I am back at playing with acid and hydrogen peroxide today--don't try this outside of your fume hood. :)
Last Saturday was the first Saturday of this semester that I didn't have to go in to work. AND, since it was the last football weekend, Dan and I celebrated by NOT going into work, and snickering with glee at the 11000 Penn State football fans who had to watch their favorite pastime in misting rain (too bad it wasn't a little colder...). I'm sorry, I just don't get very excited about football weekends, since traffic gets tied up, you have to plan your day around when the game is on, and even parking for church the next morning is tricky, since our church is downtown. Buwaaaaa...
C-Bass (Chris, whatever I should call you), thanks for your comments on FISH--Dan forwarded them to me. It's good to hear what other youth groups are doing--maybe ours needs to step out of its incestuous comfort zone and do a little research. We will get together with the main leader (the associate pastor of our church) this Wednesday, so hopefully that will go well. He is a great guy, and I think he agrees with us for the most part in terms of theologies, etc. However, I don't want him to think that we are just full of criticisms for this program that he's been in charge of for 10 years now. Hopefully no feelings will be hurt and we can all be open-minded and kind about what we say.
On a completely different note, I had a funny (i.e. interesting) conversation with someone a few weeks ago. My boss went to China and met another scientist there who was doing some really interesting research with integrated agriculture (where the farm grows or has everything it needs without having to import or export anything--the traditional farming approach, I guess...). Apparently, this guy speaks a little Japanese, having spent 2 years of his Ph.D. in Japan. So my boss suggested that I call him up in China and see if we can get some kind of collaboration going. Well, I did, and the conversation started off in Chinese. Although I can order my favorite dishes at a restaurant, bargain at the underground market, and even carry on low-level conversations with my broken Chinese, I am anything but fluent right now, ESPECIALLY in scientific Chinese. So you can imagine how quickly I let him know that Japanese was ALSO a common language that we shared. The rest of the conversation (very short) consisted of him trying to make me hang in there with my Chinese, while I answered him in Japanese. At one point he tried to figure out what nationality I was in the first place, but that just made matters worse, I think. Anyway, I am fairly excited and hopeful about setting up a collaboration (possibly a summer internship) with him. I would love to go back to China, and it would be a great excuse to visit Japan again, this time with Dan. :) (ironically--and this will get old, I'm sure--the word for 'husband' in Japanese is "Danna", so I will introduce my "Danna" as "Dan" hahaha).
Anyway, enough for now. I think my acid and peroxide mixture has sufficiently chewed up and digested my roots. These are the last of 90 or so plants that I have been digesting for what seems like forever. Yee ha.
Have a great Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the rest of the year!
Zaijian, y'all...