Speaking of the hot topic today on Guamo's site, I have been staring at Frc, our Fungal Respiration Chamber pronounced "Frick") all day, waiting for the temperature in the car radiator to equilibrate. The blasted thing has wasted so much of my time in the last month or so. It's kind of a cool apparatus, actually. We sawed off the bases of a bunch of nalgene bottles (we destroyed them!!!), shoe-gooed them to a galvanized steel plate, and hooked up a bunch of Bev-a-line tubing. THe car radiator comes under the steel plate, keeping the chambers at a constant temperature. To make it look extra scientific (and so we can bring the temperature extra low), we have green antifreeze running through the tubing going into the radiator. It looks SWEET. :) Our objective? Measuring respiration rates of fungi from different altitudes, and seeing how (and if) they acclimate to warmer or colder temperatures. I know Roubos is the only one who actually cares about the last few sentences, so enough about fungi. (They're so COOL, though!!!)
What have I been procrastinating on? Paper due for tomorrow--last one of twelve that I have had to write this past year (first year of grad school). The final topic is cell differentiation ("How do cells know what they're going to be when they grow up?"), something I care very little about, and since I have to come up with a molecular method to test a hypothesis (which I haven't come up with yet), that adds even more reason for slacking off until the last possible minute.
PLUS...it is such a nice day out today--what am I doing inside????!!!!
OK, back to the paper...

Check it out, everybody--the Candida infection ad is gone! (I bet that just brought it back...) I now have gospel songs and choir ads on my page. :)
Latest news from ...the cabin. I have been inside since Friday, 2:30 pm. It is very sad, and I am getting serious cabin fever. I had to do a presentation Friday, but woke up feeling flu-ish, but had to go to school anyway. I get up to do the presentation and the one part I was worried about defending (molecular biology and DNA techniques) was this guy's (the grader) specialty, and unfortunately could see through all the BS I was slinging at the class. Now, I couldn't defend that talk if I were in my right mind (Yes, Bode, I always am), but add some strange virus (or fungus, whatever it was), and I pretty much was left to making sorry jokes about my presentation. He didn't give up, though, and left me up there for 15 minutes, while everyone stared at my face, which was feeling very hot--surprisingly more from the fever than from embarrassment (I know my class members too well by now to be embarrassed by this). Oh well. I then went home and slept for 18 hours, pretty much straight through. I don't think I have ever done that.
Oh well. So I have been in the house for more than three days now, and I am ready to go out and contaminate the world with whatever I have.
Other than that, no huge news. Our soccer team played our first game last Thursday, and the Chloroblasts did not fare well. Nope. 8-0, last time I checked. We actually had two shots on goal, and playing in the rain and mud actually HELPED us, in my opinion. I think it brought the other team down a notch. It couldn't really bring us down any farther, therefore the gap was lessened. Dan was complaining about getting muddy and getting the car muddy and how it used to be fun when we were kids and we got to play in the mud. Maybe it's part of being a soil scientist, but I couldn't agree with him completely. Maybe that stage will come when I have kids...if that ever happens. I don't know--I would probably still enjoy it as much as they would at that point as well. Hurray for mud! :)
Summer is coming, and therefore frisbee season should soon be on its way. This summer (with no important event where they take millions of pictures of you in a nice white dress) I won't have to be worried about having wifebeater tan lines (the "Casper" definition of tan, that is).
Can you tell how bad the cabin fever is, just by the length of this blog? Yup, I need out!! Granted, that will mean facing reality and writing more papers, etc., but anything is better than sitting at home all day.
OK, ciao everyone, don't get sick. It's not worth it.

I was just reading Guamo's 26 comments about being pessimistic (most of them were written by Guamo himself--maybe I should try to beef up my comments section that way with messages from myself). I think he is starting to sound like a Buddhist in the sense that the general attitude is 'nothing good will ever come from pleasure in anything related to this world, and therefore we should strive to become nothing, want nothing, and believe in nothing besides becoming nothing ourselves'. OK, that last part didn't make complete sense, but I think you know what I mean. I don't know, Guamo. I have trouble with that kind of mentality, because even if this world is not perfect, and we can never make it perfect, there IS hope (or light at the end of the tunnel, or whatever), and you would be denying God the enjoyment that He gets from seeing his creation enjoy His work, if you let yourself get caught up in 'high standards' and pessimism.
Anyway, that was just a thought. Even though humans have corrupted the world, and polluted the environment, etc., take a look around at what is still there and it won't take too long before you see how awesome the creation is, and how miraculous even the concept of 'life' is.
OK, gotta go. Tonight is pizza and Indiana Jones (Temple of Doom) night. :)

Is anyone else still on jetlag from daylight savings time? We got up yesterday at 7 and had to sing at two services for Palm Sunday. I think my eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, but the choir did an awesome job, and I was so proud. It's like having 11 kids (some of which are older than you) sometimes. We just have one more service to sing at, and we're doing the "Hallelujah Chorus" gospel style. :) Yesterday we did Kirk Franklin's "Now Behold the Lamb" which is also a wonderful piece, and we got a lot of good comments from people.
After a 3 hour nap and a volleyball game, Dan and I went to check out "Fusion", which is kind of the on-campus LOFT here, except that it's about 20-30 people, instead of 4-? hundred we had at LOFT. I didn't know a lot of the songs, but they did a good job, and it made me want to go back to a LOFT service. I think I really took for granted all the worshiping opportunities we had at Calvin. We go to a great church here, and I have learned a lot from our pastor et al., but at the same time, it's nice to be able to just go hear really good contemporary/upbeat (not necessarily synonymous) Christian music. Maybe I'll have to go visit Ron Rienstra one of these days...
Two more big papers to go and my first year of grad school is virtually done. Wow. And both of those papers are due this week (Fungal Pathogenesis) and next week (...??...oh, I think it's on vegetative development...I should look that up, huh?), so I better get going.
Regarding the yeast infection and athlete foots ads, I think I just need to change the name of my blog to get rid of those. BUt then again, maybe I should just leave it and let the inoculated ones benefit from my blog. :) I know you're out there.

I just realized that these little ads that come up independently on our blog sites--they correlate with whatever words are used in the blog (in my case, fungi). I was wondering why my site kept advertising on how to get rid of athlete's foot and yeast infections, etc., while Guamo has all these sophisticated links to political or religious websites. Maybe I will have to start censoring my posts. No more of "the F-word"...don't know if that is going to be possible.
Let's see if this changes the ads--last night we went to a Wynton Marsalas concert with Wynton and three other guys-- a pianist, bass player, and a drummer. The pianist was awesome (as were the other three), I don't know how to describe it, but his fingers were literally flying over the keys, and he had such control over everything he was playing, it was almost superhuman. Maybe I could do that if I practiced for another 50 years or so...?
Time for lunch. Dan made a huge pot of curry last Sunday, and we have been having it for lunch everyday this week. Anyone who knows me knows that it takes a lot to make me sick and tired of eating or listening to something good (i.e. food and music, respectively). It is the same way with curry. Speaking of which, my curry is still waiting for me. Chow! :)