Category: life events

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One more rotation…

So on Monday afternoon, I’m starting my fourth (and final?) rotation with Dr. Heather Macarthur. I’m actually pretty excited about this rotation since, for the first time, I’m doing research in stuff I’m pretty interested in. I wanted to go to SLU because of the research going on in Dr. Westfall’s lab, and Dr. Macarthur works really closely with him…thus, the research is similar…

Here’s the rundown: Parkinson’s Disease is characterized by a loss of motor control because (so far as we know) neurons localized in your brain (acround the cerebellum and nucleus accumbens…I think…) die for some reason. It is thought that one way these neurons die is due to oxidative stress. For those of you who know anything about chemistry, there are things called “free radicals,” which are analogues of known compounds that are missing an electron…hence, they “want” to bind with something else by any means necessary. In the body, these free radicals can do a lot of damage and can end up damaging or killing a given cell. We take antioxidants (and we have natural ones in our bodies…) to prevent damage by free radicals…surely you’ve heard of those…
Well, dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is important in controlling our body movements in our brain (among other functions). Apparently, there is a “version” of dopamine known as dopaminochrome that is essentially a dopamine free radical… If this stuff accumulates in your brain, it can kill off the cells it inhabits…and in Parkinson’s patients, it is possible that this molecule ends up accumulating where dopamine is normally localized.

(side note: as Dr. Macarthur pointed out to me, we normally think of Parkinson’s patients as moving uncontrollably. Actually, Parkinson’s patients would normally not be able to move at all, but the drugs we give them flood the cells with dopamine, causing more uncontrollable movement. I didn’t know that…thought it was interesting… :-P)

Anyway, Dr. Macarthur’s lab works with dopaminochrome in rats, detecting it and analyzing its effects. Actually, they use a drug that causes Parkinson’s-like effects in rats or cell lines, which allows for testing. I’m not sure exactly what I’ll end up doing in her lab, but I think I’ll be messing with an HPLC (high pressure liquid chromatography) that’s been modified to detect dopaminochrome in a variety of situations… If all goes well, then I’ll be doing this stuff for the next 4 years until I get a Ph.D… 😛

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On getting fit(ter)…

So yeah, Nathan and I are going backpacking over Spring Break again, so I’m trying to work out a bit more than I had been before. Last year, I did alright, but certainly should have been able to hike further and faster. I’m back to being able to jog for 20 min straight at a pace of 6.5 mph, which is a little over a nine minute mile. My goal is to be jogging for 20 min at 7.5 mph, which is about an eight minute mile. I think, by mid-March, that should be entirely attainable.

On a related note, my new frame pack arrived yesterday…5600 ci Kelty Red Cloud for about $100, so it was a steal ($75 less than at REI). I’m excited to get to use it! I still need to get a water filter though, since a). mine broke last year and b). I can’t trust Nathan to bring iodine tablets to cover our asses when we get stuck in the middle of nowhere and have to boil water to stay alive.

…but that’s another story…

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Joining the 21st Century…

So, Brooke and I made the switch from basic (i.e. not digital) cable last week to DISH network. We’re getting a few less channels (about 65 channels total…) than we did, but we have their DVR service for $10 less per month, without having to pay for equipment or set-up.

So far, the service is pretty damned good. I’ve only noticed one time when the reception wavered a bit (watching “SVU” last night…), but it wasn’t that detrimental to my viewing experience. The DVR itself will record up to two things at once and has a 100 hour limit to what it can store, so we’ve got every show we regularly watch during the week programmed. Actually, we have it specifically set to only record new episodes, rather than all of them.

Overall, it’s pretty cool. Nice to not have to record everything to VCR…that, and I can now pause “The Daily Show” when I take a shower and come back to it when I’m ready…w00t! 😛

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Long week…

So, it’s been a relatively long week. Unfortunately, my grandmother passed away on Dec. 26th in the early morning hours after complications from breaking her hip on Dec. 23rd. While it was unfortunate, it’s best that she wasn’t relegated to a nursing home; it would have taken 6-8 weeks to recover from the hip surgery, and even then, it was likely that a). she would have had to stay in rehab or a nursing home even longer and b). that the other hip joint would have given out within two years. She had a stroke 18 years ago that caused her to spend a lot of time in rehab and she vowed to never do it again. I’m just glad she didn’t have to. It really sucked that it had to happen at Christmas time, let alone that she was to turn 84 on Jan. 3rd. Regardless, it’s likely that she shouldn’t have survived the stroke in the first place; she fought to recover and was able to spend the last 18 years watching her grandkids grow up. And for that, and many other reasons, I’ll never forget her.

Anyway, that ordeal has taken up most of my Christmas break… I start class again on Jan 4th (grrrrrrrrrrrrrr…), so I’m going to spend the next few days being as worthless as possible. We had a few people over last night for a New Year’s shin-dig and I think we all had a good time.

I’ve also been having problems with the web server…I’m trying to get the whole thing fixed up, but I’m afraid it’s a hard drive failure… The system keeps requiring a reboot to fix it and then I have to run the equivalent of a “scandisk” to fix it (“fsck,” for those Linux-users out there). So yeah, I’m trying to fix it, but this site may be up and down from time to time.

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One down, nine to go…

Semesters, that is…average… My last exam was today…finally…and I think it went generally alright. That last section hurt quite a bit and dropped me down from #3 to the middle of the class (of 9 people) again, but that’s cool…I’m doing alright overall, and I think I have “A’s” in my other 3 “classes” (only one of which is a real class…). Either way, glad that it’s finally over and now I get a break…until January 4th… Stoopid grad skool…

Anyway, we’re going to Hannibal tomorrow night until Christmas morning, then heading to Columbia for a few days. If you’re in the area, give the cell a buzz or something… We’re going to be here in St. Louis for New Year’s Eve, so lemme know if you’ll be in town for that, too. Otherwise, have a merry Christmas and travel safely…

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Reading Rainbow

How many people didn’t watch “Reading Rainbow” back in elementary school? Well, apparently, the show is still on…but maybe not for much longer. It’s been on for 24 years with LeVar Burton hosting and producing and has won 24 Emmys, as well as a Peabody award (among others). Apparently, they’re running low on funds to make new episodes because sponsors aren’t convinced that the viewership exists.

So, as a result, some good folks have started an online petition called SaveReadingRainbow.org to try and save the show. If you have some fond memories of that show and want it to be around for your kids to watch someday, I’d recommend you check it out and sign up.

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For the record…

So, I’m going to mention this now, well in advance. This year, 2006, I’m going to root for the Cardinals. Crazy, I know…but I don’t make this decision lightly… While I’ve always been a KC Royals fan (…if you even count me as a “baseball fan” in the first place…), they haven’t had a winning season in what seems like 20 years…that, and I’m living in St. Louis now, so I should root, root, root for the home team. Finally, I’ve kinda rooted against them in the past two playoff bouts (since Truman is 80% St. Louis kids, so I have to go against the grain…), but I kinda felt bad last time since the Cards weren’t really playing at their best and, practically, gave up the playoffs this year.

I mention this now because I generally hate it when people are “fairweather fans.” For example, there were lots of Bulls fans 10 years ago…are there any anymore? Nope. I saw a lot of Rams fans running around a few years back…but now that they aren’t doing so well, I don’t see as many jackets as I used to. Granted, some people have “always been a Cardinals fan,” but not that many people… I figure that now that they’ve lost two playoff bids and many of their key players have been traded, etc., I can safely begin to support them without becoming a “fairweather fan”…perhaps…

Therefore, I hereby make it public knowledge that I will support the St. Louis Cardinals in their next season, be it successful or not. If I’m going to live here for 5 years, I guess I’d better get used to having a hometown team.

P.S. Busch Stadium was only 40 years old. I don’t understand the hoopla behind selling bits of it off to fans… If you know nothing about this, they’ve torn down the old stadium to make room for the new one…but they sold off things like seats, dirt and urinals from the old stadium for hundreds of $$$ to idiots. I don’t understand this need to retain memories of a 40-year-old stadium. I mean, if it were Wrigley Field or something, I’d understand…but…this isn’t Wrigley Field…

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So, I miss Kirksville…

I miss the people I met over the years
I miss getting up 5 min before class and still making it on time
I miss the lack of traffic
I miss a good Super Wal-Mart
I miss being able to care very little about classes
I miss the Dukum and everything about it

…but…

I don’t miss the fact that it was 10 F when I woke up today in St. Louis…but it was -14 F in Kirksville…

Friends in Kirksville? You kids have a nice day 🙂

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Craziness…

So yeah, do you remember hearing about crazy fools fighting at Wal-Marts at 5:00 am on Nov. 26th? Well, Brooke and I joined in the fun… We saw that Wal-Mart had a cheap-o laptop for sale at just under $500 in the ad on Thanksgiving day…didn’t think much of it… Well, then I went by Slickdeals.net and saw that the deal was actually $378…which is insane for a laptop that has a decent AMD processor in it, a burner and wireless networking… Brooke is getting to the point where she needs a different computer (since her HP is 5 years old and a 1 GHz desktop will only do so much with WinXP installed…), so we decided to make the attempt…

Well, we got there at 4:50 am…and the parking lot was pretty full. We walked inside and everyone was back at the electronics department in a line…like…40-50 people in each of two lines. One line was for the laptop…the other was for a $50 GameBoy Advance… We come to find out that they only had 18 of the laptops. We didn’t get one. We were back in bed and sleeping by 5:30… 😛

Anyway, the weekend overall was pretty good. Got to visit with both sides of the family and got to see friends in Columbia, so that was really good…hadn’t seen Jeff or Jason in about a year (not my fault… :-P), so good times were had.

Now, I just have to get back in the “finish this semester before your head explodes” mentality…

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…what a weekend…

So, yeah…we were both pretty busy this weekend…again… This time, I played poker on Friday night at Jeremy’s, which was cool, as usual… Then Saturday, Stu and Joel came to St. Louis for some frolf action…there are pictures posted, but I’m sure most of you don’t care…but you should, ’cause frisbee golf rocks tremendously. We played at Watson Trails Park and Jefferson Barracks, neither of which I’d ever played at. Later that night, Stu and I went to a concert at Pop’s featuring Strapping Young Lad and Fear Factory. Who are these bands? They’re death metal bands. Yes, I went to my first death metal concert. In East St. Louis. Next door to the Penthouse club. Needless to say, it was an interesting night…

Arguably the most pertinent part of the weekend, however, came on Sunday… Brooke and I were wanting to get a pet, so we finally did. While I wanted to get a dog, it wasn’t really feasible for our current situation (i.e. I don’t have time to take one out for walks, teach it not to do its thing on my computers, etc…), so we got a cat. We went to the Humane Society on Sunday afternoon and picked out this little fella:

Sam the Cat

He’s 6 mo old and was a stray before being picked up and taken to the Humane Society. He was very well-tempered at the shelter and seems to be pretty friendly, thus far. They named him “Constantine,” but we decided that a 3 syllable name is a bit long for a cat, so we decided to call him “Sam”…seems like a name befitting a kitty cat… There are a few more pictures of him up in the Photos section now, too…

Now, time to get back to reading for this week… I don’t have to start my next rotation until November 14th, so I’ve still got afternoons off for the next 2 weeks…w00t!