the sun died

so last night i had a weird dream.  i was with a crowd of people in a cafeteria.  i looked up at the window and saw the sun with a smiley face.  someone had drawn a smiley face on the glass and the sun was in the perfect position to look like it was smiling.  i told everyone to look at it as i reached for my camera.  by the time i got my camera, the sun had moved.  i was sad.  then we were all standing outside watching the sun rise.  as we watched it, we noticed solar flares coming off the sun, and they were getting bigger and bigger.  we decided not to look at it anymore and to run back inside because it was about to get really hot.  suddenly, the largest solar flare came toward us and stopped just in front of me and a stuffed toy leprechaun slid down the flare.  it reminded me of rainbow bright.  it started talking but i couldn't hear what it was saying.  we started to run down a hallway, but when we realized we weren't getting anywhere, we turned around and went back outside.  it was dark and cold. we looked up at the sky and the sun looked like the moon.  the sun died.  it started getting colder and windy.

and the dream freaked me out.

update on school and other things

it's hard to believe that the semester is nearly over.  it seems like it just started!  next week i have two finals, and a presentation.  i have to keep working on my research proposal while i'm working at the hospital, which starts on the 14th.

for this next rotation at the hospital i'll be working in hematology.  i'm a little nervous.  i was nervous about working in microbiology in the summer but i had a blast.  i loved it!  the people there were funny and they joked around all the time, but did their work, too, of course.  it was so much fun.  i hope hematology will be fun too.  it'll definitely be different than micro, though, because micro is very hands on, and hematology is very automated.  i know i'll get a lot of practice making blood smears and doing differentials.  i just hope i don't come home with a headache everyday from looking in the microscope for 8 hours.

anyway, the blood bank class has been so much better this semester than it was in the summer.  i don't know why i had so much trouble with the first part during the summer, but i'm happy that it's a lot better now.  chemistry has been okay, too.  the only thing with that is for the first part of chemistry back in the spring, there was a lab that helped with the grades because the labs were very easy.  this semester, there's not a lab for the second part.  that means i have to do better on the exams and i can't rely on easy lab grades to boost my average.  i'm doing okay so far, but i need to kick butt on the final.

my management class is weird.  the teacher hasn't posted a single grade for us all semester and i don't know how i'm doing in the class.  i'm sure i'm okay, but it would make me feel a lot better if he would post our grades.  and the methodology class is a disaster.  it's so disorganized and confusing.  i finally turned in my research proposal, but i haven't gotten any feedback on it yet.  this has been the most unorganized class i've ever had and it's frustrating.

on another note, i went to a funeral yesterday.  it was the 3rd funeral i've attended in less than 2 years.  it was for a man i worked with when i worked at the bank.  he also was the DJ for our wedding reception.  he was a great guy.  very funny, and nice.  he liked motorcycles, playing the drums, and being a DJ.  he also was a pastor sometimes.  he attended seminary and filled in preaching sometimes at his church.  i will miss him a lot, but i know i'll see him again.

i had a nice conversation with my pastor yesterday.  i really like my church and i'm glad we have a place to go every sunday.  the members of our sunday school class are really funny and i really enjoy seeing them every week.  i wish we saw them during the week, too.  i'm pretty happy.

a story about my arm

     when i was a kid i was retarded.  we had this toy table and chair set in our bedroom.  so one night we decided it would be a good idea to jump back and forth between one of the chairs and the bed.  we did this several times.  at one point it was my turn to jump from the bed to the chair.  well...i slipped on the sheets, and my arm hit the edge of the chair as i fell.  i screamed.  i don't remember how much it hurt because i was 6 years old.  my parents came into the room, comforted me, and i went to bed.
     a few days later my school had a field day.  there were all sorts of things we could do.  one thing i chose to do was an obstacle course.  the only part of the course i remember was where we had to crawl through a tube thingy.  i got to that part, got down on my knees and started crawling.  once my left arm hit the ground i felt a deep burning pain.  this was the same arm that i had hit on the chair a few nights before.  i started crying and couldn't finish the obstacle course.  my teacher came up to me to find out what was wrong.  i told her i hurt my arm and she just had me sit out for the rest of the day.
     the next day, i went to the bathroom with a group of girls in my class.  as we were leaving the bathroom i tripped on a rug and landed on a ramp in the hallway.  this made my arm hurt even more.  i started crying.  the teacher called my mom.  my mom came and picked me up from school and she took me to the doctor.  the doctor took x-rays and we discovered that my arm was broken.  it probably had been broken since the night i fell on the chair.  so, they put on a cast.  the following day was the last day of school and i remember hiding under my desk because i was embarrassed that i had a cast.
     later that summer we were at a swimming party and i promised my mom that i would be careful and not get my cast wet if she would let me get into the pool.  she agreed.  five minutes later i fell in the water and my whole arm under water, soaking my cast.  and my cast smelled really bad the rest of the time i had it.
and there you go.

normal

i ate too much candy and now i can't sleep.  i blame halloween.  (i only ate two "fun size" pieces of candy.  it's only "fun" if you eat the whole bag...).  anyway, the solution?  play on the computer and eat more candy.  i only have two pieces left....but that'll be good enough to keep me up until 8am.  baron is sleeping next to me on the couch.

i wish my brain had a usb port so i could transport all my files to the computer.  i just want to empty my head, get it on the computer, organize it, then maybe put it all back in.  that would make things so much easier.  like the pensieve.  oh, i wish i had one of those.  i could just pull silvery thoughts out of my head and put them in a jar, and go back and look at them later.  helpful.  dumbledore was smart.

when i was still in bed earlier trying to go to sleep i thought of a dream i had in high school.  i had this dream 12 years ago and it still haunts me.  i guess it bothers me so much because i have no idea what it means and i spent a lot of time trying to figure it out for about a year after i had the dream.  finally i gave up trying to understand it, but i still think about it often.  i'll tell you parts of the dream but no one needs to know all of it. 

after band practice one day i was sitting in the auditorium.  just sitting there.  there were a few people hanging around up on the stage.  (we were in the auditorium because we were preparing for a concert the next day).  suddenly someone came and sat behind me and we talked for a while.  this person told me, "danielle, i'm not as vague as geneva."  then suddenly i was back in the band hall and i wrote "why can't anything be normal?" on the chalk board.

it was a strange dream.  i can't figure out what this person meant when he said he's not as vague as geneva.  it was so weird.  it bothered me so much.  a few days after i had that dream i went into the band hall and wrote "why can't anything be normal?" on the board.  it was dorky, but we always wrote stupid things on the board.

anyway, so i was thinking about that earlier.  i don't know why.  i woke up in the first place because i had a dream that i was in japan and there was a really bad thunderstorm.  that was over two hours ago.  i spent two hours twisting and turning in bed trying to go back to sleep until i finally gave up.

i think baron is happy that i couldn't sleep and i came out here to play on the computer because he gets to come out here with me.  he loves sleeping on the couch.

it's official.

apparently i'm boring the world.

Clean, Shaven. and aliens.

i woke up because i thought i heard baron bark.  i sat in bed for a few minutes, listening.  when i finally got brave, i got up.  using my cell phone as a flash light, i walked out of the bedroom to get a drink of water, and mostly to make sure no one was in the house.  i don't have a clue what i would have done if someone had been in the house.  (you see, i'm not that smart.)
anyway, i got a drink of water, walked through the house, and went back to bed.  but i couldn't go back to sleep.  i started playing on the internet with my phone.  an hour and a half later i put the phone down and tried to go to sleep but i couldn't.  i looked toward the window and saw an orange light in the backyard.  i'd never seen an orange light out there before but i was afraid to go look out the window to see what it was.  i kept looking over at the window to make sure the light didn't move.  don't know what i would've done if it had moved.  and then i was reminded of this movie i watched one time when i was a kid.  it was about alien abductions. 
this woman saw flashing lights out of her window at night and went to look out the window to see what it was.  there was an ambulance and some men were out there.  one of the men looked up and saw her in the window.  they turned out to be aliens instead of men, and they abducted her.  she was returned to her house several months later.
i've always been excited about aliens and the x files and stuff, but honestly, it freaks me out.  ever since i saw that movie i've been afraid of being stolen by aliens.  right...as if the aliens could single me out from all the people on earth.  i'm not saying that i believe aliens exist.  it's hard to imagine that they're real, but also it's hard to think that in this whole universe, earth has the only living beings.
i looked out the window again, and of course the orange light hadn't moved.  i just wished i could figure out what it was without going to look out the window and be seen by the aliens.
and then i started thinking about a movie we watched just the other day.  Clean, Shaven.  it was weird and sad, but i liked it.
i finally fell asleep about 3 1/2 hours after i thought i heard the dog bark.

the end of the world

so the other night i had kind of a scary dream.  it was a long dream, but i can't really make it seem like it was long by writing it down.
i walked out into the front yard at this house where we used to live in eastland.  i looked up at the sky and there was some kind of machine falling into the atmosphere.  it was turning the sky red, and there were flaming pieces of metal falling all around.  i ran down the street to tyler's apartment and banged on the door.  when he opened it, i looked inside and could see more things falling out of his window.  it reminded me of this scene from The X Files.

anyway, i asked tyler what was happening.  he said it was obviously Armageddon.  his apartment started falling apart and we had to run away.  my feet kept getting really hot as we were running.

i didn't sleep well the rest of the night.  argh.

and then, last night i was thinking about this dream some more.  i thought about the end of Return of the King after Frodo destroyed the ring.  He said, "I'm glad to be with you, Samwise Gamgee, here at the end of all things."  It's kinda random, but oh well.

#Dream

crazy dream.
i just woke up from a very strange dream.  anderson cooper was in it and it was really weird.  the only famous people i've ever had a dream about were harry potter and voldemort. 
i don't know why i had a dream about anderson, but here's what happened:
sean came to meet me for lunch at school, but school was somehow suddenly out at the airport between midland and odessa.  it was set up kinda like rock the desert--lots of open space and a big stage.  we were sitting at a picnic bench eating lunch and some of the biology professors were sitting next to us.  they all got up to go through the line to get their food.  the next thing i knew, sean and i were sitting in his car eating our sandwiches, and the professors all sat down at a table up next to the stage.
as i finished my sandwich, i heard someone talking on the stage.  "hey, that sounds like anderson cooper!" i said to myself and looked out the window toward the stage.  and it WAS him!  and he was wearing a bright pink polo shirt.  i said to sean, "look at that pink shirt wearing boy," and pointed to the stage.  (i don't talk like that, so i don't know why i did in my dream...)
so anderson kept talking about something and i kept wondering why in the world he was in midland, tx.  i looked around for my lab teacher, because in my dream she liked anderson cooper, but in real life it's someone else i know who likes anderson cooper.  but anyway, she was on her way to the bathroom and i followed her.  i told her we should go meet him.  she said no. 
i looked around for a while and noticed that anderson was leaving, so i chased after him.  i ran through the airport and all the way to odessa.  i found him in some building and there were a lot of people there.  i asked some stranger if we could meet him and one of the producers of AC360 said yes, so i got in line.  i was all sweaty from running to odessa.  i got out my phone and tried to wipe all the sweat off my face and neck with an extra t-shirt i was carrying.
so anderson started walking around, meeting people.  i followed him, trying to meet him, but everytime i got close, he apparated to another part of the room.  seriously!  the dude could apparate!  at some point, he finally got to a part of the room and stopped and i was in the right line to meet him.  i got my the camera on my phone ready.  i was so excited that i was going to be able to tweet a picture of me and anderson with #spotAnderson on it! 
i was next in line.
....and i woke up.

so...i didn't get to meet him.  that was not the craziest dream i've ever had, but it was weird.

비빔밥

비빔밥

Pibim pap—vegetables mixed with rice

This was one of my favorite meals in Korea.  I’ve only made it once since I got back from Korea in 2005, and I’m making it again tonight.  It’s very tasty, but a pain in the butt to make.  Also, I can’t find all of the vegetables I need for it here, that’s another reason I haven’t made it more.  This recipe mostly from A Korean Mother’s Cooking Notes by Chang Sun-Young.  I made slight changes.  It's tasty and you should try it!

Ingredients:

6 cups rice, soaked

3 oak mushrooms

½ carrot, sliced

1 cup onion, sliced

1 cup bellflower roots

2 cups cucumber, sliced

2 cups bean sprouts

Salt, soy sauce, green onion, garlic, sesame oil, olive oil, pepper, vegetable stock.

Mushrooms

After soaking the mushrooms, cut into slices and stir-fry.  (I don’t use mushrooms because Sean would yell at me.  Heehee.)

Carrot

Peel carrots and cut into strips.  (I cheat and buy the “matchstix” carrots.)  Stir-fry in hot oil, adding ¼ teaspoon of salt.  Add spoonfuls of water while stir-frying so the carrots don’t change colors.

Onion

Cut onion like the carrot strips and stir-fry, adding ½ teaspoon salt.

Bellflower roots

Scald bellflower roots in salt water.  Stir-fry, adding ½ teaspoon crushed garlic, ½ teaspoon salt and pepper.  Add 4 tablespoons vegetable stock.  When tender, remove them from heat, mix with chopped green onions and a drop of sesame oil.

I strongly recommend trying to find bellflower roots.  They are very good cooked this way, but I have never been able to find them.  L

Cucumber

Cut the cucumber into 2 inch chunks, peel skin, slice into strips.  Don’t use the soft insides.  Sprinkle with ½ tablespoon salt and let stand.  When limp, squeeze hard and stir-fry.

Bean sprouts

Fry ½ teaspoon garlic in 1 teaspoon olive oil, add bean sprouts and ½ teaspoon of salt.  Cover and simmer until beans sprouts are well cooked.  Remove from heat and add 1 tablespoon sesame oil, 1 tablespoon chopped green onion, and ½ teaspoon red pepper powder.

To serve, put a scoop of rice in a bowl and sprinkle with 2 teaspoons sesame oil.  Arrange the vegetables on top of the rice.  Place a fried egg on top.

Disclaimer: Remember, I took most of this recipe from A Korean Mother’s Cooking Notes by Chang Sun-Young.  It is not my own.

O Canada

this blog may become my dream journal.  haha.

last night's dream:

i had to go to a funeral.  it was one funeral for two people, and i had to sit in the front row because i was playing a song, but no one told me what the song was before i had to go play.  i was sitting between my sister and my mom.  they both had saxophones because they were playing something too.  i had my clarinet.
someone came by and handed us little index cards that told us what songs we were supposed to be playing.  i turned my card over and it was the Canadian flag, but it was all messed up, like those "security" phrases you have to type in when you want to post a link or something on facebook.
i decided that i apparently was supposed to play the Canadian national anthem, but i didn't know it.  i got really nervous and thought about how i had never played in front of a crowd all by myself before and imagined myself getting up there and squeaking my way through an unknown anthem.  and my legs were hairy.
and then, beside me, my mom started playing the Notre Dame Victory March to practice.  but the funeral had started and Mr. R came up to us and started yelling at me, telling me not to play while people were talking.  i told him it wasn't me.  it was obviously a saxophone playing and i don't even know how to play the saxophone.  i was even holding my clarinet up for him to look at.
and then i went out into the hallway to try to figure out how to play my song. 

and that's all i remember.  very weird.  don't know why i'm having so many band dreams lately.

Cute baby dogs play fighting.

new semester

so i started the new semester on monday.  i told myself that, after the blood bank fiasco last semester, i would not get behind in my classes this time.  so far i'm doing okay.  ...but...it's only the third day, so we'll see.

i'm taking the second part to clinical chemistry, which is fun.  i like clin chem.
i'm also taking a method development class.  it is the first of two classes that will include a big research project i have to present at the TACLS conference next april.
in another class, management in the laboratory, we'll do a project where we have to start our own lab--find a building, hire employees, make schedules, and other things.  i think it'll be pretty fun.

and then...there's...the second part to BLOOD BANK!!!!  it will be okay.  it will be okay.  it will be okay.  it will be okay.  it will be okay.  it will be okay.  it will be okay.  it will be okay.  it will be okay.  it will be okay. 

a story

so when i was a little kid, probably 6 or 7, i liked to go into my brother's bedroom and play with his fishing pole.  there was a loop on the end of the pole where the line was supposed to go and my goal in life at that age was to hang the fishing pole (by the loop) off the glass thing that hid the light bulbs on the ceiling.  it was my daily ritual.

...until one day, i went into his room, put the fishing pole up on the light cover like always, and the light cover broke into many small pieces which rained down on me.  one piece of glass slashed my skin open on my right collar bone.

i never went to play with the fishing pole after that.  stupid thing.  i still have the scar.

...just a little story i thought would be funny.


oh, and...i passed the bloody blood bank class.  woohoo.