Those who fail to plan...

So M and I have been doing the program for almost five months. Which seems unbelievable to me. Now, while I wish I was on track with their 1-2lb/week, I am sadly not quite. But not doing too badly.

The best thing so far has been how much better we've been about healthy meal planning and execution. We made a shared excel spreadsheet with a weekly meal plan and have been pretty good (a few weeks notwithstanding) about making a plan.

And we've made some delicious stuff too!
A lot of recipes we've found on www.skinnytaste.com and kalynskitchen.com

Here are a few I've snapped a pic of with my phone:

Egg flowers


Potato leek soup


Sushi


Super adorable (5pp) Easter cupcakes.


And tonight's Stromboli.



I am blogging from my phone tonight to fulfill my goal while watching M and a friend play an intense game of chess.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

If it was fun they wouldn't call it work?

As most of my readers know I have been working in a lab since my very first day of college. I had financial aid in the form of work study and during “welcome week” freshman year I set out to find a J-O-B. As an optimistic biology major I answered an ad for a lab assistant (read: dishwasher) in the pathology department at the med school. I LOVED it. I loved washing and sterilizing dishes, autoclaving garbage, making solutions and gels. I loved that when I took my first chem lab, one quarter later, I knew what a stir bar was and how to correctly set a micropipette. As time went on my bosses told me what they were working on and explained to me how a small protein called a peptide was shown to kill bacteria. They showed me how they were able to characterize it using gels and other biochemical techniques. As my course work progressed I started putting the theory together with the practical (ex. the charged residues in the peptide make it run a certain was on RP-HPLC) and did my own research project in that lab.

I was totally hooked. SO much so that I decided I wanted to be a little lab rat and went to graduate school. I ran into some hitches there (mainly I was such a sad panda in CT and felt like a major imposter, these issues need/needed to be addressed but don’t play too deep into this post) but I still loved the idea of using the characteristics of molecules to design experiments.

I got my first job in biotech and here is where I felt like everything clicked. I was pretty good at this crap and a valuable member of the team. I really liked how in an industrial setting the entire team is focused on one goal.

I liked it and I felt good at it.

But, with that VERY LONG preamble, I am so fed up with this industry five years and two companies later. I am so tired of being on the edge of oblivion every six months. I hate that so many decisions are made based on the financial situation rather than the scientific situation. I haven’t figured out how timelines are made for goals which may or may not be possible in nature BECAUSE WE HAVEN’T TRIED THEM EVER BEFORE. I am just a bit tired.

But the thing is, I am also terrified to figure out if I want to do something else. It is what I know. I know how to split my days between the lab bench and my desk. I know that most days, when I get to work I need to take things out of the freezer, thawing is part of my schedule. I don’t really know anything else.

I have considered teaching and even optometry school (my original plan rom way back when). I have wondered whether I should get trained to be a carpet dweller and learn project management. But, honestly, lab work feels like a part of me in a way and…I don’t suck at it. Which makes finding something else seem a bit capricious.

I have no conclusions here. This is the main reason I have been a bot radio silent. I sort of feel lost on my career trajectory and, what is worse, have just shut my eyes and tried to ignore it.

For fun, the video that made me fall in love with molecular biology (central dogma FTW!):

Not much to say

I’d basically given up on the whole blogging thing but M said he wished I wouldn’t. That, and the fact that I need to do something has led me here tonight.

Lately I have felt really out of whack. There are things in life that are SO great and exciting and others that feel overwhelming, scary and tiring. I feel like my attitude has been an average of all that…a big old BLAH.

Even though I can’t decide what to do about the blahs and the unknowns I can at least acknowledge the stuff I am sure are great.

 

We went to Hawaii 

Our room in Waikiki was great, had an awesome view of Diamond Head.

We did an underwater scooter adventure that was really cool.

These submersible scooters were awesome and I have decided I am going to become an underwater motorcyclist.

We snorkeled a bit on the North Shore.

Shopped the International Marketplace (This was SO different than I remember, it was just a frenzy of vendors schlepping the same stuff. Still, fun to add my M to the people I’ve been there with).

We stayed on the North Shore for most of our trip.

With a trip over to Pearl Harbor.

And a trip to the Polynesian Cultural Center.

It was a great trip. The weather was amazing the whole time and it was fun to break away form the cloudy days of winter with my hubs.

We got back just in time for my sister Emily’s 14th birthday Wii Dance party. I had been pinning away cute décor and invites (THEY WERE SO CUTE!) and then it was time to put it all together. Emily and I dipped goodies in chocolate, made PowerAde ice cubes (my on the fly idea to make blue cubes which turned out to be super cool) and dyed cupcakes.

Everything looked awesome (if I do say)

The PowerAde floated on top of the lemonade when the ice cubes melted!

M, the sweetest BIL in the world, resurrected the photobooth from our wedding and the girls went to town. There was Wii Dancing, photo taking and snacking for a few hours. I think the party was a great success.
 

These are the standout fun things from April…and now it is the 21st of May

*I’ve been running and have an 8 miler on June 2nd.
*I’ve been working but there have been layoffs and general morale rotting.
*We’ve been kicking butt in some of the nesting department (we cleaned the house like maniacs for our home appraisal) but dealing with obstacles in others.
*The days here have gotten longer, brighter and warmer and we’ve been taking good advantage of it.
* We are still chugging away with the Weight Watchers thing…it is easier some days than others.

Will report on some of these things this week. My goal is to blog everyday this week…we’ll see.

Happy Easter

Out for a run in a beautiful spring day then headed to brunch with friends followed by games. Hope everyone's day is looking as good. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

March!

I am THRILLED that it is March.

This month has all sorts of greatness coming up.

1. Daylight savings! I am SO glad to be rid of that extra hour. I need it to be light out later, it renews my spirit.

2. We have a house guest this month! It’ll force us to get out and be Seattle tourists a bit.

3. My 4th running of the St. Pat’s Dash with DSF (3rd with her ).

The first time we met! I guess we couldn’t even be pictured together

4. Hunger Games movie. I have never been a big trendy movie gal but I really liked these books and am all in for seeing the movie. I was hoping to host a Hunger Games dinner party using the cookbook M got me for Christmas. Timing isn’t good now (maybe when Emily comes over in April) but the Pacific Science Center is coming through for us! I love the Science Center and I am excited about the movie. WIN-WIN!

5. Mercer Island Half Marathon. This one I am not so much excited about as anxious about. I have been pretty good on my training program and feel like I should be ready by then. Last year was so terrible though, I just want to feel better about it this time. I have been doing speed work on the treadmill and have been hitting the hills for the past few weekends.

6. The premiere of Make it or Break It. I am not proud to like a show on the ABC Family channel but this show is so amazing. It is about elite gymnasts and…it is an Olympic year. I love Payson. You don’t see characters on TV often enough who are seriously goal oriented and work relentlessly hard, while remaining genuinely nice to others, to reach that goal. She is the most passionate character I’ve ever seen on TV and I love her for it. 

7. M’s dad may come out to visit us. I would really love to have him since the last time he was here we had been pretty wedding absorbed and fed him mainly banquet leftovers. Would be great to have a bit more relaxed time.

__________

Those are my biggies for March. Five days in and I like it so far.

Things I Like Right Now

For starters, for making this post possible, my Eye-Fi wireless SD card. This thing is amazing.

Our dish washing station.

M and I weren’t really on the same page about where wet sponges should go. I usually keep them in the sink, he usually sets them near the counter by the faucet, either way neither of us really liked our solution. Then on a whim we were wandering through Target and saw this guy. It was a tad pricey (for a sponge holder) but we gave it a try and…it rocks. It is a dish washing command center. It is pretty stable and the sponges dry out nicely.

Settling our Settlers.

We really like Settlers of Catan. But the board stinks! It is a lot of different pieces that can shift (if for example, they get walked on by a cat). For Christmas 2010, M and I bought each other the same gift. A potential solution for stabilizing the board. My solution didn’t pan out too well but we finally tried his (a piece of plexi-glass) and…Hurrah! It works like a charm.

Our guest bathroom.

After 16months in a Christmas theme, we finally undecorated our guest bathroom. We also hung up one of my favorite wedding gifts and…they look awesome in there (bonus we can see them from the hall!).

Having a coat rack

I am not really compliant about hanging my coat in the closet. Solution…coat tree. I really like having it so far. (beside it, another of my favorite wedding gifts, see our very own original piece of art!). I need to be careful not to have too many coats racked at a time though.

Having some wedding pics up

I just bit the bullet and threw some wedding pictures up and …I love it! They are hung opposite our bedroom door so I thought it might be a bit jarring to wake to ourselves but it’s cute.

Other things I am loving:

Longer days
This short week
Babies in Hoberman Spheres

Still here

I don’t have a ton to say but I am avoiding hitting the treadmill so I thought I’d say hi.

Let’s do this bullet style:

- I want to get better at sewing. I sort of stink at it right now but I am getting better. I finally made something where the finishing was pretty darn good.

- Watching what you eat is a bummer. M and I are doing pretty well with it but it still sucks to have to give what we eat so much thought.

- On that note, we have been making some really great meals lately! I have latched onto this blog and her recipes have all been pretty awesome. It has also been good to get back to cooking together more often and planning our week of meals.

- I am 7 weeks into Hal Higdon’s intermediate half marathon plan. I had done everything indoors up until my long run this weekend. Lucky for me, it was a beautifully sunny temperate day on Sunday.

- I had a job shadow! M’s BFF’s 16 year old came and spent the morning in lab with me. It was fun to get to spend a little time with him. Every time we go over to his house this one stays very quiet so it was cool to spend one on one time with him. Hopefully it wasn’t too boring…we pH’d solutions.

Wow, I’m more boring than I thought. That’s all for now.