And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough

Not having my camera is so difficult right now!

Today I spent 10 hours in a car moving half of my earthly possessions from one place to another with Judd Nelson (also known as CrocodileMD):

It was incredibly fun. 

Fun enough that I feel like we definitely need to share the secrets to our road trip success:

Top 5 road trip tunes:

Johnny Cash- any/all

O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack

Beastie Boys- License to Ill

Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire- The Swimming Hour

The Cranberries (there is absolutely nothing better than yodeling along to Dreams in a Ford Focus in traffic in the somewhat great state of Ohio!)

Top 5 road trip stops and snacks:

Something sweet: after a beautiful last evening in NY spent with great friends, pie, ice cream, and our beloved Twin Peaks we decided eating a box of Tim Horton's donuts was more than necessary

Something salty: the worse the better. we choose Cheez-Its

Something caffeinated: copious amounts of coffee and frozen coke

Something real: stopped at Panera for a slightly less-processed, salad-based dinner
Something else: onion rings. glorious onion rings.

5 things I wish we had:

GPS/wifi

Snoop Dog: live, via GPS voice, or via MP3

a little more leg room

Mountain Dew and/or Dr. Pepper slurpees

fresh, road side cherries (one of my all-time favorite things about driving up north in the summer!)

personal masseuse(s)

Enjoy! I'd love to hear about your road trip favorites/rituals/etc. In the mean time, I'm enjoying my respite and commencing painting as soon as I'm unpacked. I can't wait! Happy Summer!

Debaser

Today was gorgeous. A perfect public market morning followed by an afternoon filled with insane college students and an impromptu (well, only for me, I'm sure someone planned it) concert on the quad by OK GO (that band that has the treadmill video, pictured below), then an evening of writing, pretending to write, and art-related tangents. Tomorrow I'll be back in the studio, working on all of the things I want to be working on all of the time. I know it's far too early, but I keep daydreaming about my senior show: I want hundreds of perfect prints, and tons of paintings. I want to fill the gallery. I want everything to be beautiful, understated, overwhelming, and inspiring.

It's that time of year. The time of year when I just want to go.go.go and slow.slow.slow. When I am perpetually, simultaneously overwhelmed and extremely content. I love what I do. I feed on stress. I perform better when things are crazy.

But.. I look forward to when things slow down, when I can lay in the grass and just BE (happy, silent, with Tim, content, watching, thinking).

Yesterday I had the chance to present my research to my home community. I realized my favorite thing to do is explain the things we do to the people who say "oh, no, definitely not!" when I ask if they're familiar with biology. I get to show my excitement: then it BREAKS OUT and all the viral particles run wild, right!? (HIV-1 acute infection of CD4+T cells). I think most scientists become numb to the awe-inspiring nature of our work. Yet, I'm so humbled by and fascinated with the things we study, and more importantly, the things we don't know.