Anyway, sometimes you have to decide to really commit to something. Because otherwise, what's the point of living? You just float around without any purpose in life. With that in mind, it's clearly time to get serious about blogging. It's back by popular demand. (Shout-out to Kristine)
Sadly, I can probably encapsulate the past two and half months of not blogging very briefly. I went home for break and killed it, won Christmas, and then went back to school. School has been fun, although I'm not sorry that's it's the first day of March. I actually don't mind the winter that much, (especially when there are so many awesome sledding opportunities, thanks to feet of snow being dumped on us) but it has sent a lot of people at school into the doldrums which is boring of them. It was stunning how few people went out to romp in the snow. They missed out on the sweet sledding ramp built of six chairs and two recycle bins that is fairly unmelted. This is what Annie looked like when she went down:
My intramural basketball team went winless, although we played probably one of the best games of the season against the undefeated Hustlers in our final attempt. Our B-team put us down 17-0, we staged a furious rally to close the gap to 8 by half. Inspired, our B-team refused to score until 2 minutes were left in the 3rd, on a set of 6 free throws from a double-technical following a shooting foul. The fourth-quarter was back and forth, several players had four fouls. Yours truly buried some dagger three pointers, and discovered the meaning behind a Browning quote that I memorized after seeing it in the Shackelton biography: "Just when things looked their worst, they turned for the best....so thin is the line which divides success and failure." Unfortunately, I was on the reverse side of this dividing line. Down 5, I nailed a three with 10 seconds left and was the hero. Even the referees were happy about it. 
Down 2, I stole the inbounds pass, and threw up the ugliest looking fall-away scoop/hook shot in history, ignorant of the fact that my teammate was open underneath the basket. Still, the game was a lot of fun. On a side-note, the jump program has finished and was a resounding success, despite the fact that I did not achieve the ultimate goal of dunking. I had 2 blocks and probably 8-10 rebounds in our game, and my legs are like tree trunks.On the treasure-chest front, for those who remember that epic, things are going very well. The top AND bottom are now complete, I just need to add some trim, and screw in a hinge. Don't worry, I have already put in a birthday request for some gold coins or bars to make it a properly treasure chest. We'll see if the 'rents come through. I did some searching, and was surprised to find that there's actually a huge gold market on Ebay. It was really hard to avoid bidding on anything.
As for the search for immortality, everything is coming up aces. Things are progressing well in terms of doing some work at Tulane over the summer. My independent research is also going well, as I recently read a ton of articles about resveratrol, which has produced some amazing results in lab studies. From what I was able to parse out of all the articles, the important part is that it activates SIRT1, a type of protein, that helps reduce free radicals. What's hilarious is despite the fact that it as yet has not been tested on humans at all, lots of people are apparently as desperate as I am for life extension, because there are whole groups of people that are now taking resveratrol supplements. I think they're mainly doing it because they don't have the willpower to live on a calorie-restricted diet. Also, everyone is making a big deal about how it's naturally in wine (although in absolutely negligible quantities, you'd have to drink hundreds of bottles a day to get a significant dose). I think they just want an excuse to drink wine out of a soda can.
It is almost spring break (OW-OWW) which must mean it's time to go to Austin! Apparently that place is pretty sweet, and I think the timing works out so that my visit to Charlie coincides with South by Southwest, although I don't know that I'll be able to overcome his inertia enough to go to that. Also, is it sad that this is the first image that turned up in a google search for spring break...with moderate safe search on? Is there any way these girls were young enough to actually be on spring break at the time?
Anyway, as it turns out, the return to blogging was fairly painless. My next post should have some excellent pictures of me and my buds all duded up for Lola's. Plus, check out this sweet video:
Free radicals play an important role in a number of biological processes, some of which are necessary for life, such as the intracellular killing of bacteria by phagocytic cells such as granulocytes and macrophages. Free radicals have also been implicated in certain cell signalling processes, dubbed redox signaling.
ReplyDeleteat first i thought maybe you'd had to write about them for some health information project for work. nope. so caught. wikipedia much?
ReplyDeleteKristine's friend Brian just recommended a book for you. It's called Oxygen, and you need it to live. No. Really it's about the destructive properties of oxygen, with an emphasis on its role in aging.
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