I can be a cookie winner.

The wheels are turning...  highlights from the past two weeks-

o I will buy a camera if only to take a picture of my treasured work- a mowed lawn. This breakthrough deserves an explanation, even though I think it should be fairly obvious. Fresh cut green grass is my kryptonite. Hermione should have received 10 points to Gryffindor for detecting that scent in the Amortentia love potion brewed by Slughorn. Not only do I take pleasure in the scent, but I also relish in the effort to obtain it. That is-- I love to mow the lawn and I love mowed lawns. Sunday was a gorgeous day. The weather begged me to work outside. Thus, I awoke the beast of a lawn mower to keep me occupied. I denied my neighbors the amusement of past years when my struggles to turn it on could have been made into a clown show . Shoveling the snow has made me a brute force of nature this winter. It took me less than three attempts to start the mower. I mowed half the yard and beheld its beautiful transformation. All the while these happy thoughts were being formed. I smile every time I venture outside and see the lawn. This has led to the desire to obtain a camera. I have on multiple occasions expressed no desire to utilize a camera. This is a rare exception to that sentiment. I want my mom and dad and brothers and sister and cousins and aunts and friends to see my handiwork. I doubt they will be filled with as much love that Hermione and I share regarding grass. Truth be told, extended family will probably be a little bemused at my interest in lawn mowing, but I can't fight the feeling when it comes to the scent of fresh cut grass. Lastly, the length of this paragraph correlates with my love for mowed lawns.

o Kitchen refrigerator contents are revealing. What do yours say about you? The same day that I wished I had a camera to capture the better half of the lawn, I also had the pleasure of contributing my last flour tortilla to a superbly healthy dinner prepared by the creative genius known as Ben Shinozaki. I will not attempt to describe the dish except to write it was delish. To complete his creation, he inquired if my roommate or myself had any tortillas. I had one. My roommate supplemented the rest. This led me to wonder about the food content in the refrigerator and what it reveals about the owners. My roommates and myself have divvied the refrigerator into three sections for our personal use. One-third of this space has never been fully stocked. The other-third is randomly stocked at varied intervals of time. The last third is always full of exotic looking food. Guess which third belongs to me? Ben, to his credit, did not judge my scant food supply, but it made me think... and I’m still thinking about what it says about me... so far it is favorable. (So why take a picture of an empty refrigerator? Obviously to send to my parents and sister so they can send me more care packages. That’s all.)

o Monkey bars in the lab are only the beginning... For more than two weeks, I have been itching to tire my arms. I want my hands to be calloused and my arms to be sore from all that hanging and swinging. Since I spend many hours in the lab, I have imagined a few ways that a jungle gym could be incorporated into the lab milieu.

o I need a transmogrifier to duplicate myself when I perform death assays on 60+ samples. I have lost count how many times I have wished for one. In the past month alone, it has been vocalized at least 4 times. Unfortunately, there is nary a soul that knows what I am talking about.

o To the science nerds out there with an awareness of Native peoples, may I offer one suggestion for a name change: wild type Americans. Ha ha ha ha. Wild type is the control in any experiment. It is the original while all other conditions are deviant from that population. Ha ha ha. Whew. I was not clever enough to be the first to suggest it. That honor goes to a witty bioengineer who was patient enough to listen to my rants about the politically correct way to describe indigenous American populations. I think this may be funny to only scientists because my primary audience (e.g. family) did not laugh as much as I did.

o In the multiverse lives of 1sheepherder and therogueNavajo, it was this universe that they dueled... and I am not referring to wizard duel for once. This is a clash between two avid readers of The Navajo Times. It is a humorous saga to at least one person (in my primary audience). To the two participants, it possibly serves as a platform for one to establish her monarchy and crown herself queen.

o Kit Wickel knows something about me that no one else knows, except those faceless people who process fees... and I will keep it that way. It does not go down until 2012 anyway.

o I love wise old men.

I am well aware that there are Dumbledore haters. I have heard your reasons and I refute them. Sort of kidding, I am not that blinkered. Yes, Dumbledore was very calculating in how he positioned the people that would defeat Voldemort, but he had to be! Let me just share briefly what I love about Dumbledore. He is fascinating because he is not oblivious to the power of emotion, whether it be from a house-elf or half-giant. He is naturally gifted as a wizard, but that does not preclude him from disciplining himself in other aspects of human development. He is a man who seeks after the good things of life. One of my favorite quotes from him is “Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young...”

Uncle Iroh. What a chap! I love this cartoon character. Who did NOT cheer in season 3 in the episode “The Day of Black Sun Part 2: The Eclipse” when Iroh escapes? Who did NOT cry in season 2 in the episode “The Tales of Ba Sing Se”? Who did this funny old man NOT charm in season 1? Who? WHO? We have nothing to talk about if anyone comes forth in the affirmative.

Chingachgook. Wow. He is such a grand ‘old man’. I shouldn’t even categorize him as one since he was able to finish off Magua in less than a minute after running up an 89-degree canyon in just a few minutes. However by that logic, Uncle Iroh and Dumbledore also become disqualified as old men. In my youth, I watched The Last of the Mohicans with my family and vowed that I would condition myself to be like Chigachgook when I became a white-haired old woman. He does not say much in the movie or book, but when he does speak it pierces the heart. In the closing scene of the movie he tells his adopted son Hawkeye, "The frontier moves with the sun and pushes the Red Man of these wilderness forests in front of it until one day there will be nowhere left. Then our race will be no more, or be not us."

Conclusion: I love wise old men... who are smart, witty, and spry. (Although the ones described above are fictional, my grandpa trumps them all. My pops will be happy to know that he is not in the “old man” category just yet.)