David Attenborough, Life, and Returning home

That's right kids, it's almost here.  On June first BBC America will release the real version of LIFE to dvd.  Not the one with Oprah.  Psh!  Life narrated by the one and only Sir David Attenborough.  Those three letters mean he was knighted. Let's see Oprah do that!

When Discovery Channel decided to air Life, they had Oprah narrate it instead of using DA's original narration, much like they did with Sigourney Weaver on Planet Earth.  Nothing against Sigourney, I just think we need to let experts do their work.  If we need rescuing from a parasitic facehugging alien species we'll call you Miss Weaver.  Leave the documentary writing and narration to the man who has been the writer of more nature documentaries than you can shake a stick at, and a narrator of even more than that. He was also a senior manager at BBC and the controller of BBC Two

And also his older brother Richard played Hammond in Jurassic Park and Santa in Miracle on 34th street.  So let's keep the American female personalities away from our nature shows and let the man do his thing.  I mean really he's 84 and still doing this? That's amazing.



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Moving on, I left Ames today and I've checked into my hotel in Des Moines.  As I was pulling into the parking lot I heard a noise that sounded like the very fabric of reality being torn asunder.  My car shook and I almost lost control of my bodily functions. Then just as quickly it ended and I tried to make sense of the chaos that had started and faded so abruptly. Then I remembered I was across the street from the airport...

Then it happened twice more in about a minute but I didn't pee myself rest assured.

I can't wait to get home.  I'm not excited however about flying out at 6, but what can you do?  At least I'm going home. 

By the by, the first chapter of The Bellezandra is up.  Yu can find it here.  Let me know if you like it. Or if you hate it.  Either way I'll keep working on it.  Maybe I'll put the second chapter up befre the end of May.  But I wn't get much of anything dne if my stupid, piece f junk "O" key keeps ignring me!!!


o  oooo oooooooooooooooo

Okay it can work if it wants t.
crap.

Day 1 at NVSL

My first day was more or less uneventful. I'm pretty sure that's how it will stay.  It's a nice facility, because it's their brand new building.  They have windows which makes me jealous.  And the rooms have negative air pressure to keep you from letting possibly contaminated air into the hallway.  Basically a vent in the lab ceiling keeps sucking air in so you have to push harder than you'd think to open the door out into the hallway.  The cool part about that is the indicator to make sure it's working.  Above each door is a plastic dome on each side of the wall with a hole for air.  Within this dome system is a clear pipe with a slight slant towards the hallway.  This pipe contains a bright pink ball (like ping pong ball size).  When the doors are closed, the negative air pressure brings the ball up the pipe, through the wall and into the lab room.  When a door is opened the negative pressure is dispersed coming in the doorway and is not enough to keep the ball in the room so it rolls out onto the hall side of the door. Simple yet awesome.

Other than that it was kinda hum-drum diagnostic work.  I don't have to shower in but I do have to shower out.  I don't get to wear my own clothes in the labs.  I wear provided scrubs.  That would be neat if they matched. Or coordinated.  Or fit.  I had a maroonish (not quite fuchsia) top and purple pants.  Which would have been acceptable if I hadn't spent the first half of the day trying to keep them up.  I finally figured out how to cinch them up enough to stay on.  But this further reinforces my confusion toward the "sagging" trend that I so often see in my neighborhood.  If these guys are tough like they say, and looking for fights as they often seem, wouldn't having your PANTS ON THE GROUND get in the way of not getting beat up? Haha.

Anyway, the coolest part of my day was after work.  I went to Olde Main Brewery and Restaurant, the same place I went for dinner last night, with a guy at NVSL named Leo.  Leo knows the owner and the brewmaster so I got to go down and see where the fermentation and everything takes place.  It was pretty cool to see the whole process and hear nerdy beer talk.

Alright well I'm off to eat dinner and maybe work on some more Bellezandra story and sketches.



***Just to reiterate in case you missed it in my bottle cap talk:  I drink beer from time to time (it's expensive, so not often), and even less in public, but getting drunk is never okay.  The Bible is pretty clear.  If I'm with somebody that I might offend or cause to stumble in their walk I don't drink.  If you have an issue with that email me and we can talk about it.

Arrival

This morning I left the Easterwood Airport to fly to Ames, Iowa for some work training.  I always forget how awesome clouds look from above. This isn't as well lit as I'd hoped but you get the idea. It was pretty sweet.

I'm not sure what you think of when you think of Iowa, but I honestly was hoping for something like this:

This was not the case. 

It's cold and rainy here.  It's as though by going north I went back in time to January or something. Oh well.  I do have a very nice room.  Here's my humongous bed.  This is bigger than our bed at home.  That's my backpack in the middle so you can have a frame of reference. It's pretty swell other than the howling wind outside my window. But I can overlook that.

And also I have a large desk and wifi.  You probably already knew that though because we both know that I wouldn't pay extra just to have internet at my hotel.  I'm cheap.  Anyway, I got some writing done on Bellezandra on the way from DFW but it's surprisingly hard to write or draw during turbulence.  I was thinking Um...hello? I'm trying to shade with a bic pen here. It's difficult enough as it is without you shaking the whole plane Mr. Airpocket!  I'll try to post some later and then put the link on here sometime this week to the site.

Today I don't really have much to do. Just get here and get settled.  And get some sleep too.  Tomorrow I have to start training.  I have to shower in and shower out every time I enter/exit the lab this week.  In my head I see something like Andromeda Strain.  But knowing how glamorized CSI is for lab work, I assume government diagnostic facilities aren't much nicer than mine.  I couldn't find the book I wanted to bring this morning and I almost grabbed Richard Preston's Panic at Level 4, but then thought Nah, I don't want to have nightmares about giving everyone Ebola or something because I'm clumsy.  I won't be able to take my phone into the lab so I'll update this tomorrow evening.  Well, my tummy's getting angry and I'm tired so I'm going to find some food and a nap.  Catch yall on the flip side!


(....what does that even mean?)


****UPDATE*******
I forgot to give a shout out to MW, who may as well be my sister.  Thanks for keeping my baby girl company this week.  You're awesome.

Writing

For the one of you actually following this blog (thanks Heather), sorry I've been a little AWOL.  I have managed to get an electric fence up around my raised bed, but we've been out of town a lot and haven't had time to actually put anything in there.

My main project right now is finishing up my medical school application as well as my public health school application.  The med school app will be for fall 2011 admission and the public health app will be for this coming fall. I'm going to try to take a few classes to get some foundations for med school as well as improve my grades.

Interspersed between that I'm working on a couple of stories.  Yep, I'm trying my hand at writing.  I get all of these neat (at least I think so) ideas in my head but I never write them down so eventually they just shrivel and die in my brain.  But I've started writing bits and pieces down this time so these may actually get written out.  They probably won't ever get published but I'd at least like to write them out for myself because I really like my characters and think their stories deserve to be told. Is that weird?

One is about a group of teenagers in semi-post-apocalyptic America making their way from L.A. to New York.  That one I'm keeping pretty tight reigns on because I've written the most on it and if possible I would like to see it in print one day.

The other is just an idea right now that I'm trying to flesh out.  Here's a really basic synopsis of my thoughts so far:

An apothecary searching for his lost king, a military hero framed as a traitor, a pair of thieves looking for their big break and a young adventurer looking for his place in the world.  Their journeys will bring them together in the land of Kaladea where the land gives way to endless sky, and they may find the answers to all of their questions in a mysterious air ship, a behemoth of unexplained origin, known only as the Bellezandra.

I'm trying to decide how to write this one.  I think it might be a fun experiment to do it as a serialized blog, a chapter at a time.  But then I question the quality because I know that I'll get to the end and go "I wish I'd done this at the beginning so I could that at the end."  Do I write it and publish a chapter at a time, write it all out and then release it one chapter at a time or just write it all and release it all at once?


Thoughts?