BACK TO SCHOOL! START TO WORK!

I thought summer would never end! But it is finally over and I am back into the swing of things. You wouldn't believe the relief I feel at being back to work. And speaking of work, I have started my new research position with The Mahoney Neural Tissue Engineering Lab under the tutalidge of graduate student Rachael Mooney, who is cool as hell. She doesn't even mind that I am a complete bonehead.

I went in to meet her yesterday and she put me to work right away. She showed me around then put me in front of a hood and had me taking pink stuff out of here and putting clear stuff in to there and put the pink stuff back and then taking it out again and shaking things up... boy is this stuff complicated! I really get a kick out of all this Chem and Bio stuff, and Rachael has a sense of humor, so she doesn't get mad at me when I call the Photo-initiator "Mr. Foil Tube" and the Polymer "The Powder Keg". Its so great, I work in a steril environment! STERIL! We constantly spray ourselves and everything we work with in ethyl alcohol.

So it turns out that I have a project myself! I thought I would just be doing side bar stuff for Rachael's project, but nope I have a project all to me. It turns out that my project is to test Rachaels project. So she will be making the Fibrin/PEG polymer mixture and I'll be putting the PC12 Rat StemCells into a hydrogel with it. Eventually making cool pictures like these. At first I was totally bewildered with all this chemistry and bio stuff, she kept on using words that I didn't know and multiplying by factors for which I couldn't account, but luckily for me (and not so lucky for Rachael) the first batch of hydrogels didn't work, we think because of something that went wrong with the polymer, so I got to do the whole thing over again today along with a turnicated version. So now I am mister cool in the lab, running here and there grabbing stuff from shelves, cabinets and drawers.

I have people ask me all the time how this stuff has to do with physics, and now I really understand the answer. Physics is such a great subject because it gives you such a fundemental understanding of how things work. So when Rachael is talking about stuff I have never heard of in my life, I just kinda stare off into space and think of what is happening physically and even though I might not know the names for what I see, I am usually on the money with the process. So Rachael seems as psyched as me to be working together. And I'll just say this also, Physics REALLY teaches you how to pick stuff up fast! We are expected to pick up three semesters of electrical engineering in a one semester lab class for example. I really could have done the entire process today by myself had I been expected to.

So I expect this to be a damned difficult semester but FUN AS HELL!

Andy

Prostitution Ban

A few nights ago my roommate Chris and I had the very awkward, yet vital, "rules of prostitution" talk. And it was decided that for the time that we live together here on Sundown Lane we would not entertain prostitution in or near the apartment. We added the "near" part after long debate as to whether prostitution would be allowed on the balcony. It ended in the idea that if prostitution was held on the balcony, such prostitute would necessarily have been in the apartment and would violate the terms of the foremade agreement.

On further speculation as to the case where one of us was to befriend a prostitute, be it male or female, if that prostitute would be allowed in the apartment. It was agreed that, though unfortunate, it would be unproven to the other party that lived in the apartment that had not befriended such prostitute that prostitution was not taking place, that befriended prostitute would not be allowed in the apartment. The befriended prostitute could possibly wait for the said friend just outside the door or on the balcony (as prostitution in this case would be very unlikely).

Now you may be wondering why such a conversation came about and why a rule had to be set. Well I will tell you. The other day a young lady came knocking at our door. This young lady greeted me with, "Hi, I'm your new roommate you ordered from eBay!", I immediately suspected the young lady was very confused or was a prostitute. To make sure she wasn't just confused I told the young gal that I had a roommate and that I hadn't ordered anything off of eBay. She continued to insist that she was ordered from eBay, so I thought that perhaps Chris had bought some time with a prostitute on eBay. So I call for Chris to tell him his girl from eBay was here. He walked up and denied ever ordering a prostitute from eBay nor a roommate. So we were in quite the pickle... It turns out she was selling magazines and wasn't a prostitute.

We were talking about this later, Chris and I, and I told him how I suspected that he had ordered a prostitute. He thought the idea was quite absurd. I told him that when I did think that it was his prostitute I was quite upset, and that I was ok with him having dates over but that I draw the line at prostitution, for the mere fact that they are prone to drug use and theft, and as he agreed early-on to maintaining a drug free environment here at the apartment I felt that he had gone back on his word. But as that didn't happen things were well and we did come to an agreement on the issue of prostitution in the apartment.

This may seem like an odd thing to come up in life, but I assure you, when living with others, it is very important that you make boundaries very clearly so that all parties are made comfortable in any situation.

First day of school today... It sucked.

Andy

Just bored

Not much going on today, just hung out all day. My roommate is worried he is gunna get fat cause he keeps on buying up sale items at the store and Costco, I thought that was pretty funny. Chris is really active, even when he says he isn't. Says he hasn't done a thing in a week but he was at the gym at 12 in the morning today, when I was just rolling out of bed to make me some oatmeal... damn that stuff is good. Almost makes waking up worth it.

Andy

And The Ground Shakes

Things are changing all over the place, making me all the more insane. My parents have come and gone. My mom left me a bunch of ones, which I like to refer to as "stripper cash." One particular highlight was on the first night my parents got tipsy at The Rio Grande, and while I walked them back to the car I passed a pretty gal from school. I was terribly embarrassed, she pretended she didn't know me, which was probably for the best. I would have really liked to stop and say hi, but thats not wise with drunk parents at your side.

I have started preparing for my return to the academic world. I have stocked up on trash novels, and I have started working with my World of Warcraft character again. I was really excited to see that some of the people I used to run with in the game have banded together again, calling themselves "Knights of Eldergods", I would have never known, but one of them was doing something that was unique to us... selling crap for A LOT of money. Half Robin Hood we are, we take from the rich... thats it. My character looks like this, and is named Rappaccini (from the short story Rappaccini's Daughter, because rogues in game use poison). When I am unwinding from scholastics, I'll be kicking it as this guy. If I have learned anything from WoW, its that stealing may be wrong, but it is so very fun!

I'm actually kind of sad, because I won't be talking with a friend I have had for some time. I shouldn't be so sad, cause we didn't talk for a very long time, but the idea of not talking forever is a bit rough. But like everything else, I'll get use to it. Like I say, people invented the Cleaver for a reason, to cut things off in one chop, like bad relationships.

What is even more amazing is that people that aren't on my common characters list have been commenting on my blog! How cool is that?! Thanks Odie, Patricia, Blair!

Still Kickin' It

I didn't post last week, but OH was it a week. So I wrote on Sunday that I was worried about Denny, but never fear Denny is back in perfect form. Last Thursday she got herself a new car (That lucky Devil), a 1999 Saab 95 V6 for only $5000! It is all black and pretty as hell. I drove her into Denver Friday night to pick it up. She got it from a car broker, who is cool as hell. I took his card, just in case I ever wanted a new car. So she is happy as hell.

While in DennyLand, I should mention that we had an outting on Sunday also! Denny, Chris, and I all went hiking out by Estes Park with her dog Opie. Denny was dead set on going farther in the park than she ever has, so we walked all the way to the resevior, where Opie proceded to swim like a fish. I swear Denny was half dead on the walk up though, she isn't used to walking that far, that high. We made it up and back though, and Chris got a new friend here in Colorado. Actually he made two friends, Denny AND Opie. He got to spend a lot of quality time with Opie in the back of Denny's new car on the ride up and back. Poor kid.

Thursday, Bev and I took our trip to prison. I saw a lot of inmates this time cause we actually went in. The place was nice looking. I've never seen so many well behaved dogs in my life! And they were all crazy as hell when they went in four weeks ago. That place really works mirracles. They put on a demo with all the dogs that were leaving that day, for the owners of those dogs. It was nuts! They put all the dogs together and called them out one by one and the dogs just sat there until they were called. Then they put one dog in the middle and had all the other dogs walk around it. The dog just sat there looking around until the trainer called it! If I ever get a dog for myself it is gunna be a prison dog, they train them well. And you can board them there at the prison for two weeks for only $125, which is cheap as hell, and they get trained while they are there! That was a pretty cool adventure.

Finally, on Saturday I was in the mountains also, moving furniture for an older lady. Turns out, lifting things when you don't have any oxygen is pretty difficult. But we moved a third of a house full of stuff from one place to another in one day and it was pretty good exercise, so it was a good day.

Thats all the excitement I had last week, I wonder what will be happening this week!?!

As The World Turns

So, LENA's BACK! Finally someone came back! Well she has been back for a while, but we just finally hung out yesterday. We went to the Celestial Seasonings factory, we thought we had missed all the tours, but we ended up catching an extra tour they decided to do for some German tourists. Lena caught on to that, smarty pants kids and their learning other languages! She even talked to them at the end of the tour in German, I spoke to them ON the tour in English... so HA! I don't remember what it was, probably some vulgar comment about our cute guide, who knows.

In other news my roommates mother has left us this morning. Its pretty sad, cause now we don't have someone to get us to do stuff. After group my new roommate, named Chris, and I went to Chautauqua and hiked up to the Flatirons where he proceeded to climb up in sandals, he is a pretty good climber. I feel bad for him cause I remember being home sick my first time alone here in Colorado. At least his mom took some time to get him settled in. I really hope he doesn't withdraw, cause I would really like to have someone to do things with.

Also today, I got conformation from the Mahoney Group, so YEAH! for me.

Andy

Scary Sunday Morning

Yesterday started off with a huge scare! Saturday night I called Denny, my church buddy, to see if she was going to go to church in the morning, and I found that her cellphone was off. Come 9:30am Sunday I still hadn't heard from her, so I decided to call her on her home phone. No answer, GRrrr. So I leave a message, she usually screens calls, so I figured she would pick up... nope. At 10am she still hadn't answered, so I decided that she probably would need a ride anyway, so I'd go to her house in Longmont, about 20mins away.


I got to her house, and there were three papers in the driveway and her plants hadn't been watered in a while... thats when I got scared. Denny is a florist, she doesn't let plants go without watering often. Her house looked like it had been made lightproof recently also with all the drapes and blinds closed. So it looked as if there was a bout of depression set in, and I had thought that she may have had a suicidal moment a week earlier when she drove her car into a couple trees. At this point I went into "Wellness Check" mode. I went back to my place, looked up her daughter in Golden, made sure that I could get ahold of her, and set the clock. If I didn't hear from Denny within two days, her daughter was gunna get a call and Denny's house was gunna get some visitors.


luckily Denny ended up calling me around 1pm and told me that she had been Camping with her AA Sponsor since Friday because she was having a depression over her recent breakup. Her sponsor had given her 20mins notice that she was going, so she didn't have time to tell anyone where she was going. Hehe, her ex-boyfriend ended up showing up at the camp because his sponsor had the same idea... oops.

So that was the scare of Sunday! Craziness as usual.

Andy

My New Roommate

My new roommate has moved in. He is 24 and Chinese American. He moved in on Tuesday and it has been a whirlwind of action since. His mom is staying with us until Monday, and she is a fireball of action. She has been feeding me so much I think I may have gained around 5lbs since she arrived.

Today we went on a Denver exploration. I can now say that I have been EVERYWHERE in Denver. We specifically saw the Coors Brewery, Hammond's Candy Factory, and the Coors Field home of the Colorado Rockies. Unofficially we saw just about everything else. We walked down the 16th street mall, scoured the area for a Little China area, which we did end up finding around the Little Mexico area. Not my kind of place, a few too many Bail Bond shops per block. Otherwise we just drove around and saw the sites. There was supposed to be a little canal trip that we were gunna take, but it was closed for the day. All this was accomplished without much trouble because they have a GPS map system in their car that continuously gave us directions... my god how it helps!

Andy

Since no one is using MSN Spaces anymore, I decided to make the move to this one, which I think looks pretty cool.

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