Under the Skin

I have sprees where I feel like I'm the best blogger in the world.  Then, I have crises like today when I start to wonder why I would ever start a blog.  I have a boring life.  Today's highlight was making blood jello, aka simulating blood clotting in little itty-bitty cups in order to evaluate the intrinsic coagulation pathway.  It's official name is PTT or partial thromboplastin time, but I like calling it making blood jello.  We even centrifuged out the red stuff too make it more appetizing.  I spend a lot of time with blood, but I probably spend more time with plasma and serum, which people find to be less stomach-wrenching than blood for some reason.  Perhaps the fact that I don't find it to be stomach-wrenching at all contributes to that. Anyways, I like my life.  But I wonder if other people would.  I was talking with the MLS that teaches the intro-to-the-major class. She was talking about how there is a problem in the medical world,...

There are some things in this world that a lot of other people seem to like that I quite frankly don't.  One of these things is pre-cut fruit.  I bought some cantaloupe and honeydew the other day, and since I bought it from the little grocery store, and not the real grocery store, they were not full-sized fruits.  They were buckets of pre-cut fruit.  There are many reasons I don't like fruit this way: 1) It goes bad faster.  It really does 2) It is generally not as cheap as buying the full melon.  But, I don't have a car, and I wanted melons and fruit. 3) They cut the pieces WAY too big 4) I actually enjoy cutting fruit. 5) I am a control freak I want to decide how big my pieces are.  I know the size of my mouth.  And I generally believe that unless it is a wedge of watermelon, melon should be eaten in bite-sized pieces.  You shouldn't have to take melon out of your mouth once it has touched your lips.  Not only is juicy, messy a...

For Valentine's Day, BYU's Harold B Lee Library had a program called "Blind Date with a Book."  They had taken a bunch of "hidden treasure" books and wrapped them up in brown paper.  On the outside of the brown paper, they had written a description of the book, making it sound like a date (such as, "I'm adventurous and mysterious," or "I like to do things the traditional way").  Then, they had made a copy of the library barcode and put that on the brown paper as well.  Then, you picked a book and checked it out, not knowing what it was.  I thought it was a cute idea.  They always say, "Never judge a book by its cover." This way, there was no way you could.  So, I looked at the descriptions and saw one that said, "I like the classics and I'm good with kids."  I assumed that meant it was a children's book, and the thickness didn't seem like something I couldn't handle with my classes.  So, I ...

I have never been much for Valentine's Day.  You can tell people you love each other any day.  Why do we need a special day dedicated to it?  To me, it's just an excuse for an awful love of candy.  But, on the other hand, it is a special day.  And I don't even need to know how. Day 14: Best Movie Kisses, The Princess Bride How could I not end our festival with "the most passionate, the most pure" kiss in the history of the kiss?  'Nough said. Day 14: Best TV Kisses, Merlin (yes, again) I told you quite plainly that I believed these two to have chemistry.  Plus, the pickins are more slim in TV, and I'm not as well-versed in television. But, I love pretty much every time they kissed. Day 14: Best Animated Kisses, Hunchback of Notre Dame So, it is true that this kiss is an interesting one to end with.  And honestly, if I had a little more foresight, I probably would have picked another kiss for the last one.  But, I still ...

A kiss is a funny thing.  It can encompass everything from the the most innocent of a child's kisses, to the less innocent of an older person's.  But really, a kiss is more importantly the way that we tell each other how we feel.  I admit that I used to not "get it."  I thought kissing looked wet and gross and chapped-like and all of those things.  However, I get it now.  Maybe it's because I've kissed now.  It's so much better than that. Day 13, Best Movie Kisses, Never Been Kissed Speaking of not getting it, here's a movie where the girl probably doesn't get it.  I also don't get Drew Barrymore.  But because of the cuteness of this scene and the beauty of Michael Vartan, here it is!  I haven't actually seen this movie for about 8 years.  But I remember this kiss at the baseball diamond. Day 13, Best TV Kisses, Raising Hope Here is a show that I watched the first little bit of the first season, and then lost inte...

Edmond Rostand wrote in Cyrano de Bergerac, "A kiss is a secret which takes the lips for the ear."   The kiss is something shared between two people who love each other.  In French, there are actually three words for "to kiss."  One is kissing a baby or a friend or a greeting, one is kissing in love, and one...let's just say it has more to do with biology than love.  But, the kissing for love is the pure kissing that I'm talking about.  It is the kiss that is a secret. Day 12: Best Movie Kisses, Star Wars Let's face it, the newest three Star Wars were little more than garbage.  However, the first three were good. As I've analyzed it throughout my life, I think a lot of that was Harrison Ford.  The first time you watch this clip, just watch it for the beauty of the kiss.  Then watch it again and imagine that instead of Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford, it is Hayden Christiansen and Natalie Portman.  It will because ridiculous more tha...

So really, from an outsider perspective, kissing is just sucking on body parts.  And I was going to say that I don't think people do that to other body parts, but then I realized that some people do.  The time I saw two people in my junior year English class sucking on each others' hands (no joke) comes to mind.  But really, I think that kissing is so much more than that.  It is an expression of love.  For whatever reason, we decided that that was how we would express it in our species.  And now, embrace it. Day 11: Best Movie Kisses, That Thing You Do In this kiss, Guy asks Faye when the last time she was truly kissed was.  She says 1961.  Seeing as she just got out of a multi-year relationship with a guy, this is a sad thing!  I hadn't been kissed until Brian, but I think that's a sad thing to have kissed a person for that long and then realize that none of it was real.  So, I'm glad that Guy can give her a real kiss.  And it...