Fitness Fridays!

Considering weekly posts.  Thinking about plants, reproduction, scalability.  Keep them safe, and let them learn. This is how I got addicted to twitter and neglected my blog, along with complete sentences.  I am on "Spring Break" and awaiting a visit from my parents (separately, of course).  I've attended so many amazing seminars, I can't keep track of them all.  My summer student has been funded!

2012

Mar

8

09:39

Thu

I looked up at the moon and thought, what a great night for an evening walk, the moon was amazingly full.
I attended a seminar by an accomplished geneticist who is a professor at University of Southern California on Feb. 29th at the Women in Science dinner at Scripps College.  What an amazing experience!  She encouraged all of us to be ourselves, to embrace our inner "bitch."  Ahem-on-a-bike!  I heard a talk at the Athaneum at Claremont McKenna College by a professor at Singularity University, and a 'restless inventor,' who pointed out that with regards to technology, we can expect exponential progress leading ultimately to a crossover point where humans and technology become one.  It's already happening.

I heard a talk from a scientist at Pioneer/Hi-Bred which is part of DuPont who uses DNA shuffling (every day he's shufflin) to identify key amino acid residues in proteins responsible for efficient detoxification.  In this way, farmers can use selective herbicides to target weeds without harming their crops.  I went to a workshop for Writing Intensive courses in the Sciences.  The professors of English were constructive and gave me the courage to try a Cypher with my students on the last day of class before spring break.  Thermodynamics, it's a rap!

Looking forward, I see the San Dimas Road Race (18-Mar), the RBC Time Trial (8-Apr), NSF day at USC (12-Apr), and the Verdugo Mountains 10K (6-May).  Looking forward to the Commencement Ceremonies (3 in one day) on 12-May.  I see the the IGERT Symposium (15-Jun) the Pagent of the Master's (8-Jul).  I'm celebrating my 32nd birthday in Chicago!  Speaking of which, I hope to run tomorrow morning in the Downtown Dash... gotta run!

I may not be reproducing myself right now, but my chard is adorable.  I got some 2 L bottles from the Water Quality Lab and blinged them out using superglue.  Then I transferred my seedlings into them and voila!  These are seedlings from seeds produced by plants that grew to maturity at my roommate's house on Leafhill Pl in Riverside (33.960421,-117.343296).

The title of this post: Fitness Fridays! refers to a concept my husband and I developed while working in different cities all week. Now, we live under the same roof but work quite hard all week.  So it's the idea that to break the tension and let go of the stress, we do some kind of fitness.  We crank up the music, and get some wacky YouTube videos going and crunch it out.  I had a sweet rotation going last night between crunches, pull ups, and push ups.  I told my student, who is on the ballroom team, that I am in training for next year's 'Dancing with the Claremont stars.'  I love motivation.