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.