LOL #2: H2O, Train Cows, & Movies

Life is like a series of biochemical reactions.....especially when you work in a bio lab and day in and day out your life IS biochemical reactions.


Yes, that is my astute and profound statement of the day. Now for real business (NOT!)... first off, only about half of you were in my address book when I sent out LoL #1 (LoL=Life of Lisa) so sorry if you feel left out but for those of you that have been with me from the beginning (all 2 amazing episodes!!) thanks for staying tuned in - or something cheesy like that.

So yeah my life has been something more than normal, something less than totally chaotic lately. It's one of those deals where sometimes everything in life just clicks into combination for a perfect day and other times everything that that can go wrong, does. Hence the real reason life is like a series of biochemical reactions, sometimes things work, other times one little slip messes everything up. For instance... (you had to know there was gonna be a "for instance"!) I was getting really frustrated that for three straight days I couldn't get my PCR experiments to work right (that's polymerase chain reaction for all the science nerds in the audience). Finally Alex (the doctor also known as Sparky) figures out that the wonderful little test tube on our lab bench marked H20 is actually alcohol!! Who in the world labels vials "H2O" if they aren't filled with water????? But that's really my only gripe at the present time. And you'd be amazed at how much better experiments will work when they're not evaporating mid-reaction. :)

Other than that the interesting thing that I have to comment on is again having to do with my experiences as a train commuter. There's this wonderful process of getting off the train at Union Station in the morning that's something like instantaneously turning into a cow and joining a massive herd of numerous other slow moving cows all trying to get to the same place as quickly as possible which somehow makes everyone reduce speed to slower than turtle. This would seem like a major annoyance but I find myself laughing at the whole situation while playing snipets of the Matrix soundtrack in my head. You know that scene where Neo's in the agent identifying training video thing and he and Morpheus are walking down the street with tons of people going in the OTHER direction? That's the song I'm talking about.

OH OH!!!! IT'S SHOUTOUT TIME!!!!!!!!! First Shout-Out goes to the wonderfully spiffy Laura G whose birthday was last weekend!!!! (September 2nd - or was it 3rd?) Either way, hope you had a great one!!! And also a shoutout to all of my favorite Soph-fours - I miss you girls and hope everything's going great for y'all! And one more shoutout to Karrie M cause she's just cool and I hung out with her at Karrie-ibou (I mean CARibou) Coffee the other day and I'm going to drag her off to work at Northwestern with me so that we can be train buddies. (I'll take runon sentences for $300, Alex.....)

Other than that things in my life are pretty sweet. Saw the movie "The Importance of Being Ernest" this weekend. I'd highly recommend it. Also if anyone hasn't seen the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" - go see it. It's one of the funniest, cutest feel-good movies I've seen in a really long time. It's also at least 20 times funnier if you know anything about my family or if you come from a huge loud family.

Random thought of the day... I heard some DJs on the radio this morning talking about an article in People magazine debating whether or not Ben Afflek wears a toupee. My first reaction was "who cares" prompting me to change the radio station. Then after the tailend of a Celine Dion ballad (I was in the car with my dad...) a new set of DJs began the same discussion about Ben Affleks hair! I guess it was a slow news day or something but does anyone (...besides maybe Matt Damon) care whether or not Ben's hair is real???

Well, I guess that's about it. Except for some other random wonderings and inquiries that I'll save for the P.S. Hope all is going great for all of you!!!

smiles & sunshine,


lisa :)


P.S. So what's up with all the random soda flavorings these days?? I mean sure I was the first one to jump on the Code Red Mountain Dew bandwagon and I can't say that I was anything but pleased with Lemon Pepsi Twist and Vanilla Coke (Cherry Coke is NOT new people, it's been here since the 80's!!) but I think things are getting a little carried away with Pepsi Blue and Dr. Pepper Red Fusion. It's like some big head honcho CEO's of Coke and Pepsi are sitting there with a crayola colored dart board flinging darts to find out what new color/flavor they're gonna add to their soft drinks!! I'm all for inovation (and actually Pepsi Blue is pretty tasty...haven't tried Red Fusion yet) but please tell me they'll stop before they hit Grap-epsi and/or Mocha-Cola!
Even I - the sugar queen herself - have to admit that a line must be drawn. Till then, stay caffinated. :)