Female · Composer

Not gonna lie...but this video kinda made me cry the first time around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntReE2n15bo&eurl=http://skepchick.org/blog/

Wow...had an interesting weekend. First off, I went to a pool party a couple of days ago. One of my friends invited me to his friend's pool party, which was cool..because now I got to really get to know my friend's friends. If that made ANY sense at all. It was really fun though..cause there was copious amounts of drinking involved. At first I was nervous about drinking around a pool, but after starting to drink..it was all gone. Ha. So there was lots of physically involved drinking games that ended in lots of beer all over the table and side of the pool. There was also lots of pushing other people in the pool and flipping people into the water. Lots of fun. I got decently banged up...at one point my friend is trying to help me out of the pool at the deep end (cause it's decently hard) and so he reaches down and grabs both of my hands and just drags me out of the pool. He ended up just scraping my leg against the concrete side and leaving a pretty good burn/abrasion on the side of my leg. I also got lots of bruises that I didn't remember getting...haha. I think it was simply because I was having too much fun to realize that I was getting them. I have a pretty dark purple bruise on the top of my left thigh, and then I have a palm-sized bruise on the bottom of my right left that looks (I swear) like a Swastika. It's creepy. I feel a bit nervous with a swastika on my leg. haha. I'm also sore from swimming for about...6 hours. It was an awesome party.

Also, my parents have just recently started turning to healthier foods, which is fantastic. However, I feel as if they might get caught in a trap by anything and everything that claims to be "healthy and organic." They are decently skeptical people, so the fact they are suddenly just picking up all of these health food products makes me nervous. Also...I have been telling them to eat healthier for years. I don't know. My mother says that my father has been seeing plenty of his friends die from heart attacks or suffer from other health defects..etc etc, and it was just kind of a slap in the face because my father's health has not been the greatest lately (cholesterol, diabetes, sleep apnea, etc etc). I don't know...it just sorts of makes me nervous. I feel like they are going to -force- me to do all of this as well...which is not necessarily bad for my health, but I'm pretty healthy already....arg. I don't know

That is the extent of my weekend. Time to get off to the lab to work on a DNA extraction and PCRs. I really need to keep myself busy. I've been thinking way too much again lately.....

Had the most crazy dream last night. It was one of those ones that makes you jerk awake, and the first thing through your head is "oh Thank God." Most of the details are muddled and obscure (as they almost always are after you wake up). I remember something about a submarine...but that has nothing to do with the scariest part.

Something had happened to me, I had swallowed something ridiculously poisonous, and it had turned out that someone was trying to kill me. I don't remember anything about what I ate except for that the poison was thick, almost like karo syrup, and such a deep purple that it was almost black. I was ridiculously scared, because I had been force fed this poison, and although I had tried to resist with all my life's worth, he had managed to get it down my throat. So I was rushed to a hospital, and stuck in a bed and hooked up to IVs and various other machines that beeped and hummed. I was poke and prodded and forced to throw up several times...over and over and over....and then it all just went still. All of the nurses and doctors left the room...there was nothing that could be done for me. Over the time of the dream, all of my senses started to slow down....but my mind was still going as fast as it normally does. It's quite an experience really. Just then, a guy rushed into the room (who shall remain nameless at the moment, but I -do- know him.) and starts to sob hysterically on my bed. He tells me how he had never meant to hurt me during our lives together...and that he felt so completely helpless because he could not save me. I'm thinking at this point..."Save me? Why do I need saved?" and then it dawns on me that I am going to die. My stomach churns and my body breaks out in a sweat while going completely numb at the same time. Die? Why? I can't die now! All the while I can feel this thick poison oozing through my body and slowing everything down....my heart should be pumping faster because I have never been more scared in my life, but it just seems to be slowing down. The guy is hysterical, and he looks down at me and says, "Ashley, since I couldn't save you, I'm going with you." He then drinks something, and lies down in the hospital bed with me. We both cuddle up to each other, and I can feel the both of us slowing down. My mind is hysterical at this point, because I don't really believe in any sort of afterlife. All I know is what I have been through on Earth, and the idea of my being suddenly becoming nonexistent in time and space just scares the crap out of me. I'm struggling to stay alive, but in my mind all I can imagine is falling asleep and never waking up again. Simply receding into black. The heart machine along the wall is beeping slower, and slower, and slower.....and all of a sudden, I look at the guy one more time...and then my heart stops. The long "beeeeeeeeeeeeee" fills my ears, and I am amazed that I am still conscious even though my heart as stopped....The guy smiles and me, strokes my face...and then his eyes slowly close has he dies...and my vision fades to black.

I then wake up violently, my heart racing, and I'm on verge of crying. I realize where I am, and I do start crying, simply for pure joy at the fact that it was all a dream...and then I almost immediately fall back asleep and didn't dream a single thing for the rest of the night. I have no idea what to make of it....but I have never been so scared in a dream before. I honestly thought I had died.

So I just got done hanging out with one of my neighbors, and I never realized how...boring and safe and cautious I am. She is completely free with what she does and how she lives....and I feel lonely and jealous for some reason. I have been talking to John lately, and I really miss him, and I have been doubting the friends I have....and I wonder if I would still feel jealous if I wasn't so self-aware right now. She just seems like a completely awesome person to be with. That...and John hung out with her a lot last night. I am still hurt from when he dumped me. I really miss him. I -really- miss him. John is also just an amazingly awesome person. I am surrounded by amazing people...and it makes me wonder why they would even want to hang out with me. I feel really.....*sighs*....lacking.

Lately I have been feeling...odd. I'm not entirely sure if this makes any sense, but I feel as if I am just not as good at life as everyone else. I keep trying to do lots of things, and I feel like I'm missing the target by about an inch. I feel as if everyone just doesn't get what I am trying to do...and then tell me I'm doing it wrong. I'm in a translucent box...and I can move and communicate with everyone around me...but no one can touch me at all.

I feel lonely. I feel exposed. I feel cut off. I feel....not good enough.

So my Genetics professor is completely awesome. I am always going to his office to talk to him about things....mainly things that have nothing directly to do with the class. Mostly about grad schools, life, figuring out what I want to do...etc. He talks to me about when he was younger (cause, honestly..he's still young), and about his wife and how she is doing in her pregnancy (YAY!)...etc etc. I don't think I have ever felt this completely comfortable around a professor before (except for Mrs. Morse). He is such a nerd too. It's a huge consolation to me to know that I can connect with other nerds of any age.

So I was in his office on Friday, and we were talking about the stuff that I want to do as a career. I was a little worried that finding a field that dealt with Music, psychobiology and neurogenetics was going to be hard. Turns out...there's a decent number of people in this field already. I was explaining that I could do a bunch of brain tests on my little sister, because she wants to be a professional musician, and he starts going into I could hook up a bunch of wires to her brain WHILE she's at a concert. I thought it was hilarious....and what if I could hook up certain colored lights to particular areas of the brain, so that when the neurons fire in that area...the light flashes on stage? So my sister is sitting there playing some Mozart clarinet solo or something, and then different colors would be flashing all around the stage!! A self brain induced light show!! My professor gets so ridiculously excited about this idea...and we both start laughing hysterically. I told him that is I ever seriously tried to pull that off...I would call him, and give his family free tickets to the show.

He is so completely awesome. Not only that, but I feel like I can really learn a lot from him. It is sort of a daily ritual now for me to show up at his office to talk about...well...whatever. My philosophical discussions with him are my favorite. Also...the ones about nature and nurture. And he always good suggestions for books to read. He just seems to know what I would be interested in. It's...weird.

So yeah. I'm back in the 757 now. If you want to hang out, feel free to call my cell. Also, I got my amazingly cute new glasses. I think they make me look super smart, but mother thinks I looked smart to begin with, so she simply called them "sophisticated". They have green frames. (go figure, right?) Super awesome. I didn't realize, however, how bad my vision was getting....I had to experience the lovely "why is the ground so frickin' close" feeling when I put them on. On the other hand...I feel like I have some sort of superpower simply because I can read -really- far away (by my standards). Yeah. 

That is all. 

Oh goodness...I am so ridiculously exhausted. How long have I been up here at college now? I think it has been about a month...and I seriously have not had a free weekend. The only difference between my weekdays and weekends is the fact that I don't have classes on the weekend. That's it. I wish I could just do what I want on a Saturday. Tomorrow I have to get up early in order to read who knows how many papers to get my proposal done. Then I have to clean my room. If I don't clean my room, then I might seriously hurt myself walking from the door to the bed. Then I need to see if there is any food I need to replenish.

At the moment, however, I just wish that I could find something to do on a frickin' Friday night. I feel so lonely and unloved. *sighs*.

In other news. I can't wait until Katsucon next weekend.

I shall go find something to do and/or collapse.

So the sampling that was supposed to happen today didn't actually happen. We went to Shenandoah lake to collect some samples, and not only was the water COMPLETELY frozen, but it had receded from the dock about 100 yards. I tried to get to edge of the lake...but within 10 yards of the edge of the water, I started sinking down into the mud. Fun. So my professor wasn't very happy about that. Other than that...my ball is rolling, and I'm so glad that everything is gearing up and getting speed.

....still not sure about that guy. I think I need to talk to him in order to see what is going on.

Stuff is really starting to pick up around here. Went to see my Advisor today in order to figure out what I am going to do for Graduate School. I figure that I should go to Grad school for Genetics, since I want to be an Evolutionary Geneticist (that happens to work in the field of Marine Biology). My advisor told me to look at schools that have Genetics programs, but then they should have a Marin Biology program at the same time...so I can just waltz over there whenever I feel like it. So that means that I am more than likely going to be staying on the East Coast. However, there is the question of whether I will actually be graduating on time. I was all ready to go with getting internship applications together, but then I started to question as to whether I actually needed to do an internship. Turns out, that since I am doing undergraduate research for the department, I don't -have- to do some sort of internship. However, I DO need to take as many classes as possible in as short of time as possible, seeing as my parents are only going to be paying for four years of college. So... I am going to be staying at college over the summer in order to take Organic Chemistry. Possibly BOTH semesters of organic chemistry. Not at the same time...but...well, It's complicated.

SO! All of that is basically put together...and then I went to talk to my undergraduate research professor. She wants me to coauthor with her on a paper to be published (as I have stated earlier). The project we had been thinking on taking up has to do with the DNA sequences of a particular gene in copepods (microscopic crustacean). Let me see if I can explain at all. There is a gene that is called 18S, which is a good marker to distinguish the difference between families. Compared to the outgroup, the more nucleotide pair differences, the more evolutionarily distant that particular species is from the outgroup. However, when you get to genus and species, there is no real difference in the 18s gene. However, there is another gene, ITS2, which can help to differentiate between species of copepod, which is very helpful. It's almost like a barcode. A particular nucleotide sequence codes for a particular species. It is good that the gene acts in such a way, because many of the individual species are SO DIFFICULT to identify. Because of a phenomenon called chromatin diminution, copepods have the ability to evolve very rapidly. I have a feeling that they can evolve so rapidly that that is the reason why indentification is a such a bitch. Anyways...the project that I am going to take on explores the differences in the ITS2 gene in a single species over the span of several continents. Anyways...yeah. Should be interesting. Also, it will look very good for Grad school applications.

Ah crap. I forgot to ask my advisor about tests I need to take for Grad school. Damn.

Other than that...I am heading up to UVA for the weekend in order to visit some friends. I can't wait! Should be fun! I LOVE going to visit friends. Much fun shall be had.

Also. I met a guy over the weekend, and I'm not sure if sparks flew or not. He got my phone number, but like a ditz...I didn't get his. I have seen him once since the initial meeting on Friday, and he was acting about as nervous as I felt. He wouldn't sit still! He is about 24, and he works for the local theater department by building sets and working lights and sound systems. He intrigues me, but....I don't know that much about him...so I can't really say if I'm interested or not. Flirting is really fun with him....but....*shrugs*. We'll see what happens. *laughs*...oh. And he looks like Jesus. Hair to his chin, and full mustache and beard.

Yeah. I think that is it. I am already behind in Animal Physiology, so I need to read a couple of chapters. Genetics seems to be going well. And I am still completely obsessed with classical music. Rachmaninoff in particular. Amazing music.

I have to get to bed so I can get up and go out to the lake to do sampling.