my new mouse.

Currently, I'm trying to train myself to use my new mouse that I got. It's been almost three years since I've had a mouse with the computer that I use most often, and I keep forgetting that it's there. It's pretty convenient, though. And it's wireless so I can bring it with me without a hassel.

Today was a good day. I worked Monday from 12 noon until 5:00pm and then I drove down to Cranberry to my friend Sarah's house and spent the night. That was cool. Her mother is from the Phillipines and she cooked us Phillipino food for dinner and we watched a movie and then spent some time laying out plans for the missions trip this year. It's looking like it'll be really cool. I have high hopes for this trip.

Then late this morning (Tuesday) Stephen drove over to Cranberry and we went to lunch and headed down to Pittsburgh for a little bit and even met up with his friend Jude/Dave/Clark for dinner. It was nice to see Jude/Dave/Clark again - he's a really friendly guy. Then I came back here to a big, dark, empty house. It seems even emptier considering how full it usually is. Weird. At least spending the night at Sarah's was one less night alone. That's good.

I'm getting excited for the start of school. The band camp kids are all gone, so there's absolutely nobody on campus. It's weird to walk around and not have anybody there. But the football players come in later this week and we go back on Wednesday, so it's all good. Man, this summer has gone fast!!!!

free speech.

I was thinking a lot today about what country I would live in if I ever had to leave the United States.

No, seriously. I really was.

The day before yesterday I wrote a letter to Congresswoman Dahlkemper about the potential abortion clause in the new Health Care Bill. It worries me that I might have to pay taxes that will directly fund abortion. I'm Catholic. I can't do that. It's Catholic law.

This is from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.⁷²

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.⁷³

My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.⁷⁴

2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law:

You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish.⁷⁵

God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves. Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.⁷⁶

2272 Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae,"⁷⁷ "by the very commission of the offense,"⁷⁸ and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law.⁷⁹ The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.

2273 The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation:

"The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority. These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin. Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being's right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death."⁸⁰

"The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined. . . . As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unborn child from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child's rights."⁸¹

2274 Since it must be treated from conception as a person, the embryo must be defended in its integrity, cared for, and healed, as far as possible, like any other human being.

Prenatal diagnosis is morally licit, "if it respects the life and integrity of the embryo and the human fetus and is directed toward its safe guarding or healing as an individual. . . . It is gravely opposed to the moral law when this is done with the thought of possibly inducing an abortion, depending upon the results: a diagnosis must not be the equivalent of a death sentence."⁸²

According to this, I can't fund abortion and still be a Catholic. The options are these:

1) Pay the tax.

2) Don't pay the tax; go to jail.

3) Leave the country.

Thus my thoughts about where I could possibly go if I was seeking political and religious assylum.

These thoughts were compounded today when I got a phone call from Stephen. He was telling me that he'd heard on the radio that Obama was calling for a list of all American citizens who are speaking out against the Health Care Bill. Two days ago, I sent an official letter to a United States Congresswoman. Surely, if such a list exists, (and it does, according to the White House's blog) I'm on it. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/05/white-house-draws-requesting-fishy-information-supporters-health-reform/

Apparently, (and I couldn't find any official documents to back up this next bit), people who are on this list are supposed to get a little more harrassed at airports when they're trying to leave or reenter the country. I guess they're worried about terrorist activity or something.

disgust.

This afternoon, in the store, an elderly woman came in to have a look around, and once she was done, sat in a chair by the door.

After an hour I asked her if she was alright. She told me that her family had gotten tired of having to wait for her because she walked slowly, and had sent her into my store to have a look around while they shopped elsewhere. They had told her that they would meet her in my store when they were finished. She said that should could probably go out looking for them, but that the mall looked all the same to her and she was afraid to leave the store and get lost.

An hour-and-a-half later I was getting angry at a family, asked the woman her last name, and had Bryan send a page out to the mall to get the family to come to our store and collect their grandmother.

Twenty minutes later, they showed up. The mother of the family walked into the store and (honest-to-goodness truth) yelled at the little old lady for having paged them when they were "right down the aisle". They walked out of the store still arguing, and, once outside, the couple continued to scold the older woman while their teenage children watched.

I hope, when the mother is her mother's age, that she is blessed with children exactly like herself.

Bryan sent me on a break then, I think because of what happened, because he told me that when I came back from my break I needed to look less disgusted.

There is no respect in America for the elderly. And what a terrible example for the children who watched.

sunday worries.

I'm not sure what to say today. I'm pretty tired. I'd really like a day off, but I'm liking what I'm doing and I don't realize that I'm tired until nighttime when I get into bed. Or at about 6 am when I have to get up.

I've been running. I'm following a training program online. You know I got some new running shoes and I've been following the Nike plan online to get back into running. I'd really like to be able to do something with that. And it's a nice way to start the day: it wakes me up and makes me feel like I'm still a little bit in shape and doesn't make me feel so bad about eating smores or anything like that.

The lab is okay. Hard to believe that we only have three short weeks left. Feels like we could use about a year more, we're just now getting started. It's not really our fault or the fault of our advisor. We came across some problems and then we had to keep restarting our experiment and we can only DO the experiment when the fish lay eggs and blah blah blah. The whole nine yards.

I've been trying to take care of myself. Drinking my milk and taking my vitamins and getting some sleep.

Money is starting to be something I'm worrying about every day. I've been working a lot and trying not to buy too much, but I'm afraid because it seems like my paychecks aren't as amazing as I'd like them to be. And I have a list of things I need to get for school in the fall that I've started looking for since I'll only be in Erie for 2 days in August. I finally caved and got a new white cardigan. The one I had was mine since I think about the ninth grade and it was getting a little dingy and JCrew had them on sale so I figured it was about time to start looking nice again in a white sweater. We also had those ribbed sort of cotton tank tops on sale. They were $4.97 on clearance, so the clearance price took 30% off and then I got ANOTHER 30% off of that for my employee discount. They ended up being like a dollar and some cents. You can't even get them that cheap at Walmart. So I got six. I'll wear them for running and to class and in the summertime. But anyway, I'm worried. And I don't want to come to the end of the summer and (if it happens, which I'm not sure it will) not have enough money to cover everything and still owe a little going into the school year. Thankfully, I'll have a job (or two) during the year, so if that happens to be the case, it's fixable. But I'm nervous.

Hope all is well in Erie. We've FINALLY been getting some summery weather down here.

I'll try to call soon. Dad, I'm so sorry about forgetting to call back the other night. And today after work I had to stop at the grocery store again and get some yogurt because I have cankor sores really bad and by the time I got back I thought you'd be in bed. I will try my darndest to call Tuesday afternoon/evening. Tomorrow I have to work at JCrew again after the lab.

Tuesday should be fun. Stephen and I are taking Dr. Gribble out to lunch as an early thank-you for everything this summer. She's been great. I can't wait to have her for class now.

Okay, time to sleep. Up at six tomorrow to run. I'll be fine. I just need sleep and reassurance that everything's going to work out, that everything's going to be okay.

wednesday.

Nothing much going on today. Went running this afternoon as it was gorgeous outside and then Stephen and I played tennis.

I've decided that I'd like to make it my goal to run a marathon by the time I'm 25 years old. I think that's doable, and it'd give me something to run for and a reason to be disciplined about it. Grandpa Charlie ran marathons and I'd like to continue that tradition, if only for just one time.

Tomorrow I'm having a haircut. I'm very excited.

Stephen, Dr. Gribble, and I are going to head down to Pittsburgh for lunch next week. My birthday will be coming up and Dr. Gribble's birthday is on the 28th, so we'll be going to Nakama's (the sushi place) for lunch to celebrate and also as a thank-you to Dr. Gribble for working with us this summer.

Dr. Gribble mentioned off-hand today about wanting to work with us again next summer. Stephen says that he probably won't do it because he'd rather have a clinical internship or shadowing position, but I might be interested, especially because our research is just now taking off and we keep discovering things that don't have to do with our project. Example: today we found out that at a particular concentration, the fish' ears don't form. This creates problems with balance and the fish are forced to swim in circles because they don't know which way is up. SO interesting, and SO worth studying, but not at all relevant to our research for this particular summer...

I'm pooped. I asked for more hours at JCrew, and boy did I ever get them. I have tomorrow and Thursday off, and it'll be nice to get things wrapped up in the lab without rushing and get in to bed at a decent hour.

Updates:

I've started running again. When do I have time to run? In the mornings. I get up at six.

I'm going to start trying to go to mass in the mornings on any days that I DON'T work at JCrew. Otherwise it's just too much for me.

I have a haircut on Thursday! My hair is getting a little unruly. I'm going to get it pretty short I think, shorter than now even. Shorter because: One, it's too hot for it to be hanging in my face all summer. Two, I have to keep pinning it back in the lab so I don't burn or corrode it off. Three, I like getting haircuts. I'm a little nervous because all the haircutting places in Grove City seem a little shady, and this one I only picked because it's within walking distance of my house. I'm going to take a picture and show them what I want. We'll see if they get it right. If not, there's another hair cutting place four doors up the street. I'll go there the next time.

Finally, I may be in Erie on Friday the 24th of July. Torrie, Katie, and Ashley want to take me out on the town for my birthday and Torrie has dubbed the 24th as the day of choice. I'm still not sure I actually want to go, but asked for the day off anyway. Even if I don't end up going, maybe Stephen and I can catch a movie here or something.

a room of my own.

So life here in a house of 9ish people is amazing. I say 9"ish" only because on any given night of the week there may or may not be one or more additional people staying in the house. It's great, though. I love people and kids and noise. It's kind of like being an RA, actually. I thought that especially true this evening when the two eldest girls and their friend from school were sitting on my bed. We were having a heart-to-heart about the movie we'd just watched (Confessions of a Shopaholic) and how it relates to the perils of overspending and using credit cards and buying things you don't need.

And then they saw my open closet door and asked to try on all my shoes (they love shoes. there are TONS of shoes laying around this house) and we chatted on for a bit more. It was fun.

I've never had my own room before, and I have to say that it's sort of refreshing to have my own space. I'm barely ever here, but when I am it's nice to be able to listen to music when I want. Get up and go to bed when I please (usually very early to both), leave on as many nightlights as I see fit (currently two. don't judge me - I loathe the dark), and keep the fan on or off. I really like having a roommate at school because it's something like a big drawn-out sleepover, but it's actually pretty nice to get to be on my own for a little bit. I'm glad that this is the living arrangement I ended up with, rather than renting an apartment with other girls.

All of the kids here are really great and funny, especially the youngest, who yells "HI ARISSMA" every time I see her and then chatters on about various things. In church on Sunday she yelled hello and then went on to tell everyone around us about how I'm living in her house. Mrs. Coulter told me last week that the neighbors often ask, in reference to this youngest girl, "how is the empress today?" She's very demanding.

Never having had a large immediate family, it's awesome to see the dynamic. I've learned that I could never have six children, especially not if the person I end up marrying were to have a job that would require him to be gone for many hours of the day at odd times, and sometimes have to pick up and go back to work at a moment's notice. I've also learned not to leave anything you don't want to go missing at a level that can be reached by a 3-year-old.

monday.

So those pictures? I'm having a difficult time posting them, but I'm trying. Dr. Gribble put the zebrafish pics in a weird file format and I can't open them in normal places. It's a .tif format. I may just have to show you those ones when I see you next.

Dr. Gribble was telling us this morning that Duke is doing an experiment similar to ours and that we're going to try to get ours done and published before they do so they don't dominate the market. Apparently they just started but they have way more money and people than we do so there's the possibility that they finish their research first and then ours is sort of moot.

Anyway, I'm writing because I was thinking today when I was sitting out on Stephen's steps for a while, that Monday was one of the best days I've had in a long while.

Everything at the lab seemed to go really well. Stephen and I are finally figuring out how to do everything by ourselves and that was the first day that Dr. Gribble didn't have to babysit us the whole time. Jordan was visiting and he helped out in the lab a little bit and that was awesome and fun. Then we left work early, rode our bikes back to Stephen's apartment and made pasta for lunch/dinner in the early afternoon and sat around his living room eating pasta together and listening to music. Then I got to dress up and we drove to Pittsburgh and walked around a bit, ate sushi at the sushi bar, met Eric Hutchinson, saw that awesome concert got back not too late, watched a little of this new show the guys found. It was awesome. I love hanging out with Jordan and Stephen, all the three of us together. We get along so well. They're both great guys and they're hilarious together. I've missed Jordan this summer. During the school year, it's always some combination of the three of us hanging out and usually a forth rotating person. Usually it's one of my good friends LabJenn or Bekah. And without either of them and Jordan it just seems a little empty.

But Monday was great. I couldn't stop smiling. Not when I almost choked on a mouthful of pasta from laughing so hard, not when we were driving through Grove City with the windows down and I could smell fresh-cut grass and I felt - miraculously - WARM, especially not when walking around the city, or when we had to count to three to try some weird kind of sushi (everybody takes a bite on "three"), or when shaking hands with the guy whose concert we came to see. Or when Jane called my name to say hello when I got home.

Monday was a really great day.

And I think I'm getting better at feeling at home places much faster. But more on that later.

lots of pics.

So I'm putting up a bunch of pics today. I'll name the folder "Summer 2009" and it'll have pictures from all kinds of stuff that we've been doing and also some of the pictures of the fish that we've taken. These aren't the fish pictures that we took on the big microscope today, but some from our microscope at school.

I'm glad to have an evening off, and glad that I'll be able to go to bed early tonight. I was really happy to see Jordan for the last couple days, but it's nice that everything's back to normal. I'm especially nervous for being in the Coulters' huge empty house starting tomorrow and going through Sunday morning. I'll just leave lots of lights on.

saturday.

Crazy day.

Last night/this morning was Relay for Life. I was on a team with Stephen, Jordan, Pumpkin, Evan, Josh, Chuck, and Gummal's little brothers. Jordan was in charge of the Committee for Recruiting Girls and failed miserably. I only stayed till 2:30 and then I came back at 7:00. It was too long for me and I have a CellMolec test on Monday so I didn't want to be sleeping all day instead of studying.

Then this morning at 9:00 Dr. Gribble, Emily, Alex, and I spent about 3 hours doing in-vitro fertilization with the zebrafish. It was really awesome. We had a hard time getting the fish knocked out so that we could squeeze the eggs out of them, but after they were passed out we got tons of good eggs and sperm and we fertilized them and stuck them in petri dishes and we have 8 full petri dishes off baby fishes in their eggs down in the basement. The real test now is if the fish we did the experiment on today will live. They seemed okay and came out of the anesthetic pretty well, but it sometimes takes 24 hours for the drug to kill them, especially in this case when we had to use a much higher concentration than was advised. 

And all morning I'm standing there working so hard and Dr. Gribble puts a slide under the microscope and tells me to come look and I sit down and there are dozens and dozens of these tiny little eggs and I can see on them where the cells are starting to divide on one end. That's how you can tell that it's working - when the cells start to divide. And we all started cheering. Nothing EVER works for us on the first try in the zebrafish lab. And I just couldn't stop staring at this slide. I was so happy - that's why I study science even though I fail sometimes - because when I look down the microscope at tiny little baby fishes and I understand, down to the tiniest detail, of how it works and I know that being able to do something like this matters, it makes sense. It doesn't matter that I can't balance my equations during chem lecture; I can make baby fish in real life. 

pictures!

As promised, pictures (and lots of them!) from our trip. I'll explain them as best I can in captions, but if you have questions, I'll just have to tell you about them in May.

new plan

So I'll talk to you about this when next I call, but I think I've changed my plan...again.

Science is awesome, and I love it, but it's not worth the effort and angst that goes into it for me. I'm always upset and stressed out and my grades don't reflect the amount of work that I'm putting in. So I talked with my Spanish professors about masters and doctorates in translation and interpretation (which was the thing that I wanted to do in the first place).

So we decided that maybe the best thing to do would be to complete a biology minor (just 5 classes total. i have 2 of them done already.) and finish the spanish major strong and take some french classes and then really perfect the spanish and get into french and arabic in grad school. the biology minor would be helpful in locating a job within the government or in a hospital or something like that.

There are some really intensive summer language programs that might be good to look into, and my one spanish professor told me that there's an awesome internship in Pittsburgh where you work in the PPG building all summer doing translation for a law firm. Sounds like something I'd love to do.

Anyway, these are my thoughts. I'll talk it over with you when you get back from Hawaii.

breathing comes in pairs.

Sometimes Dad will say about a song that everytime he hears it, he notices something different about it.

There's this song on the new Fray CD that's kind of like that. It's called "Enough for Now" and I have no idea what it's supposed to be about. Look it up on YouTube and see if you can figure it out. Either way, it's got the most amazing lines:

"breathing comes in pairs,

except for twice:

one begins and one's goodbye"

Now, on a poetical level, it's sort of neat, but on a more literal level, it never occurred to me that a person always has an even number of breaths in their lifetime. 

Not sure why that's significant. It just struck me.

valentine's day.

I've posted a couple pictures from our Valentine's Day outing on my photo site. Take a look!

i'm an RA.

Being an RA is a little like suddenly acquiring 30-some children. You worry about them - wonder if they're getting enough sleep or if they're doing their homework, or if they're taking care of themselves. I tell them to be careful when they're going out for the night, I make them tea when they're sick, I hear every little noise at night, and I can tell who's coming down the hall just by hearing a laugh. 

This is undoubtedly the hardest job I've ever had, but it's also the most rewarding. It took me an entire semester to earn their trust and friendship, and now I love these girls. At first, I was ready to have them put up with me because they had to. Never did I imagine that I would feel such attachment to them. 

They're all beautiful, hilarious, dedicated young women. They love each other and they protect each other and I have never seen anything like it in my entire life. Even if I don't get to be their RA again next year, I'm so grateful to have been lucky enough to get to witness something like this during college. 

It's worth all the unrelated crap from last semester. They're amazing.

friday.

And the craziness begins.

This week, I was so overbooked that I didn't get to sit down and do homework until Wednesday night. It's insane.

RA stuff is a little over-the-top right now. Sorority pledge starts Monday morning and I've been working with the girls a lot trying to make sure they don't tick off or alienate the independents on the hall, and I've been sticking around a lot in case the girls need help or try to do something illegal.

Tonight I'm going over to Dr. Coulter's house. He's the professor whose family I may be living with over the summer (considering our proposal ever gets approved). I'm just going to talk with them for a little bit and see the rooms I'll be living in and all that jazz.

I've been benched for the season for lacrosse, but I'm still going to all the practices and games and stuff and helping to train the new goalie.

We had a meeting for our DR trip over Easter break yesterday. I really can't stand a couple of the guys who are going. One of them was making all these incredibly rude comments about girls, so Stephen, Jordan, and Pete came up with this plan to put him in his place. We got about 20 people in on it - any time anybody sees him on campus they're supposed to yell "YOU!" and then throw a snowball at him. Probably nobody'll do it, but it made us feel better to talk about hitting somebody in the face with a slush ball.

Tonight I'm just doing some homework and watching a movie with Stephen. I'm glad to have a few hours to relax after such a busy week.

skiing

Today's a really busy day. So take a look at the pics under "Spring 2009" and I'll give you a call when I get the chance...which probably won't be till Thursday.