Done!!

I finished my take-home biochem final today... I've pretty much been working on it the last two days straight. Once again, a PhD comic pretty much sums things up...

That was totally me and Eva-Lynn over the last two days.

Anyhow, I'm actually done with a whole semester of grad school. Wow. Time to really enjoy Christmas break, now.

Speaking of which... Mark and Amy's wedding this weekend was spectacular!!! It was so great to see everyone again. I'll post some photos when I get my hands on some... I'm ashamed to say I only took a dozen photos over the weekend. This coming from the compulsive photography addict who usually takes hundreds of photos of any particular event. I was running around pretty frantically most of the time with best-man duties... but still. Shameful.

PhD... "Piled Higher and Deeper"

I came across this comic strip, "PhD," recently. It totally sums up life in grad school... it always leaves you (or me, at least) thinking, "That's SO true!!!!"

For example, I think many of us have been in this situation before (it happens to me about once a week):

One typical grad school event is the "group meeting"... each week your whole lab group gets together and someone gives an update on how their research is going. Then everyone tells them what they're doing wrong. It's often very painful. (As always, you can click on the image to make it bigger... sorry they're so small on here.)

I have definitely been the the first student on the left (twice now, all-nighters both times), and I am almost always the third student from the left (totally lost). I also often find myself thinking like the second and fourth students. I've never been the fifth student, because I always know exactly when and where there will be free food.

Finally, anyone who has lived with me will understand this one:

Instead of "going to bed," about a third of the time I fall asleep on the couch in my apartment, with the lights on, music playing, and papers spread around me. One time I slept all night with my laptop balanced on my chest.

Winter Wonderland Wanderings

I had to run an errand across campus yesterday. It was snowing, only the second time since I've been out here in Boulder, and everything was nicely frosted in crystalline awesomeness. Here at the 30,000-student University of Colorado, "across campus" is a lot farther than it was at Fox, especially if you don't know where you're going. The trip gave me plenty of snow-coated objects to admire, and my new cell phone has a pretty decent camera in it, so I started snapping photos.

The chemistry building. I pretty much live here.








Brrr.




I've been riding my bike to campus, but I wimp out when it's actually snowing. Other people are more dedicated. Our first-year Biochem Core course professor, for example. Occasionally he shows up at the last minute to teach our morning lecture -- wearing skin-tight, spandex bike pants. Sometimes he even grabs a button-up shirt and tucks it into the bike pants. I kid you not. Welcome to grad school... it's a whole new world in here.

Gettin' Hitched

At last.... the Great Blog Famine of May 2007 has passed. Pat's wedding prompted me to action. That's right... allow me to introduce you all to Patrick and Katherine Shuckerow:

They're going to have some beautiful Korean/Irish/Russian babies, don't you agree??

Our own Mr. Shuckerow has officially left the Beebe/Gulley Brotherhood for the greener pastures of wedded bliss. He shall be missed. But we didn't let him go without one last man-hug...

The Beebe/Gulley guys, minus Grant, Father Dane, and Teacher Ryan ("Lyon")




And, of course, no wedding would be complete without some groovin' moves...




....an epic battle or two (that's me in the tux vest)....




...and a few familiar, friendly, fresh, freakishly fabulous faces.

Speaking of weddings.... Grant did some Hitching of his own a few weeks back. A few of us were able to road-trip it up for the big day.

Grant and Brittney got married in this old mansion that we're pretty sure must be haunted. We went wandering in the bowels of the building.... and we lost Mark when Dave got a little exited with an executioner's axe.



Enjoying a round of Uno Splash at Dave's house

That's not all, folks... click here, if you dare, for more photos from two very radical weddings.

PS -- For those still waiting patiently for more Honduras awesomeness.... fear not. Good things come to those who wait.....

Far Out

Q: What do Martha Stewart, space tourism, and Microsoft Word have in common?
A: More that you think.

Sometimes we make fun of movies for being too ridiculous and far-fetched.... what about when real life is too weird to take seriously?

Introducing Charles Simonyi, former Microsoft employee, and ¨chief architect¨ of MS Word and Excel. Recently Charles paid over $20 million to ride shotgun on a Russion rocket to the International Space Station. That makes him Space Tourist #5, and the self-proclaimed First Nerd in Space. He spent almost two weeks in space, documenting his trip with blog entries, photos, and vidoes, on his website charlesinspace.com.

The Russian cosmonauts he rode up with have awesome names like Oleg Kotov and Fyodor Yurchikhin (pronounced exactly like ¨your chicken¨). In one video on the website, they are asked how Charles performed during the flight up. In an incredibly thick, almost cartoon-like Russian accent, Dr. Your-Chicken responded, ¨Yes, ov course Charlez iz not professional cosmonut…. but ve dunt hav anny problem vis Charles. For us he iz vun ov crew member.¨ (Translation: ¨we don´t have any problem...¨ he´s ¨one of crew member.¨) Classic. If it were in a movie, we´d complain it was too corny.

And the icing on the cake... in Kazakhstan on launch day to see Charles off was none other than Charles´s ¨good friend¨ Martha Stewart. There was talk that Charles might be proposing from space. Yeah. Very, very weird.

PS -- Don´t worry, I´m not done posting about Honduras yet. Check back soon...

It´s a Small World After All

Sorry about the major lack of blogs over the past week or so…. this was my last week at the hospital, so things have been a bit hectic. And last weekend I was away, making a quick trip to the island of Utila… more on that once I’ve had a chance to go through the 500 or more pictures I took over the weekend (I tend to get a little carried away).

In the meantime, here are some more Little Things that caught my attention in the last few weeks…

There are some awesome metallic-looking beetles and wasps around here. Very cool.



This big moth practically smacked me in the face the other night while I was reading in bed… I was annoyed at it, until it landed and I realized how awesome it looked.




Not only did it have awesome colors (for a moth, I guess), but it didn’t fold its wings back like a normal moth…. it would just sit there with them flared in crazy directions.




Personally, I think it might be a mutant super-moth… I wonder if it’s an honorable crime fighter, or an evil monster dedicated to death and destruction….




This guy is definitely an evil monster dedicated to death and destruction.




Speaking of death and destruction..... This huge swath of army ants marched out of the jungle past the staff housing building the other day. They apparently were out for a day of pillaging and plundering, because that afternoon they came marching back past the building into the jungle, carrying lots of ants and ant eggs and various other dead bugs…. the spoils of victory.




These guys were pretty vicious… I stuck a blade of grass down at the line to see what would happen, and a couple of ants went completely nuts, biting and stinging the end of it… after that I was very careful as I stuck my camera inches away from them.



Apparently sometimes the huge swath of ants goes right through the staff housing building… there’s not a lot you can do when a thick line of thousands of ants come marching across the floor and up the wall. Just hide the food. And the babies… wouldn’t want them to get carried off.

I haven’t had a chance to figure out how to post a video right into the blog, but click here if you want to see a clip Jesse took of the sidewalk literally covered in a moving carpet of ants…

Just remember... they´re more afraid of you than you are of them.

Happy (Belated) Easter!

Last week (the week leading up to Easter) was "Semana Santa" here in Honduras.... Holy Week. Sort of. It's called Holy Week, but it's not particularly holy.... it's more like Party-on-the-Beach Week. The secular culture just enjoys a week off, basically ignoring the Jesus-dying-for-our-sins part. You know, the whole point of the holiday. Not that we're any better... be honest, what do you spend more time thinking about during the Christmas season: God or gift lists?

Anyhow, the local church I've been going to with the Harmons held a special "event" down on the beach during Semana Santa. Proper attire for church down here is long pants (for guys) and skirts (for girls), and we assumed that those rules applied for the special service as well. What we didn't realize was that the "service" was more of a church picnic.

So we showed up in our Sunday best...

... only to discover a rollicking....



...frolicking....



...Honduran beach barbecue in progress.



We didn't exactly blend in. ;)

Despite being slightly over-dressed, we still had an awesome afternoon. I made sure to partake of the four basic F's: food, fun, fellowship, and Fotography.








Honduran worship, unplugged.



Steaks, anyone?

Then, on Easter Sunday, the missionary community held a sunrise service down on the beach. Unfortunately, the sun rises at 5:30. That's very, very early.

Mmmmm.....

Living in Harmon-y

And now, for a long-overdue introduction.... (drum roll, please).... I give you... the Harmons!!! (cue trumpet fanfare). And, as an added bonus, you get to meet Grandma, who happened to be visiting for a week when this photo was taken.

From the left: Patty 1 (Tom's wife), Patty 2 (Tom's mom), Tom, Jesse, Peter

For those who don't know, the Harmons are a family from my church who are living down here in Honduras for several months. Tom is working in the hospital as an anesthetist:

... while Jesse and Peter get to spend a semester doing school in the jungle:

Patty and the kids have also gotten involved in various outreach ministries and hospital projects, including using a lensometer (no, I didn't make that up) to sort over 3,000 pairs of glasses for the eye clinic...

The Harmons are basically my adopted family down here. I live in the same building as them, I get rides with them to local churches and missionary get-togethers, I send my grocery list with them when they into town to go shopping, usually I eat dinner with them anyway... they even take me on some of their adventures. The other day we went on a quest across the Honduran countryside for the legendary Bambu Waterfall....

Our romp to get there took us through several little villages, a few river crossings, and many miles of muddy, potholed roads.

Tom plots his course... at one point water actually washed over the hood of the truck. Way cool.



Have burro, will travel.

Interestingly, there didn't seem to be any bamboo anywhere near the Bamboo Waterfall, nor have I seen any in Honduras. The nearest village was named El Bambu, though.... what's up with that? Crazy Hondurans.



We youngsters went for a dip... as you can see, this was before the tragic demise of the waterproof camera.



Sorry, ladies.... he's unavailable. ;)