Six Flights of Stairs Creeper

The office of my boss and one part of my job is on the sixth floor of Storer Hall. The womens bathroom has a big window with a BEAUtiful view of campus, I usually take a few moments to look around, its very nice I wish I could live up there.
But anyway. Until today I always took the elevator because I was too lazy. But today I spent lots of time working and wandering around from building to building doing things. So I decided to take the stairs. The first try I got up to the 3rd or 4th floor and gave up, not wanting to come into work all sweaty and out of breath. But then later today I took the stairs again and made it to the top!!!
This is my way of working up to actually working out at the gym.


Also I learned today about Scots Dumpys. They are chickens that are heterozygous for the Creeper allele. No joke its called the Creeper allele. and it means they have short legs!!!
I want a creeper chicken.

Simple Mediterranean Pesto Pasta

The sauce starts with garlic and pine nuts roasted in olive oil. Then I added tomatoes and let them cook for a while forming a bit of a sauce in the pan. Then i added the olive to let them warm up. Last I added only about 2 tablespoons of pesto so it wasn't too overwhelming. Then I piled it all on top of the pasta and squeezed half a lemon over top and sprinkled some fresh basil and Parmesan cheese.
It was Deee-lish!
I thought I would eat half the plate and then save the rest for lunch but I ate the whole thing! So good. And easy!

Yummy Food

I made a really good quick pasta dish today. i took pictures and everything. But I will upload them tomorrow.
Until then here are two other photos i found stumbling :)

Fall

It has changed from summer to fall in about 2 days. It is suddenly cool and crisp instead of the hot air of summer.

My bike is way faster with the new and improved gears.

And I found a nice sharp knife at a friends yard sale. I love it. It is one of the big blocky square ones and cuts amazingly.

Showers in Davis water Makes me feel Slimy

I got to work today. I switched fish from one tank to another. I made a little isolated mommy area with burlap for expecting mothers. Because apparently they like being secluded. And the burlap will hopefully allow the babies out so mommy doesnt eat them. Which apparently she likes to do.
Then I had booooring stats class. Then I went to the bike church, which was very neat. I fixed my bike. yay! I completely took off the front derailer. And then adjusted the back one so now I can reach the highest gear! yay for going faster!!!
Then the farmers market.
oh and my great sandwich.
it was on whole wheat sourdough bread. with balsamic vinager goat cheese spread that i made, and a little bit of hummus, that i also made. with a sliced and peeled tomato. lots of fresh basil leaves, and lots of melt in your mouth roasted eggplant. It was SO GOOD! I'm gonna make another for lunch tomorrow.
and last night I had a dream that my toenail fell off and there was a big gaping hole in my toe where it used to be. This is a semi-realistic fear because i stubbed my toe really bad and the nail will probably fall off. I've never had that happen before. most people say its not that bad but I have always been afraid of the idea. gives me the heebie jeebies.
and davis water is super duper basic and hard and when i wash all of the soap off of me in the shower i still feel like a slimy slug. it is hard to get used to.

It's been a while....

Sorry it has been so long since I have posted. School always seems to motivate me to waste time online. So I am back at it.
Actually school doesn't start until Thursday. But I got a really cool job that I am excited about.
It involves taking care of fish. Here is what I got emailed after the interview.
" I very much enjoyed meeting you today and I'd like to offer you the position with a little modification. I think you were most excited about the mosquitofish YY female project? With your previous lab experience I think you could take a broader role in this project. This could involve mixing up the estrogen-laced food, sorting and isolating the male and female mosquitofish fry, isolating gravid females, and essentially running the breeding program eventually."
I'm really excited.
Sadly I had to turn down another really cool job offer. It involved nitrogen fixing bacteria and growing invasive and native plants in a certain type of soil and trying to figure out what components of the soil helped or hindered the growth of the plants and how the plants survived.
But I could not pass up and opportunity to work with vertebrates. Working with animals in some sort of research capacity is pretty much why I went to college.
So lets see how it goes!!!!

I am Classy!

I apologize for not writing more this school year. But now that finals are around and I have a paper to write I feel suddenly compelled to blog. Maybe I am also influenced by all of the articles in our school newspaper about graduation and summarizing the past year.
Overall this year has gone well. It seems to have gone by pretty quickly. But I still have trouble remembering what I did fall quarter.
The 6 people in a 3-bedroom house has been interesting. And I think considering the amount of people we have, we have done very very well. There was only one house meeting with a total meltdown. And despite that we are all stilly friendly to each other. Last night we stayed up making up new names for each other. I ended up as Gwen. Mark turned into Mateo, Angel is now Michél, Angie turned to Emma, Chelsea is now Cameron, and Jackie became Penny. The deciding process was HILAROUS. I have not laughed that hard in a long time, I almost could not breathe.
The end of this semester somehow feels less exciting than any others. Although it should be the most exciting. I am not sure if it is just me or if everyone feels this way. It could be the impending summer school, or the dread of having to stay in Davis for the summer. Although I will be going home, thank the lord. I am the only one in my house who will not be staying for summer.
I think I might be keeping my excitement at bay so the studying goes well. I have set in my mind that I will be excited on Monday after 3. But not too excited because I have to retake the permit test. I had my permit for a year and never got my license so now I have to retake the written test. I figured that I would just pile up all the tests in the same few days and get them all over with.
I hope to come up to Davis to visit. There are some things that I have wanted to do around here but never got the chance because of school. Mainly I have wanted to explore the town and see what it is like to be up here without the intense pressure of school.
What have I done this year...? I have....
Stop regularly drinking tea, although that might change when I move back to a house with a new espresso maker. That coupled with late nights.... Sounds like fun to me :)
I applied to study abroad in Australia. And in doing so got my first two letters of recommendation.
Did not going skiing for the first time since I was four. And accepted that it was just not in the cards for me to go.
Grew a wisdom tooth all by myself.
Saw a squirrel eating a road kill bird. Ew
Learned that some people have NO idea how to do dishes and are not easily taught.
Have retained my very good common sense about my alcohol tolerance.
Come to like Davis more and more, despite some of the stupid people in it.
Managed to make it happily through another year of a long distance relationship.
Managed to keep my sense of humor.
Learned that drinking orange juice out of the carton is something that makes me unreasonably happy.
There are some people who should not do drugs.
Plants are really complicated, and very much alive.
Eaten more cherries in the last few weeks than I ever have in my life (due to the fact that none of the stone fruit has met its ripeness potential yet.)
Learned why strawberries have seeds on the outside. The seeds are technically the fruit; they are like miniature sunflower seeds. The juicy red part is called the receptacle and it just sits there and holds the fruit.
Learned that sometimes I would rather hang out with my parents than my friends.
Okay in the interest of getting this online I am going to stop here. Maybe I will add more later :)