Ohayo

Changed my blog layout. Do you like? This wonderful new layout is courtesy of yummylolly.com, and was directed to my attention by Jen.

So tonight I planned to sit down and get some serious journal reading done as my genetics journal club is tomorrow. It`s a pretty great paper (The Genetic Landscape of a Cell, Science 2010), but I just haven`t had the time of day to read it.

Journal reading is one of the most difficult tasks I can undertake. They are these unassuming 5-8 page papers with figures and tables that, by the looks of them, should only take about an hour to read. Boy is that a horrible assumption.

Each sentence itself is a minefield of jargon that leaves me puzzled, and itching to search it up on Wikipedia. Every time I finish a paragraph I`ve already forgotten what the previous one was about. If I actually make it through a single paper (a month later), I`m still not sure what the authors were trying to say. It`s awful.

So to motivate myself I made a nice little snack/second dinner. (The first dinner was also an assortment of snacks, but on a much larger scale.)

fuji apple, mini oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, mint tea, choco
And then I went on skype for 3 hours. #fml

Some of that distraction did actually consist of skyping with my Dad. He e-mailed me this morning about some flight deals and my return date in August/September. It really got me thinking about how I`ve almost reached the half-way mark of my stay here in SF, and what it would be like to go home in the Fall. Don`t get me wrong, I love Vancouver, and hopefully I`ll be excited by my upper level courses. However, I don`t look forward to living at home again. It`ll be nice to be around family, and have the luxury of my parents at hand, but I know I`ll miss the absolute freedom.

And what freedom I enjoy living in the foggy city. There`s a lot to complain about what with being underage, and living in the most party heavy house on the block. Yet, I`ve already come to take for granted the simplicity of coming home at the end of a day`s work to a house devoid of parenting. I absolutely love waking up in the morning with the house to myself and making one of my favourite breakfasts.

I guess I`ll just have to appreciate the time I have left, which is a lot, but already my weeks fly by in an instant. San Francisco, I will savour you like being cocooned in a blanket on a chill, rainy morning. Like that first burst of sunshine you taste when you bite into a blood orange. Like a velvet storm of cherry blossom petals in a rain shower.