Happy Leap Day

Today is the day our human calendars catch up with the earths rotations. The Earth actually doesn't rotate around the sun every 365 days. It actually rotates every 365.25 days.  Therefore, to catch up with that 0.25 days, every 4 years, we have a leap day.

Pretty savvy, except the earth doesn't really revolve around the sun every 365.25 days, and therefore to make up for the additional screw up in our human calendars, we skip leap year every now and then, as was done in the year 2000. This makes so much sense, wow!

You can read the full article at the LA Times. It won't be any clearer!

So here's the all important question: What do the kids that are born on leap day do?

It's a conspiracy I tell you!

Kitchen Inspiration

I love a big organized kitchen.  The more cabinets, the more room to hide things, and of course the more room for all the crazy cool dishes and things to buy. The kitchen in my small apartment is much better than what I had before because it has LOTS of cabinets, but I lack the counter space I really need and its not the prettiest looking.  Living in a small apartment is really difficult, especially when you see pictures like these.  Maybe someday I'll get lucky and I'll have a cute house with a cute/big kitchen like this...sigh...

 One of my favorites.  Maybe its the pink flowers :)

Another favorite.  Albeit not a white cabinet (which is what I seem to gravitate towards), but the teal colors are just perfect.  I love this shade of blue green/teal!

 I wish I had the room for a china hutch/cabinet.  Someday...

House Beautiful

So when I get my dream house (pictures to come) and dream kitchen, then one of the first things I'm going to get is one of these.  I have no space for this now, but someday I'll make sure I do :D

Can't decide if I want it in Teal, Red or Yellow...oh the choices...

 Of course, white cabinets are not kid friendly (for those with, or thinking about having kids), but you know what, its called a magic eraser! Just saying!

New Home for My Babies

It took me most of Sunday to set this tank up (and its not finished yet).  I made a lot of mess and got fish water everywhere.  The clean up took even longer than the set up (I spent over an hour cleaning the kitchen floor, I'll explain later)...but their new home is almost complete.

Here are some pictures of my adventure.

I bought all these decorations (bridge, rock, cave) to see which one would look best, since I couldn't decide at the store.  I wanted them to have a cave/hole that they could hide in, but I couldn't find anything that would be big enough for them and sadly, I'm going to return everything and find something else.  The decorations just took up too much space in the tank and I want Fishi and Spots to have room to swim.

Fishi's getting ready to move in.  Poor baby was having a panic attack. I couldn't get these fish in the bag to save my life.  It took me forever.  I didn't realize how big they were.  I didn't take a picture of Spots, but when I FINALLY got him in the bag, in came a little pebble too, and boy did he entertain himself with that.  He kept popping it in his mouth, and spitting it back out for the 30 minutes that he was in that bag.  It was hilarious.  

Almost set up...I need more plants and some rock formation of sorts.  Looking at this tank makes me stress about how I'm going to clean it :( 

 I made them a litte hiding spot with plants and now they won't come out of there.

They snuggled up so much with the plants that they've already pulled one off its weight.... 

 and now its floating...uh...here we go again...

I really hope this tank will be a good home for them (for a while).  As my husband pointed out last night: you swore when we got the little tank you would never get a bigger one, and now we got this thing and you're swearing that you're never going to go bigger.  Every time you swear you won't do something, you do...I think this is a bad sign.  Hmm...lets hope not :D 

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UPDATE:

I bought a few more pieces to add, and their new home is finally complete :)

What a day

Long story short, Saturday was an interesting, strange day.

I went into lab (yes, I had to go in and no my experiments from Friday didn't work) early in the morning, met with one of my best friends for lunch and coffee (YAY!) and then had to run back to lab to finish the stupid experiment.

Raspberry Mocha from Pete's Coffee (didn't taste as good as it looked, sadly!)

Crazy thing, on my way back to lab I ran a red light (well it was yellow when I crossed the line, I swear).  It was a really short yellow though, which pisses me off because you usually have enough time to cross when you're close to the intersection, but this darn light turned yellow right as I got to the intersection (it makes sense in my head).  If you ask me, its a conspiracy, but who would believe me (check this out).  Anyways, as I crossed the line (or maybe not, I don't know anymore...ahhhh) I saw the camera flash and now I'm panicking about getting a ticket.  !@#$%^ Note to stupid self: DO NOT RUN YELLOW LIGHTS...PERIOD! It totally ruined the rest of my day.

Anyways, I get to lab and park in the back of the building where I usually park on the weekends (you need a permit to park back there, but I've never seen anyone check on the weekends).  The reason I park back there is because unfortunately graduate students (aka slaves) don't get a parking spot and have to park 5 blocks away and walk.  I don't think so! Not when I need to just run in to check something or set something up really quickly.

So, I set up my stuff and as I'm extracting my cells, the other grad student runs in and says ..."did you park in the back...there is a someone walking around giving tickets...".  Oh, !@#$%, I drop everything (I hope my experiment still works), grab my keys, run as fast as I can (with a cold/ear infection) to my car, my heart racing a thousand miles (I got a ticket last week when I parked there Friday night) feeling sick to my stomach about getting another ticket, and thankfully I didn't.  But, I had to move my car just in case, so I parked in the structure (where we can't park either) and then had to run around trying to find a place to stamp my ticket with a visitor stamp at 5pm. By the time I got back to lab, 30minutes later, my ear killing me, my feet aching (I wasn't wearing my good shoes) and sooooo mad I wanted to scream.

This whole parking situation is sooooo bad.  How am I supposed to deal with this for another 3 years.  WTF!

Anyways...I also went to the pet store to get some stuff for Fishi and Spots' new home (that I have yet to set up) and did my pet store routine...here are some pictures:

First I go see all the fishi's and say hi.

Then I go visit the kitties (but they were all sleeping). 

I then visit the hamsters (who were also sleeping, what's going on??)

And last but not least, the birdies (this little guy was shy)

As I was watching these birds in their little cage, playing and nest building and eating seeds, it made me realize how cruel we humans really are.  Why would you put a bird in a cage?  So you can play with it and look at it?  Why do we have pets to begin with?  Why do we take animals out of their homes and put them in artificial surroundings?  What enjoyment do we really get by doing this? What is wrong with us?  I'm not saying we shouldn't have pets (I have 2 of my own), but the animals that really need space (not so much dogs and cats), but birds and fish, should be allowed to live in their natural habitats.  Be allowed to freely fly and swim anywhere and everywhere and enjoy the world we are free to enjoy.  Now, if the animal is sick and you are caring for it, that's another store, but a healthy animal (ie. bird or fish) should be free! If I wasn't given these 2 goldfish I would never want to enslave them this way.  I've thought long and hard about releasing them somewhere, but I know they would never survive.  It's really cruel :(  

Another week's gone by...

Well, its Friday again.  What a week!  I have been so busy and stressed and I think I have come down with a cold that started with a horrible toothache 2 nights ago, and now that the toothache is gone (weirdly enough) my ear is killing me.  Here we go again...another ear infection (my last one was in December, what the heck??).  I couldn't get a doctor's appointment today, so I'm going to hope/pray that somehow I don't get sicker over the weekend, and if I do, 5 hour wait at urgent care, here I come.

I'm crossing my fingers and praying hard that my results work today.  This whole week would have been a waste.  Please God, please help me!

But on a happier note, it's Friday! I am not planning experiments this weekend (though I probably should), becasue I don't feel good, so humph Dr. F!

Fishi and Spots have a new home and they will be moving in sometime this weekend! More updates on that to come :D

Google fails again

So yesterday was the anniversary of Malcom X's death.  He was assassinated on February 21, 1965 while addressing a group of some 400 people at an event for the Organization of Afro-American Unity.  He was shot in chest and pronounced dead some time after.  

‎"America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem." Malcolm X

I would like to point out that Google had no doodle for Malcolm X yesterday.  He has also never had a doodle for his birthday!  But, other random individuals, such as Mary Blair have.  Some random Physicist from the late 19th century, Heinrich Hertz gets a doodle today for proving the existence of electromagnetic waves.  Big woop if you ask me! If I was google, I would have given Malcolm X a Doodle.

The Dolphin Named Winter

I just watched a super sweet movie called Dolphin Tale, based on the true story of a bottlenose dolphin who was rescued back in December of 2005 off the coast of Florida when her tail tin was trapped in a crab cage.  It was so severly damaged that she eventually lost it.  But...


You'll have to watch the movie to see what happens :)

If I'm I've ever in Florida, I want to See Winter!!

She's so cute!! You go little dolphin!!

My Little Garden

I wish I had a little house with a little garden to plant beautiful flowers and vegetables.  But I guess a little balcony will do for now...

 My little cherry tomato plant

 Green little tomato waiting to become ripe!

These pots have daisies planted in them.  I cut them back for the winter months and they are slowly starting to grow back now, since SoCal hasn't really had a winter.  The blue bulbs are my watering bulbs.  They really do work, especially for lazy people like me.

So these little guys (below) are actually tulips that I had from last year.  If I remember correctly, they were red tulips that my husband bought me for the Persian new year.  They say bulbs grow back, but you usually have to take the bulbs out, wrap them up in a paper bag and put them in the back of your fridge and remember to plant them the following year.  Well, that's too much work for me.  So instead, when they died, I clipped them back, covered them with another pot and stowed them away in a dark, dry corner of my balcony.  Then last month, when I was cleaning my balcony I noticed them.  I took them out of their corner and saw that the bulbs had begun to sprout.  So i've been watering them since, and they are actually growing :) I can't believe I actually will have tulips again.  I tried this once before and most of the bulbs died except one, but this time they are ALL coming back. This is very exciting :)

Coffee with my love

Moments like these (albeit rare with our busy schedules) are what makes marriage and life very special!

Lazy Saturday

Today i'm lounging around the house being a couch potato in my pink pj's and lady bug socks with matching ladybug erasers (that my husband recently found and bought me).  I used to collect cute little erasers when I was a kid and I never had ladybug erasers, so this is exciting ;) I need to find my old eraser collection and add it to them! :D

I'm watching Shark Tank by the way (awesome show)...check it out!

Happy Friday

This has been a busy busy week, but it is finally at an end.  I have decided (lets see how long this holds up) not to come into lab at all this weekend.  I have things I want to get to and lots of shows to catch up on ;)

Yesterday I gave my 1 hour presentation on IAP's and Apoptosis (for the non-science majors: Google it!) It took me 3 days of straight sitting to prepare for it and I'm soooooo glad its over.  Many thanks to my wonderful husband for his help and patience while I prepared and practiced it on him.  I am free for the rest of the quarter.  Now, lets get all those experiments working!!

Here's a picture of a beautiful tree on my campus that I saw as I walked out of my presentation, breathing in a sigh of relief :)

It's raining, it's pouring...

I stayed home all day today working on a presentation for my class tomorrow (50 minute presentation mind you) and it's been so beautiful outside! It rained, and its been cold and it finally feels like winter.  But, it will be sunny and warm again tomorrow, so i'm enjoying this to the fullest.

 Baby Snail making his/her way home...

 My flowers were happy :)

I also took advantage of this time and washed my balcony.  I figured this way, my downstairs neighbors wouldn't be the wiser about why there is tons of water pouring over my balcony onto theirs :D