Best End to the Worst Week

 Alright people, it’s time I did this blog. Sorry for the delay, I had family visiting me and they were more important to me than this blog so, sorry not sorry I guess.

Monday was rough this week, probably one of the roughest Mondays I had in a while. My TA meeting went really bad because I was having internet problems that kicked me off zoom 8 times during the meeting, and it sort of got me a slight talking to by Lauren, which really sucked and left me panicky. I was really stressed about the lab this week, so I wanted to make sure I was doing everything right and didn’t miss anything, but cutting in and out like that wasn’t helping. I’d like to think it was because of 38 people all being on a zoom call with all but three of them with their cameras on which just tanks bandwidth, but we’ll have to see. After that unfortunate start to the morning, Karin, Tim and Allie came over and we had a mini lunch celebration with Karin that was much lower stakes. I gave her the birthday present I had worked on, and she showed us the kalimba Tim had given her—she kept playing Avatar songs so it was pretty awesome. I also had some time to watch my asynch lecture on fizzle chickens and pleiotropy, and talked about why cave fish don’t have eyes. I really like Evo Devo so far, even if it’s a little out of my area of expertise and I sometimes find myself lost.

Then… it was the roughest part of the day. This week in lab we were looking at alfalfa plant height, which meant going to the alfalfa garden and measuring things. Only problem was is my lab is at 4:30 when all the bugs day and night based were out and about, so I sadly got the brunt of the bugs that could have been out. I was able to stave off my panic until the lab was done, but by the time I got home, I ended up having a panic attack and more or less disassociating for the rest of the evening. I don’t really remember what I did for the rest of the night, save for the major headache I had and the fact that I somehow made myself tomato soup and grilled cheese. I ended up sending an email to Lauren about what happened and she emailed me back about having a meeting on Friday. So yeah…. pretty rough start to the week—definitely one of the worst for the school year so far.

Tuesday was a little better. Maren went to help me measure some of the plants that my students missed the previous day, and there were only aphids out for the most part. I also only had one student that day, and I made him do all the dirty work just so I wouldn’t risk another freak out. I was still exhausted by the time I got home, that I ended up finishing my drawing from conference weekend right before Neuroendo, where we talked about female sexual behavior… yay. *Note the blatant sarcasm*. It was fine, I just wasn’t too interested and I still had a slight headache from Monday. The one interesting that happened that day was that I got to watch a biology seminar from Price about function morphology, life history, and natural selection in fish. I think it has been my favorite seminar so far, even over the mice. It was just interesting and worked with the knowledge I already had about fish and the like. But yeah, as far as Tuesday went, it was a lot better than Monday and was my main recovery day for the week.

On Wednesday, the student I was supposed to meet with had to cancel, so I had a nice open morning. I used that time to do a whole bunch of readings. I sent one to Lexi, our lab’s post-doc because it was linked to her area of specialty and she emailed me back about talking about it after our meeting on Thursday, which was cool. I also ready one about the connection between the hormones of love and addiction, which was less interesting but still cool, and of course one about pleiotropy in bugs. *Sigh* I just couldn’t seem to escape bugs this week. The discussion for that article went alright, though I was the only one in my second group who was able to figure out what we were supposed to be talking about and no one listened to me, which was frustrating. We looked like idiots when we came to the big discussion, but hopefully that won’t affect how I’m doing in the class.

Then came the big adventure for that day: the Crimson Trail Hike. Karin and Tim wanted to go on a hike with Maren and me, so we decided to go look at the “fall colors” of the Crimson Trail at 6:00. Karin was the one to choose the time, and we probably should have left earlier. It was very steep, and around 4.7 miles. We got lost for a little while when it grew dark, and Karin was freaking out the entire time. I slipped and tripped a couple of times, which really sucked, and it freaked me out a little that Karin was scared, and because I knew I was going to be late to scriptures and I didn’t want Mom to worry. Thankfully, part-way through, Tim decided to distract Karin and the two of them quoted all of the Princess Bride as far as they could remember—including sound effects—which helped break some of the tension. Maren felt really bad afterwards because a lot of us were shaky and sore—even though she enjoyed herself. We were all safe, I promise, just a little more wary of hiking in the future. It was really pretty when it was light out, however, and we got some really cool pictures.

Now, Thursday came, and things got interesting. Intro to Grad Studies was boring as usual—Lauren was our speaker and she was talking about teaching and TAing, which wasn’t super entertaining. In Neuroendo, Sara point-blank said she’d only prepared half a lecture because she made the “mistake of thinking the debates would be worth it” and watched them instead of preparing for class. She got slammed hard this week (along with everyone else it seems like—teachers and students alike) so we had a more relaxed lecture that day and she answered questions for the most part. We talked about cycles as a general topic with more specific questions provided by us. After that I had my lab meeting, which went as well as usual, and I was able to talk to Lexi. It was a lot of “What did you think about this?” and “How do we want to use this for your research?” kind of questions. I also got to facetime my mom, which was cool. After that, I decided to chill out and play Minecraft for a while since the server I’m on is doing a Halloween competition that I needed to grab supplies for, which I’ll hopefully be able to work on more as time goes on.

Friday was I think the most entertaining and stressful day of the week. I had a lot of busy work to get through before my parents showed up for the birthday weekend visit. I met with Lauren to discuss what happened Monday and Tuesday, and things were figured out there, I sent out announcements, busted out the rest of my GAD paper outline that I could work on without my partner (who I sent an email to), and then 1:00 pm rolled around and I got a text from Tim. Friday was the day. The day he was going to propose. He needed our help to set up. So at 5:30, Emily, Maren, and I hopped into Allie’s car and we went to second dam to prepare a dock with decorations galore. We ran out of some of our materials, so Allie and I had to race to Walmart to get some more supplies. We were almost late on the way back—but got there with ten minutes to spare before Tim and Karin got there and he popped the question. She said yes of course—we all knew that—and it was a grand old affair. There were tears on the couple’s end, and a lot of celebration. Maren, Emily and I went to grab USU sushi and I made popcorn to conclude the night. My parents were even able to drop by that night.

Saturday and Sunday wwere the “Birthday Weekend Getaway”. We went to the Waffle Iron, got some shopping done, grabbed beautiful watercolor paintings, went to the Chocolate factory, swam in the hotel pool, ate at Maymoes again, grabbed some sushi, and a few other mini adventures along the way. It was packed and I got to spend time with my parents and Mas, which was awesome. It was a lot of fun, and Mom and I even got to watch some HGTV before bed XD. Pretty awesome for the short time we had together. I was even able to have my School Year blessing from Dad, since we missed out on it earlier. I have a feeling things will start working out better now that I have that to hold onto. I love my family so much. Thank you guys for coming to see me!

Anyways, I’m going to go eat a muffin.

Talk to you all next week.