that?
mom: ...

how do you explain abortion to a kid like alex? given his circumstances (the 5th child from a 5th father to an alcoholic, drug-running mother) he could easily have been an abortion. i expect this is something he will have to come to terms with later in life.

i spent much of the myrtle beach trip people-watching from our balcony and reading "el club dumas" which i bought immediately after seeing "the ninth gate". great movie, wasn't thrilled with the ending. excellent book, though. written in spanish. a good wasy to keep up with the language, i feel.

i moved into pete's old room, across the hall from my old room. all of my new housemates have moved in, and the whole house demographic is different. not that it's any better or worse, it's just different. we've hardly even redecorated. sigh...

it's hard to believe that my undergrad career is over. we had mental notes auditions last weekend and picked 6 charming newbies. when it came time for introducing and saying name, year, etc. it hit me. i have a bs. i have graduated college. it took me all summer to realize it. shit.

it's ok, though, i've fallen into different niches and i'm closer to notes and lab people than ever. i'm glad i stayed in the group, and i'm looking forward to an awesome year.

3 hefeweizens later, i think i'm ready for bed. well at least i updated.

ed: in retrospect, cow semen would probably not have been that good. -9/5/06