Trader Joe's Southwest Salad is amaazing. I don't know what's so amazing about this particular one, but it's the only salad I've ever liked :D

Current weather in Boston is disgusting. It's 80-90% humidity and 80+ degrees Fahrenheit... gross. It has also been thunderstorming a lot overnight, which always wakes me up. It's cool though - I like watching thunderstorms, as long as I'm indoors. Recently I got reminded of Imogen Heap's Hide and Seek (such cool harmonies), and I've been listening to it on loop - it's so melancholy though... goes well with the gloomy weather I guess.

My rental wooden cello bow started falling apart, so I went to the rental store to get a new bow, and decided to try the carbon fiber bow. While I'm not a big fan of the carbon fiber instruments (they look so... unnatural), I've heard some good stuff about carbon fiber bows (they're more stable/reliable/consistent, they can sound much more powerful if they are well crafted, blah blah blah), so we'll see how this goes :) I am also getting tired of the wooden bow expanding like craaazy when the weather gets warm and affecting the playing.

Speaking of which: this weather (high humidity and temperature) is really shitty for cello playing -- cello in particular because it's easy to sound dull on the cello I think, because of its lower register. Everything I play sounds sooo clumsy and dull no matter what I do. Oh well.

Eunyong says in a month or two, we might think about moving onto a different project because this current one "isn't moving forward"... he's working on a publication right now, but once he's done with that, he'll actually do benchwork with me on this project, and if we can't make progress in the following month or so, we'll ditch it and move to something different. This is why crystallography projects suck - it's an all or nothing deal, and if it doesn't work, god knows why it didn't work... there's not much we've "learned" in the process. I also feel bad that after 9 months of being in this lab (and 7 months working on this project), I haven't really been able to make any intellectual contribution to this project :-/ Hmph.

After an exciting 3-day weekend with Ana and Scott in Boston I was totally exhausted, and since this was the first Monday I didn't go into lab in a long time (if ever?), my sense of timing was totally screwed up. I completely forgot we had our group meetings on Tuesday mornings, and I freeeeaked out when I realized that this morning, but then I regained sanity when I remembered that our group meeting was postponed to Wednesday, just for this week. Phew.

I bought the cutest plush seal doll at the Aquarium, and this will have to serve as my furry friend for right now because I can't afford a real pet :) This seal is adoooorable.

Ana reminded me I had a twitter account under the username of "raurenree" haha :) And my tweeting stopped back in November, with the last tweet being: "ate too much." Typical me.

I have found my love at Harvard Square - a whipper. Make fun of me all you want, but this guy was cute ;) But then I saw him smoke a cigarette afterwards. So, moving on :)

A full week of not biting my nails! I am proud. Seriously. I've had this habit for as long as I can remember, and wasn't able to quit. I don't know what inspired me recently other than "I want pretty nails," though this has never worked long enough before. Not that I want to jinx it.

Lastly - June is here! This means we are already 42% done with year 2010, which is a scary reminder of how fast time goes by. But back to happy thoughts - this is the month when I go back to VA twice for family and friends :) I am super excited. I haven't been back at UVa for over 6 months, and there are only 23 days left till I revisit Charlottesville (soon to be 22)!