"25 before 25"

I'm totally re-inventing myself in dental school. For one, I won't care about school. I mean, I won't only care about school. I will also love and enjoy school. I mean....

This weekend was just lovely. Take a look at this scene outside of our department:

After thundering and pouring all afternoon on Friday, this weekend's unexpected beautiful weather coaxed me to work outside.

I sat outside and thought about 25 things I hope to accomplish before I turn 25. It's at D is for Dentist: "Yesle's 25 before 25."

And I want to have an identity outside of school: "Don't let school define you."

(Can you tell this two-blogging is getting complicated for me?)

I wore my Chick-Fil-A shirt to the gym today and wondered if this was totally inappropriate! Oh wells. Happy Earth Day.

why being the first 100 at chick-fil-a will wreck you

I spent 27 hours with 109 strangers camping outside in a concrete parking lot yesterday. All for the promise of free Chick-Fil-A for a year. (52 meals for one meal a week anyway).

I learned how to pitch a tent for this occasion (It's surprisingly easy). I felt a little rugged and outdoorsy until I remembered why I needed to be outdoors.

It is sort of like being on a cruise. Since there were more than a 100 people, there was a raffle to determine the lucky 100 with 10 more alternates. I made friends with a former longhorn who works at a downtown hospital.

The crowd was predominantly middle-aged and female. There were a few other college students. Some of the raffle winners were wheel-chair bound so they had "guests" who stayed to move them around. You have to be at least 18 but there were a handful of kids that stuck around with their parents who had won the raffle. A lot of them, I found out later, are home-schooled. Some moms had brought their infant babies! Fortunately the weather stayed cool so no medical emergencies there.

The same people host the Chick-Fil-A openings nationwide. Many of the people were repeat customers who knew the CFA staff like old friends. A surprising bunch had driven hours and hours for this. One elderly woman told me she drove eight hours from Louisiana and was planning on coming in again next week to Katy.

Let's think about this. At 52 meals valued at $250, I was just at the tipping point of making economic sense, missing an entire day of work and babysitting. But to do this repeatedly? I wanted to ask others how they were spending an entire day sitting out here. I was in the parking lot from 5:30AM Wednesday to 6:15AM Thursday.

After lunch, there was a mini-jam session behind the building in the shade! I took my papers, poured myself a cup of iced sweet tea and studied listening to live music.

I met people I would normally never talk to. Being in the same boat naturally confers a feeling of solidarity. Huddled by the one outlet charging phones, talking about homeschooling, discussing "old" antibiotics (She gushed, "I remember when methicillin came out!"). I danced two-step with new friends, found another Kurt Vonnegut aficionado, checked off an item on my bucket list, and oh, got 52 free CFA meals.

#12 and #13 after an entire day in this CFA parking lot

But about the title (besides having your last exam two hours after you pull out from the CFA parking lot...), from the Chick-fil-A meal calculator I added up what I ate:

I had made some actively healthy choices, such as not constantly pouring myself sweet tea, ordering a chargrilled chicken sandwich for dinner, not winning a milkshake for a contest. But this day was out of control food-wise. My fitness calculator told me I'd gain an extra five pounds in five weeks if I kept this up. YIKES. Many people brought in chips and cookies in addition to the CFA food we were fed, so...

Some final thoughts:
I wondered why homeless/jobless people weren't here. For them this would be a great opportunity right? One speculated they probably didn't know because she heard about it on the Internet- how did I figure this out? (Facebook through a friend). People who could benefit the most from these openings simply don't know about them...

Did you see me on the news?? Houston Press and Click2Houston

the crawfish party.

There once was a boy who was turning seven. His parents asked him what he wanted for his birthday. He answered that he wanted to have a crawfish boil. His parents found this curious since the boy never liked crawfish (he found it too spicy) but promised him one anyway. The day before the dad went out to pick up the ten pounds of crawfish for the boy and his six friends, he asked the boy: "Why did you want to have crawfish instead of pizza or ice cream?" The boy answered: "I want to play with the crawfish." He was referring to the cleaning process where crawfish would sit in a salty tub for a few minutes. His parents laughed and headed over to the grocery store. They asked if they could buy one crawfish. One lucky (or unlucky) crawfish was brought home for the birthday boy. He put the crawfish in a glass bowl filled with water. He felt its smooth shell and looked at his claws. The birthday crowd ate pizzas at the party.

Homemade tortillas!!!

I woke up early on a Saturday morning and I decided to make flour tortillas from scratch.

This recipe is so simple: Easy homemade flour tortillas from Cooks.com with four ingredients everyone has in their kitchen.

Knead, form into 1 or 2-inch doughs, flatten and cook on hot griddle (or a frying pan!). I didn't have a roller so I flattened the dough by hand. You could probably get two dozen tortillas from this recipe if you made them really flat.

Off to work on today's errands! One week of school left.

Drinking out of a fire hydrant: Global Warming & Civic Scientists

I attended our weekly departmental lecture Thursday by Dr. John Anderson on global warming. He has been in the news lately about his censored article on Galveston. Heading down, I asked my friend, "Is this going to be really technical?" Because I get lecture abstracts from the listserve emails and don't know half the words in them. It turned out not to be. The lecture is part of Rice's UnConvention weekend and many in the audience were community members.

Some thoughts from the lecture:
- Can scientists be too "alarmist"? Dr. Anderson noted that now they are "vulgar" and throwing out phrases like "sea level rise", when decades ago they trotted carefully around the issue. Not to offend anyone.
- Free floating icebergs melting do not contribute to sea level rise!
- Most of sea level rise comes from thermal expansion of water!!!
- Glaciers don't grow back. Glaciers melting is inevitable. (I mean, obviously so but I never stopped to think about it.)
- How do we implement long-term changes that outlive politicians' election cycles???

After an hour of work catch-up, I made it to the Civic Scientist Lecture Series at the Baker Institute. I went to one by the discoverers of Buckyball a few years a back and loved it, so I RSVP'd for this one and invited a friend. The speakers were Dr. David Baltimore, 1975 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, and Dr. Alice Huang, a Senior Faculty Associate in biology at Caltech.

It's hard to summarize their accomplishments into one line. But their achievements could go for hours.

Interesting points from this Civic Scientist talk:
- Average age of NIH grant recipients is 42. Much of great science accomplishments happen much younger.
- Why do we train foreigners? (I had never thought about this question...) Because in doing so, we are creating competition. But sometimes they stay in the U.S. and further American progress. (????)
- Wealthy individuals privately funding research is an American phenomenon. Howard Hughes of HHMI dropped out of Rice!!!!
- New Asia might be a good incubator for new scientists because traditionally people hold respect for intellectual pursuits. (Traditional Korean aristocrats called yang-ban's spent their days writing and reading!)
- "Is winning the Nobel Prize awesome?" Dr. Baltimore answered yes, because it is recognized by everyone. "But", he noted, "individuals being singled out for achievements is difficult."
- Scientists should become actively involved in policy making.

I had so many ideas during these lectures (thus the post title). Still organizing my notes from the talks. I love lectures that become a two-way conversation of sorts, where the ideas presented spark new ideas of my own. Much more excited about my career: scientists are not just scientists. We have a responsibility to spread our knowledge and influence policies.

Baker Institute had a fantabulous reception afterwards too. Munched on mini cheesecakes and chocolate-dipped strawberries while chatting with others who'd attended the conference. It's really interesting to hear what different people take away from the same lecture.