High school yearbooks...

I'm going through my high school yearbook and I really do feel like most of this needs to be shared with the world.

My senior year, I was voted:
Who's Who in Academics
Most intellectual (Kie was most likely to succeed)
Most likely to take over Microsoft

I wish I had a scanner at my parents so I could share with the world this picture of my pointing over a dear guy friend's shoulder like I'm telling him what to do on the computer screen (which was actually a powerbook we had to cover up the Apple on since we were "taking over Microsoft"...hahaha).

My 20 year prediction (aka, I've got fifteen years left):

"Kristy now has three children ages 10, 7, and 2. (Hum, five years left to get started on that one) She attended NCSU (check!) and got a PhD from Duke in Genetics (turned them down, upgrade Duke to Yale). Kristy now works as a research professor and lives somewhere in the Triangle Area in NC. Kristy's greatest accopmlishment has been becoming a consultant, appearing on PBS's NOVA, and bieng a Brownie troop leader."

Is is strange that that really hasn't changed that much? I think the greatest accomplishments I would now reword with the Jesus perspective on life, but really, it doesn't sound like a bad life that I had planned out for myself.

My grandma is amazing

Things my beloved Maw Maw Sadie has said this week -

"You know, a girl could go out without clothes on as long as she had good shoes and a nice handbag."

"If God wants me to have a third husband, He's going to have to really just put him in my lap. I don't want to bury a third one, mind you, but I'd really like a good Christian man for companionship. Someone who would want to go to church and serve the church and serve the Lord and pray. I would like a man like that." My reply? "I'm 24, you're 70, and I think we pretty much have the same problem."

"Every night I pray that God's will be done. There's no sense in askin' for anything else."

And her all time classic -

"As long as you have your Bible and your rolling pin, it's going to be okay."

The Search is Over...

I have found the most amazing chocolate...



EVER.

Santander milk chocolate. Single-origin Columbian chocolate, 36% cacao, over 20% solid dairy fats. Best milk chocolate bar I've ever had (and that includes all my European adventures).

My quest in life is now simply to find another one.

I joined a lab!

May 11, I finally came to my decision, and joined the Kim lab. I'm pretty excited about it. Even though it is a little scary to join a brand-new lab, I think the research is facinating and it will really allow me to grow intellectually in grad school. I also feel entirely okay saying, "I am confused and do not understand" without being thought of as stupid. That counts for a lot.

Arrrgh!

So I have come to a realization -

You CAN be in school too long.

I am very tired of the semester-exam treadmill. Six years is enough! One more semester, though, and my school experience will be forever...different.

City songs

I want to find my New Haven song, probably because I'm so fond of my Raleigh song.

What makes the city song the city song? It has to:
1) Mention the city I'm living in/have lived in
2) Capture my sentiments toward the city.

My Raleigh song was Wagon Wheel, whose original lyrics are typically attributed to Bob Dylan. The song was popularized by Old Crow Medicine Show, and when the bluegrass-y fiddle gets going in my car everyone practically snerks at the fact that, at the end of the day, I am quite Southern after all.

My favorite lines from that song...

Headed down south to the land of the pines
Thumbin' my way to North Caroline
Starin' up the road
And pray to God I see headlights

I made it down the coast in seventeen hours
Picked me a bouquet of dogwood flowers
And I'm a hopin' for Raleigh
Wanna see my baby tonight

Runnin' from the cold up in New England
I was born to be a fiddler in an old-time stringband
My baby plays the guitar
I pick a banjo now

And I gotta get a move on before the sun
I hear my baby callin' my name
And I know that she's the only one
And if I die in Raleigh
At least I will die free

Every time I put on my iPod on the flight home, this is the first song I play.

So the hope is that some day, New Haven will have a song too. Therefore, dear friends, be on the lookout for New Haven in song...I'll find it someday.

Word roots, as recently discussed at parties

From my massacred reading of the Oxford English Dictionary (aka, people who are working on PhDs in Classics would be much more helpful) -

The origin of a musician's "gig" is unknown, but dates back to c. 1920 in print.

Ovation, in the context of applause, first appeared in print in the 1830s. It largely came straight over from Latin, and in Roman times meant an entry that was a little below a triumphal one. The Latin ovant shares a root with the classical Greek ovation. Appparently ovum, and ovulation, have that all important u that leads back to the Latin word for egg. So ovation and ovulation are totally, word wise, unrelated. And biologically pretty unrelated as well...

School of Music people are a riot, for the record. Yay for cake binges!

Scared Senseless

Just for Tori - or more aptly, to keep a deal with Tori:

So I just ran downstairs to grab the quarters I bought yesterday out of my dash (laundry day it is) and as I was opening the front door to the house, my neighbor was opening it from the outside. I think I just knocked a good few days off the end of my life.