Home, Sweet Home Alabama

Things are looking up since my last post. Adrianna may be sticking around for the month of June after all. And if she doesn't, Dipa knows at least one girl who wants to move, and I got 3 emails today from people who are interested, so things are not as hopeless as I thought they were last Friday.

Plus, I'm going home tomorrow for a week! I've been pretty bored here. My entire lab is gone and all my other friends are working hard on experiments, teaching or out of town for other stuff. I can't do much work until samples come back from the cruise, so even though I've gone into work every day last week and yesterday, I tend to leave early because there's not a whole lot to do. I tried to start running, but it hurt my leg too much, so apparently I need to start out slower and just walk for a while. But who cares, because I'm going home tomorrow! I'm going to spend Wed.-Fri. afternoon in Huntsville with the folks, Mike and Ames. On Friday, me and Ames are going to Birmingham for the rehearsal dinner, then Kristi and Nick's wedding on Saturday. It'll be another wedding/college reunion for me, although it won't be as much fun as Maggie and Spencer's wedding/reunion since I'm not as close with this group. But it'll be good to see everybody again. And I can't wait to see how big Luca is! Sometime onSunday Whit is gonna pick me up and I'll spend a couple days with her in Tuscaloosa. Then it's back to Huntsville for a day, then back up to RI. Whew. It's gonna be a busy week, and I'm going to try to fit in as much fun as possible. Most likely, this'll be the last time I see the house, because I think it's going up on the market this summer. According to the fam, Mom's having a really hard time letting go, so who knows, we may have one more Christmas in Alabama, although I know my dad really wants to get the house on the market now, while families are moving to Huntsville for some new business that's opened up. We'll see, I'll update when I know more.

On a random note, I saw this program on PBS called "The Human Face." It was all about beauty, defining beauty, looking at how the concept of beauty changes over history, etc. At one point, some expert stated that we are the most attractive from ages 14-24. Ouch. That means I've got about 6 more months, and then it's all downhill! I disagree with that, since puberty is awkward, what with constantly breaking out and growth spurts and all that. One interesting tidbit: in older books (think anytime before the 1950s really), people who are beautiful are always described as ivory, pale, peaches and cream, etc. It was only when Hollywood started making color fims in the 1950s, when the actors in California were tan, that tanness became associated with beauty and desire. In novels set earlier than the 1900s, tanness means you have to labor outside and you're not a wealthy gentleman. I thought that was an interesting change in the concept of beauty. Also, people who are considered beautiful by people of different ages and cultures, have features that correlate to the ratio of 1.618. In other words, the width of the face is 1.618 the width of the mouth, etc. Crazy, right?