A Glorious Afternoon

So this afternoon, a cascade of beautiful happenings tumbled into my path. In fact, there were so many little snippets of goodness that I simply couldn’t resist blogging about them. Today could have been a rather disagreeable day. In fact, it started out that way. After being rudely interrupted from a dream {about learning to fly Cessnas (that looked startlingly like stuffed sea-doos) and writing a children’s book about baby moose that treks to New York City alone} by escuela’s prompt alarm, I realized a terrible thing. I had to take a shower. I hate showering. And I’ve generally managed to get it over with at night this summer. So this was disagreeable indeed. I survived, however, and I was the first to make it to room 176B at 8:12 sharp. (I always find it a bit odd when I, the lowly undergrad, beat the grad students, you know, the ones working on a real thesis and such, to the lab.) Thus began the not-so-enjoyable morning. I immediately dug into the proliferation of work that I’ve been eying upon the horizon for 8 weeks now—it’s officially crunch time.

Enter Dr. Twiss. With the Toughbook. With a name like that, can you really expect anything delightful? He nonchalantly plopped it onto my desk, relayed the fabulous truth that it now contained new tracks for me to export, format, and harass until they appear as colored dots in Ocean Data View, a program with which I have no training and has a “helpful” 187 page manual. I was thrilled, as you can tell, especially since I had only briefly before remembered that my abstract for the SURE symposium, coming up next Thursday, was due tomorrow. I also knew that I needed to put together a presentation for tomorrow—a presentation that I will be critiqued on extensively with a “presentation instructor.” Eek. And that’s not to mention all of the data that needed to be analyzed to make the presentation.

Then I realized something else: an experiment I set up on Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. needed to be completed today. At 5. No exceptions. And the last time I ran one of these experiments, it took me 4 hours. Yipee—4 unpaid hours of lab toil! I dug in my heels in anticipation of a long, torturous day.

Now, after painting such a bleak picture for you, let me explain why the story of today needed to be told. After lunch, my work was relatively painless and quite productive. Always a good combination. Furthermore, when it came time to face off with my plant experiment at 5, I had the lab to myself and a craving for some Phoenix tunes. What resulted was a lovely, upbeat, and refreshingly quick experiment. I was out by 6:30! When I left, my hilarious roomies were home and in rare form. Bianca had already sent a text message to ascertain that I was still alive and kicking, and Teresa was full of ideas for our upcoming end of program ice cream social. We even discussed cupcakes for a bit. You KNOW how I feel about that. :) Also, I forgot to mention that I purchased a mountain dew, my first since the beginning of summer, with my excess laundry money earlier in the day. So I was HYPER. And this is where the cascade began.

I decided to go running to dispel some of the energy that was causing me to jump up and down repeatedly. Meanwhile, I stumbled upon the donkey watch that my parents (they rock) brought me when they visited. I’m talking donkey—we’re makin’ waffles—from shrek. It’s plastic. The band has rivets in it to make it look like actual donkey fur. And you must pry open donkey’s mouth to see the watch face. YES. Bianca was sweet enough to take a picture of me sporting it before I left.

I also decided to run into town today rather than to the Bayside cemetery (which is actually by the river and is quite lovely). Wise decision. Upon reaching the riverside park, Carmen, a postgrad that also works with Dr. Twiss, was sitting on a bench overlooking the most gorgeous view I’ve yet seen in Potsdam. The sunset, a weeping willow tree, the clock tower of the neighboring church, and the serene Raquette river made me establish a pact with myself to come and sit on this very bench in the near future. But wait. There’s more. Carmen was reading. What a fabulous thing. And she was reading The Hobbit. Which, if you know my view of the series, was enough for a colorful discussion between the two of us. After chatting with her for a bit, I ran on, and was delighted to see her boyfriend walk up to her bench with a freshly picked bouquet of Queen Anne’s Lace from the riverside. It was just a lovely moment. Queen Anne’s lace is a delightful weed, if you ask me. I suppose I'll always disagree with the gardening world on that one.

Let the wonder continue. There was a rainbow by the river. As I ran. Beautiful. By this point, I was overwhelmed with the distinct combination of beautiful things I had encountered. It was one of those moments that you just can't help reflecting on how loving and good our Lord is. He has just blessed me beyond belief.

I then got to enjoy looking at Potsdam from the inside by exploring a neighborhood of very interesting houses. On the way back I stopped in the gazebo on campus. Just because. It seemed like an appropriate cherry on top of a lovely evening.

Oh yeah. New York City last weekend was fun too. You can see my priorities. Hehe.

Here's a close up of the fantabulous donkey watch. :D

Here's me about to embark upon my run, in public, mind you, with the fantabulous donkey watch. Shorty, I took this picture for you. ;)
And just for fun--here's a picture from our NYC Trip. From L to R: me, Samantha, Bianca, and Yami. Just hangin' on wall street.
Well, I've put off working on the aforementioned presentation for long enough, so I'll get back to it. However, thanks for reading through all of that, and have a lovely evening. I hope you encounter just as much and more joy than I did.