Time Flies

I’m of two minds this morning: hrrrmmph! and phew!

It was a challenging week in the lab.  Stuff broke.  Experiments gave wonky results.  Instruments decided to take an early weekend by not working on Friday afternoon.  Flies died.  Answers were not found.  Questions loom larger than ever.  Hrrrmmph!

But today is Saturday, and that is always a good thing.  I’m breaking my own rule today by going into the lab to take care of a few things, but my ambition bit me on the ass last night when I realized that I apparently cannot do simple math and failed to set up my flies properly for an experiment today.  Somehow it seems like a fitting end to a week in which things have not gone as one might hope.  Whatever—better luck next time, Dr. Rosiecat!

I was watching an episode of Grey’s Anatomy the other night and in it, a younger Chief Webber says to a young Dr. Bailey, “If you never get a negative appy, that means you’re not doing enough appies.”  This comment follows the surgical discovery that their patient has a healthy appendix, despite presenting symptoms that suggest appendicitis.  Chief Webber’s wisdom is how I feel about experiments: if you don’t get any negative results, if things don’t go wrong from time to time, then you aren’t doing enough experiments.  So I try to be brave and I keep pursuing the data because one of these days, I’ll catch it.

That being said, I’m still relieved that the weekend will be a vacation from bad news.  Phew!  After a difficult week in the lab, I’m not much in the mood for new things on the weekend.  I want a guarantee on my time spent relaxing and unwinding, so I’m reaching for a few trustworthy things to help me say, “Hello, weekend!”

* I’m re-reading A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg, cover to cover.  I miss Orangette now that Molly’s posts are sporadic, and I love a good book that lets you sink into it like a warm bath.  Although I’ve read certain chapters from this book many times, there is something altogether different about reading the whole book again.  I think I’ve read it twice, so this time will be my third.  It still makes me very happy—and itchy to bake some banana bread!

* Speaking of A Homemade Life, the other night I bought a bunch of radishes at the grocery store.  I have missed radishes.  For dinner tonight, I’ll be making a radish and butter sandwich and pairing it with sweet Jess’s Simplest Tomato Soup, which is my top choice for tomato soup these days.  And may I recommend that you read the posts attached to those links?  They are among my very favorite posts from two of my favorite bloggers.

* I just can’t enough time with my oven these days.  The alchemy of baking keeps me hovering over the stove like a fruit fly over a banana.  This week I returned to an old favorite, my Crunchy Breakfast Granola, mixing it up a bit by adding some puffed corn cereal to the recipe in place of the quick-cooking oats.  I’ve been eating it by the baggieful, poured over plain yogurt studded with fresh banana slices.  If I eat it sitting at my desk at work, occasionally I have to swat a fruit fly away from me because they know how good it tastes.  It’s funny how time makes you forget your own recipes, but it feels wonderful to rediscover the foods of your past.  It is the best kind of nostalgia, I think.

* Outside of the kitchen, it’s a big weekend for me.  Tomorrow I do my final training run before the Armadillo Dash half-marathon next weekend.  I’ve got 75 minutes of steady trotting planned—10 minutes more than my long run last weekend.  75 is a big number, but I think with a little snack-and-hydration break, I can make it happen.  I’m going to dust off an old recipe from Sunlight Cafe: Mollie Katzen’s Breakfast Biscotti.  She describes them as a cross between a granola bar and real biscotti; I think they’ll be perfect snacks for a hungry, carb-craving runner.  I’ve made them once before, so this time I feel entitled to tinker with the recipe: I’m thinking chocolate chips and a post-baking smear of peanut butter.  Paired with some juice, they’ll fuel me deliciously through all those miles.

Let the weekend begin!  What’s on your list today?