Moving On...

As all of you probably know, I've started the MD/PhD program at UT-Houston. Given that this blog is called "mareninspain" and that I like making new blogs, I've moved! This blog will still be here, and you can find the new one under "Links" on the right - it's called "My 'mudphud' blog". Or you can just click here.

So update your links and join me on my new adventure! (hm, that was kind of cheesy. oh well)

My New Rivalry

Hi folks (all 3 of you; hi Mom!) - Sorry for that little absence there, I'd like to say it's because I've been so busy this summer, but really it's that nothing exciting has happened. I'm officially a grad student now, living in Houston, doing research at MD Anderson, and reading alot of papers. However, med school starts Aug. 20 (eek!) so expect some more interesting entries soon!

Anyhow, the real news is this shirt I saw someone wearing the other day.



They explained it as the Dallas equivalent of "Keep Austin Weird". Seems appropriate to me. Which brings me to my new rivalry: Houston vs. Dallas. Obviously, fair reader, Houston is far superior to Dallas, and since I've never really been a fan of Dallas, I jumped on the Houston bandwagon pretty readily. I might even have to order a shirt!

Class of 2007

So maybe I haven't officially graduated yet (the ceremony is on Saturday) and the picture in the hat is from my High School graduation (hey, same funny hat, just a different day) but I am finally done with undergrad! I just took my final final (harhar) and I already know that I've passed the 2 courses I needed to graduate, so all that's left is to get a very expensive piece of paper in the mail (aka my diploma). Woohoo!

I move to Houston on Thursday and then start my graduate program on Monday. Not very much of a vacation.


But that's ok, I've graduated!!



Disclaimer: The first picture (from www.utexas.edu, thanks!) isn't from this year's ceremony, as it hasn't happened yet, but I can't imagine it'll look much different this year. Hook 'em! (I guess?)

A Finals Week Meal

Steaming hot potstickers, rootbeer, and laptop.

Shoes for a Cause

Some of you may know that I have a tiny problem with online shopping. Addicted is a strong word, but I'm getting close. Today, I got some shoes that I ordered way back during my post-Spain "my money is now worth something" shopping spree. In fact, they are so cute and amazing that I don't even mind that I waited about 3 months for them.

I present: TOMS (also featuring my embarrassingly pale legs)



These cuties (along with solid versions for women, men, and tots) can be found at TOMS Shoes. However, the best part about these shoes isn't their cute pattern, or that they're amazingly comfortable, but that every pair of TOMS sold guarantees an Argentine child a similar pair of TOMS shoes - absolutely free! All that for less than $40! I haven't done a road test yet, but I see myself ordering a nice red pair in the near future.

New Hair

I got my hair cut on Friday, and here are the results: (in both curly and straight for your viewing pleasure)

Also featuring my (semi) new glasses!




Ok so I have three exams this week, so my study breaks start to get a little more creative ... but I'll be done with undergrad two weeks from tomorrow (!!!).

What a Cutie!

I'm a lucky girl!

Tri, Just a Little Bit Harder

In the spirit of making changes in my life (new city, new school, new work) I've decided to start working towards completing a triathlon. Crazy, I know, but it's something I'd thought about before but ruled out, mainly because the Central Texas area is really hilly and I hate biking up hills. But since I'm moving back to South Texas (read: no hills) I thought maybe I'd give it a go. We'll see.

My biggest fear is the running, mainly because running and I have never really gotten along. Swimming should be no problem, as I've already gotten back into swimming this semester, and for some reason the biking part doesn't seem so daunting. However, last week in my Evolution class we read a paper describing how humans seem to be evolutionarily adapted for long distance running (i.e. 5+ km). You can't argue with nature! So I'm giving it a go.

I found a 10 week running schedule meant to prep for a 5K or 10K race, and today was my first day! Yay! They start you off easy, the first week being a 30 min walk/jog on Wednesday and Saturday. You may have noticed that today is Wednesday... meaning that I have completed my first running workout!

Amazingly, it wasn't as bad as I had expected, I simply jogged until I felt like walking and then walked until I felt like jogging again. I did some pseudo calculations with Google Maps and it looks like I went almost 2 miles! It may not seem like much to you, but I feel pretty accomplished.

Now the real challenge is keeping it up as the workouts become more and more frequent and the mercury keeps rising. And that whole biking thing, I'm not so sure how that's going to work in downtown Houston.

And as an incentive to keep going, if I keep up with my running workouts for 3 weeks I'll reward myself with one of these and an armband for my ipod nano.



Wish me luck! And feel free to clue me in on biking workouts/how to get started.

Looking for the Future

These Pulitzer Prize winning 20 photos by Renee Byer of The Sacramento Bee document a boy and his family's struggle against neuroblastoma.

It's both powerful and heartbreaking - the reason I'm considering studying and working with pediatric cancer - but also what makes me wonder if I'm strong enough.

(found via Blog, MD)



I'll get a taste of cancer research this summer, when I'll be doing two 5-week research rotations in labs at MD Anderson, one of the top (or THE top, depending on the year and who you ask) cancer institutions in the country. I guess I'll take it from there.


In other news, I graduate and move to Houston in less than a month! Crazy!

Narcoleptic Weenie Dog!

Darla, this made me think of you and your dog a day :D

Oh the internet, I love you

SRSLY!

Articuento

In the spirit of being lazy and not writing anything new, here's something I've been wanting to share for awhile. It's a short story I wrote for a class last semester, specifically an "atricuento", a story that's part news and part fiction. It's in Spanish, but I'm not sure it will translate well. It's kind of a Spanish story... but if you read Spanish, or care to translate via babelfish, enjoy!
(and if you really want me to translate it to english, let me know, and I will)

***

Un viaje al futuro

Los trenes AVE de RENFE son los más rápidos en todo de España. Un nuevo modelo de AVE tren puede tener un velocidad de 280 kilómetros por hora y ahora une Madrid con Zaragoza. En una futura muy cerca, los trenes AVE van a unir Madrid con Barcelona con velocidades de 300 kilómetros por hora – bastante rápido para que el viaje puede ser menos de dos horas.

Con este nuevo trayecto, Madrid y Barcelona van a ser más cerca de alguna vez antes. La gente de Barcelona irá a Madrid y trata de hablar en Catalán. Los Madrileños no van a creer que están en Barcelona y querrán visitar sus cafés favoritos de Zaragoza. Los turísticas perdidos van a vagar en Madrid buscando “La Sagrada Familia".

Claro, los cambios y el progreso son buenos, pero Madrid y Barcelona ahora son tan diferentes y tan lejos que es mejor que queden como esto. Si no, es posible que los equipos el Real Madrid y el Barcelona tengan que unirse. ¡Que horrible!

written 10/2006

***

More Fluff!

To contrast recent text-heavy posts, I present to you: fluffy!





CUTE!

Once a nerd...

When browsing through my documents folder the other day I came across some of my college essays. I read through a few of them, expecting to cringe at my past writing. Surprisingly, one of them I still rather liked. I even chuckled a little. So, I present to you: a college essay.

Prompt: Explain a belief you accepted at some time in your life but have rejected on the basis of a rational process. (it goes on, but this is the gist of it)

***

An important part of growing up is losing one’s baby teeth in preparation for growing permanent adult teeth. We all know the drill - you lose your baby tooth, put it under your pillow, the tooth fairy comes, and you are one step closer to being grown up. However, there comes a time in every child’s life that the tooth fairy’s existence doesn’t seem so feasible anymore.

When I was about nine years old I was feeling especially old and grown up, and the whole tooth fairy idea didn’t seem so likely anymore. We had started to learn about the scientific method and researching topics in school, so I was beginning to reevaluate some of the ideas that I had taken for granted. It was time for me to figure out some things for myself.

One day at school, I lost one of my baby teeth, but instead of proudly displaying my necklace with the fake tooth enclosing my real tooth, I hid it in my backpack. At home that evening I didn’t tell my family that I had lost a tooth, and they didn’t notice my newly toothless state. Everything was going according to plan. I placed my tooth under my pillow before I went to sleep and waited for morning to arrive. If the tooth fairy were real, she would know that I had lost a tooth and there would be cold hard cash waiting for me in the morning. However, if there was no tooth fairy, all I would find under my pillow was the tooth I placed there.

The next morning I anxiously checked under my pillow. There it was – my tooth. My heart sank a little as one of my fantasies was ruined, but it was overwhelmed by my pride in disproving the story all by myself. I continued the same routine for several days without my parents ever noticing. Finally I announced that there was no tooth fairy and explained my little test. My parents looked a little chagrined at not noticing my missing tooth, and I ended up getting more money for that tooth than I ever had before. With my last few baby teeth, the “tooth fairy” was always very prompt and generous, even though I had discovered her true identity.

originally written spring 2004

***

I know, I know, I'm a huge nerd. But for the record, I got in.

Music Sweet Music

Lately I've been thinking that it would be fun to have a little band that sits on my shoulder, like a parrot, that would play whatever music was going on in my head at the moment.

It would be great to establish indie cred - some really obscure song would be playing as I walked down the drag and all the hipsters would follow my extreme indie awesomeness.

Except that the music that usually is going on in my head is the song of the Spanish Republic that we listened to in my Spanish class or the catchy but annoying song I heard two weeks ago in HEB and can't get out of my head.

Of course in class it would probably be annoying too: the mini band would start snoring when I was bored or play a crescendo when I figured out a problem on an exam.

As much as I really like the idea of having a mini band on my shoulder (I would name them the Maren-ers (haha?)), its probably for the best that they stay exactly where they are - in my head.

... cue theme music!


originally written 2/20/07

Ch-ch-ch-changes!

As you may (or may not) have noticed, I've created yet another blog. The idea is that my "serious" blog is where I'll talk about whatever issues happen to catch my attention and this "fluff" blog will continue as is: travel diary (w/pics!), short musings, and whatever other little tidbits I want to share. Basically more like a tumblelog. And to keep if fluffy I'll try to include as many pictures of cute things as possible!

Today's fluffy:

Clint and I drinking green beer (Stella even!) on St. Patty's day



and ... PUPPIES!

Spider vs. Spider

Living in Texas, in an older building, I have some unexpected house guests from time to time. My first week here a roach tumbled out of my bathrobe and there have been a few ants on my windowsill. Most recently, 2 spiders were in a standoff on my wall.

I had seen one of them, a jumping spider, the day before in my kitchen. I usually kill and flush my unexpected visitors, but spiders eat pesky flies, so I let him live. The second time he appeared he was on the dining room wall, and he wasn't alone. About an inch apart were the jumping spider and a more conventional looking brown spider.

The brown spider was bigger, and I wasn't taking the chance that it was a brown recluse, so again, I left them alone. I kept looking over every few minutes, but there were no new developments. Neither spider moved.

I came back home after being gone a few hours and the 2 brown spots had become one, but I couldn't tell who was winning. Later, the spot had moved to the ceiling, presumably migrating back to the victor's lair for a celebratory meal.

It was never completely clear who won, or that this was a hostile standoff at all, as the spiders never moved even a millimeter while I was watching.

The next morning they were gone from sight, and I haven't seen either since. But my money's on the jumping spider.

Knut is so cute!

Ok so maybe you've heard about this, but I am pretty much obsessed so I'm sharing with the world... There is a baby polar bear in Berlin (named Knut) who was rejected by his mother and is being raised by humans. Animal rights activists have called for the baby bear's death (!!!) because he was rejected by his mother and is now living in a unnatural environment (like zoos are so natural to begin with). Long story short, the Berlin Zoo folks plan to continue raising the cute little sucker and hope to find him another zoo to live at when he grows up. I know I'll be petitioning for the Houston Zoo!

Here's a link of some video footage of Knut along with a handy song (in German). Love it!


(photo from the bbc)

Coffee

At the the time, I was more than ready to get out of Spain. I found the people to be largely inconsiderate, extremely nationalistic to the point of racism, and with an overwhelming since of entitlement. More than that, I didn't like the person I was becoming while living in Spain. I was almost always late, I stopped caring about my schoolwork, and was generally lazy.

However, now that I'm back in the craze that is my normal life, there is one major thing I miss: coffee. I miss the ease of ordering coffee - as there were virtually only 2 choices: cafe con leche or cortado (an espresso shot w/a dallop of steamed milk). I miss the automated coffee machines that were ubiquitous - I had coffee from a machine at the Alhambra! But more than anything else I miss taking time out of the day to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee. To-go doesn't really exist in Spain. Cortados are small, so you can gulp one down in a minute or two, but that's still a little bit of the day that you took just for yourself. To stop, smell the coffee, chat with friends, re-caffeinate, and then move on.

I don't know that I'd say Spain got many things right, but coffee is definitely one of them. Oh, and also colonizing a continent.

Woman vs. Shower

I've started praying to the shower gods. Well not so much praying as pleading. Things like "please let the water come out of the showerhead warm" or "ok now please don't change temperature!".

You see, showering is one of those daily activities that's not supposed to take thinking. I usually hop in at some ungodly hour of the day, lather, rinse, hop out. The most complex thinking is "floral or citrus shower wash?" or "do I need to shave today?". Unfortunately, my current shower situation doesn't allow such luxury. I've had to construct a complex formula of jiggle cold knob, wait 5 seconds, test water, repeat until water is neither polar nor scalding. Then of course I ask the shower gods not to change the temp. But sometimes the toilet upstairs flushes... or maybe someone's using the laundry machine. Wait, test, repeat.

Oh well, at least I turn out clean and fresh (and only slightly pink from the occasional burst of boiling hot water).