Hello, world!
So, clearly, thinking that I would actually catch up on everything over the summer was not realistic... It's just about halfway over now, which is crazy to think about. I don't think I'm ready for summer to end! Gimme, like, three more months? Does that sound fair?
This time, I'm just gonna worry about catching up on what I've done since school ended. Conveniently, I've kept notes separated by week this time, so there's still some structure to this!
Right before that, though, I'll just give a little update on Arm: we texted a while a couple days after my last-last post, in which he said that he was having fun travelling, then a couple days after that confirmed that he made it home safely. A couple weeks ago, we chatted again, and apparently he's been presenting on programming over the summer with his friends, which sounds pretty dang cool and impressive. I hadn't thought he'd be the kind of guy interested in something like that, but he did show me a Youtube video where he did a magic trick in front of a massive audience and seemed to really be enjoying himself (though still nervous, of course), so I think it's one of his things after all.
From this point on, I think we're just going to be texting on WhatsApp every once in a while.
First week:
Okay, so I know I mentioned the internship before, but not what I actually do for it. Since I have been working for nearly two months now (THAT'S SO WEIRD), I think I can give a decent answer. ...I've avoided using emoticons for a long time in this blog, but I really feel like a :P is needed here.
Basically, there's a whooole process that needs to be done in order to convert a sample into a readable DNA sequence, and that's what I do. I receive samples of alfalfa weevils, crush them up (yeah, it's a little gross), then do a whole lot of pouring chemicals into little tubes to isolate the DNA, do a PCR (which makes a gazillion copies of the desired piece of the DNA- usually only certain parts of the code are actually useful in determining species and differences between groups and stuff), stick that into an agarose gel, take it out of the gel (I dunno either, man), and then purify the DNA to be sent off to a sequencing lab. That's what I'm doing just about every day. A couple days, though, I've spent some time on the sequences that came back and marking where there might be hybridization between weevil species. So, uh, yeah. I really like it! Pretty much the only sucky parts are sticking samples into tubes because they're either alive and running around or basically dead and squishy and gross, and some of the waiting you have to do between steps. Uuuuuugh. The boredom is real right there.
One of the other girls interning there (though she's working on different stuff from me) has the same major, actually! She's the first Cell/Mol Bio major I've met! She's also quite fun to talk to and we have a lot of interests in common. I think we're the ones that end up hanging out the most during work, but I do like everyone else, too.
Besides starting to work, I was enjoying the peace and silence of being all on my lonesome within the apartment for the week. Nonetheless, I still hung out a long while with Marae (haven't mentioned her yet, but she lives a couple buildings down and is fun) on Sunday, then during FHE the day after, I ended up talking a while with Ellie, who's in middle school (daughter of one of the bishopric, so that's why she's in our ward) and I always felt like we could be good friends over the year but I didn't really know how to approach her? We talked about some random stuff for a while like odd fashion trends, then somehow, we got to the anime conversation, and it turned out she's really into some of the classic childhood animes, and I'm like "HALLELUJAH, COMMON INTEREST KINDA!" I told her I'd watch My Hero Academia (even though Coatrack already told me it was heckin' good and I'd seen the first couple episodes with Terra forever ago) and she said she'd watch Violet Evergarden, but apparently neither of us have found where to watch our respective animes yet? I promise I'm gonna look for MHA once we finally figure out how to get me into the family Amazon Prime account, since I have a feeling it'll be there along with a bunch of other shows I need to get caught up on...
Also, she said she doesn't like Tom Holland's Spider-Man, and I'm trying so hard to not be salty about it.
The second half of the week, I was brought home by my parents. We went for a doctor's appointment for the... um... thing I probably mentioned a long time ago, and looks like things are still fine. Also, we went on a massive Costco shopping trip, most of which was food that they were making me take home with me. I watched Infinity War with my dad, and MAN. Ugh. No wonder Carter had told me it made him feel a lot of feels. DON'T DO THIS TO ME, PETE-
And, lastly, they brought me home with a freezer to stick all the many frozen foods they'd bought me into.
Second:
Remember how I mentioned my calc friend? I don't think I gave her a proper code-name. I feel like it'd be rather cruel to give her this, but... I'm feeling like a rude friend today, so let's go with Bias. She had officially moved in by the time I returned with the freezer, along with the roommate we all hardly ever see (and she's been really gone for at least a week now, so pretty sure she's on vacation or something?), and the last two came in the day after. So far it's been pretty fun being roomies with her (and I don't just mean the delicious food and desserts she makes all the time). She has a great sense of humor, which means general goofing off with her is very fun. We do also have a couple common interests, but mostly we just show each other stuff and the other's like "Uh-huh, sure, I kinda like it? I guess?" Mostly, she shows me stuff about K-pop and Korean TV shows. She's a huge fan of BTS, and I'll admit I've liked more of the BTS songs she's shown me than the ones from other groups, but the only one I really, really like is "The Truth Untold", so I guess I still can't really call myself a fan. Also, I'm just not into the biasing and stanning and other stuff for the K-pop culture. You know me, I don't go "OMG" over boyz, and that's 90% of what they do. I still have fun dancing to songs with her in the living room, though, and she puts up with my Vocaloid, so I can't really complain.
One of our things has been to go to the library together every once in a while. We did our first trip this week, in which I mostly grabbed Natsume's Book of Friends (I think I'm caught up now, woot!), along with a couple Adventure Time and Avatar: the Last Airbender comics. The last one I shared with Bias and one of my new roomies, Lie (I'm just being lazy with this one). Lie and Bias have bonded a little over their mutual love for Japanese food, actually, since both have been to Japan. I also shared them with the Relief Society pres down the street, who greatly appreciated them. We all agonized over the The Search arc.
Did I ever name the Relief Society president either? I know I talked a little about her all the way at the beginning of the school year. I'll call her Wan. I'm quite sure I'd also mentioned how we wanted to watch Avatar: the Last Airbender together. We've actually made good on that goal this summer (though we technically did the first two-ish episodes a few weeks before school ended). Just yesterday we finished the fourth episode from Book 2. Man, this show is just so good, and it's so fun to watch with Wan! Her roommates also apparently have fun watching us watching the show... but we get so excited that I haven't gotten terribly embarrassed.
This week (as in, the week that I'm writing this post in) we actually added a new thingy to our marathon: imitating the moves they do in the intro. Like, a couple times before we tried, but it didn't go so well, but this time we were determined to learn them and do them right. I took a good chunk of time watching the different moves slowed down a lot (thanks, Youtube, for letting me do .25 speed) and practicing everything until I felt pretty confident that I was doing it right (besides substituting out Azula's crazy jump for a floor sweep because jeez, that wasn't happening). I made myself get real sore from that, which is pretty embarrassing.
I hung out on a date-thing with one of the boys from my ward, though I feel bad since I don't think it went quite as he had planned... I said that we should just eat a couple ice-cream sandwiches left behind by my old roommates instead of going out for ice-cream, then we played billiards in the Institute game room for a while, then we came back to watch Ice Age (wow, it's been absolutely forever since we'd seen it!) but Bias ended up watching with us... He was a good sport, the poor guy.
I'd also made a friend in my spring Institute class who I'll call Skydive for lack of a better idea right now, and I ended up running into him on-campus and we talked for a while. I'll probably say more about him when I actually start talking about spring semester, but to be honest it's mostly been hanging out while I gorge on food he offered to the class. ...I promise I don't always become friends with people because they give me dinner.
Right after, I went to hang out with Al and his old roomie. I am tempted to lay out how I met Al and stuff, but I'm already taking long enough as is to write this so I guess I'll leave it for later. We all played this game that was basically the PS4 version of Super Smash Bros. and I totally sucked yet I managed to win one of the rounds, then went for dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings. The first and only time I'd gone was when my mom and I were on our road trip years ago, and I remembered that I ate macaroni because nothing else really sounded appealing enough for the price... So yeah, I got mac again, but apparently they've always had a cheap boneless wings deal on Thursdays, so I actually got some wings and I thought they were pretty good. Lastly, I played billiards with Al, but he was actually pretty good at the game unlike me.
I binge-read the entirety of Book 1 of The Trials of Apollo by Rick Riordan on Saturday while Bias binge-watched a Chinese drama.
Okay, I'm just gonna end here for now... please scream at me if I don't come back within a week.
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