>Snowday in the District!

>Hey Hey!

It’s a BLIZZARD in the District! We already have about s 10 inches now, and are expected to get another 10 more! This would be nuthin’ back home in NH, but there are literally NO plow companies here! It’s up to the city so residental streets in the DC/MD/Northern VA area are expected to be snowed in for days!

Despite the lack of travel opportunities today, I’ve been enjoying the snow day! I woke up bright eyed at 12:15pm (Aaaaah, love Saturdays). Made myself a Power Smoothie:

(I SWEAR it’s delish!)

….And parked it on the couch for some DVR‘d reality TV and a couple episodes of 90210 🙂

Unfortunately as a nurse, Kels (sista) didn’t have a snow-day. All buses are stopped and the roads aren’t plowed, so she layered up and trecked her way to the hospital.

Kels in my Under Armour Cold Gear spandex (AMAZING line if you’re a winter runner):

And leaving the apt:

Nuts!

I made a delish/healthy dinner so figured I’d share 🙂 I was craving seafood!

Sauteed 2 chopped garlic cloves (in 1.5 Tbsp EVOO), then added fresh scallops + dash of salt and pepper.

To accompany the seafood, I roasted an Acorn Squash in the oven until crispy. AMAZING!!!

Boiled whole squash for 15 mins (to make cutting easier). Then cut, sprayed with EVOO spray and added a dash of salt + pepper. Prior to serving, I drizzed a teeeensy bit of organic maple syrup over it. Fan-freakin-tastic.

Well, off to get a quick workout in (get my a$$ kicked by Jillian). Then trecking a few blocks to Shehla’s for a movie night!

Have a great night!

L

*Random ques: What are your favorite activities to do while snowed/rained in????

>The Blind Artist

>Heyy,

Today is a rough day for me. I have a 9 hr experiment, seminar, and need to prep for an hr long talk I’m giving tomorrow morning…ugh. And I’m still determined to sneak in a workout this evening 😉 On days with the most stress, I crave a killer workout…I’m thinking a 60′ cycling class should do the trick!

I was recently thinking of why I went into research rather than studying medicine. Science/research is a strange world, at least the molecular biology world. For those of you in research, when was the last time you actually saw anything you were researching? What I mean is, everything we do and study is invisible to the eye. I described it to the manfriend once as a ‘blind artist’. The artist is clearly doing and creating something, but it’s only visualized by others. In our science world, we are delivering drugs, killing cancer cells, measuring how fast a drug binds/releases from a cancer cell, etc. None of these things we can see, but they are definitely happening..

Example: Today I purified DNA from bacteria that I will ‘chop up’ and rearrange (aka clone) until it’s in a particular order that generates a gene. I will then put this gene into a cancer cell and determine if the cancer cell dies. I will not be able to instantly see if the cancer cell dies, but will have to do many tests to determine this.

I briefly browsed through my lab notebook to see what (if any) experiments I can visualize. Here’s one example of what I’ve got:

What you see there is DNA. Because DNA is negatively charged, I’m able to apply a voltage to the ‘solution’ it’s in and the DNA will travel to the positive pole. You are able to see this DNA because I added a dye to it which fluoresces under UV light….cool, eh?

So I guess what I’ve learned from thinking about this, is scientists need a lot of patience. It’s a fantastic and thrilling field full of opportunity and the ability to really make a difference in the world…but not a field of instant gratification…maybe hence the 5-year PhD program…????

Whelp, back to work. Well first one of these:

and then back 😉

– Lauren

>Wicked great weekend (I’m from NH okay…)

>Hey Hey Hey,

How was your weekend? Mine was glorious. As I told ya before, the manfriend was visiting. He flew in Thursday night and stayed until this morning. For some reason neither of us looked at his flight time and assumed it was today at 1:45pm…however, we soon found out we were 40mins off. But after a morning of rushing (more on his part) he made it to his flight and arrived safely home 🙂 I’m so used to seeing him every 2-3 months (ugh, I know) that this last month of TWICE in one month has been fantastic!

Well the weekend started off great, spent Thursday night catching up/enjoying some vino on the couch with Seth and the roomies. Friday night was my program’s holiday party. Let me just say there are few things more entertaining than seeing your professors, dean, chair of the department (more than) tipsy. How I love holiday parties…

After my program’s party we (manfriend, me, and sis) headed to another holiday party, this one for the Georgetown MBA program, at a swanky bar (en route pic of Setho)..

We met up some a few other friends and danced the night away..

LOVE this pic! Me (on the right) and my friend Ally gettin our dance on.

Saturday was quite lazy as the weather wasn’t helping. Spent most of the day on the couch 🙂 Seth got a little antsy so went to get some work done, but me and Kels (sis/roomie) happily watched a couple (ok more like 4) re-runs of 90210 😉 Aaah, love that show.

In the evening, Seth had the pleasure of accompanying me to lab for a couple of hours. Scienceland can be great but one area where it falls short is timing. If drug X needs to be added exactly 36 hours after drug Y then there is little room for flexibility and it will be added exactly 36 hours later. So yep, we were in lab til 9pm on a Saturday night. Cool, I know 😛
(I was testing how efficently 4 new kill leukemic cells)

After lab we made a quick trip to Heaven (aka Whole Foods), blasted Holiday music, and cooked up a fiesta! Seth made clams in a garlic/lemon/butter sauce (vegan Earth Balance butter…was actually very similar to butter. I highly recommend it):

I spiralized 2 raw zucchinis (as the “pasta”) then made a pesto sauce (inspired by Fitnessista) made of handful of fresh basil, 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, 3 cloves of garlic, 1 tbsp pine nuts, dollop of Greek yogurt (I’m allergic to Parmesan. Sad, I know):

Both were delish! We paired this with a spring mix salad topped with balsamic. And obviously great wine alongside.

Anddd then some dessert (dark chocolate covered strawberries, also from Heaven):

Ah, such a great date night 🙂

On Sunday morning I was in the cooking mood again. Kels had worked the night shift (she’s an RN) so her bfast was delivered in bed. Yes, I know I’m quite the sister. Wink Wink Kels..

I made these protein pancakes adapted from Tosca’s Reno’s Clean Eat Cookbook. As much as I love to cook, cookbooks have never been my thing. However, this books is AMAZING. Everything is 100% Natural (hence the name ‘clean’), made with minimal ingredients (aka college student friendly) and of items that you’ve probably heard of. I highly recommend it!

The recipe called for 1 tbsp. canola oil (I substituted this with unsweetened apple sauce) and wheat germ (which I didn’t have, so also gluten-free..aka roomie-friendly)

Pancakes were made of rolled oats, whipped egg whites, apple sauce, vanilla whey protein powder, cottage cheese, cinnamon, stevia (an all-natural, zero calorie sweetener), and flax seeds. I made a fruit topping by microwaving some frozen fruit (Trader Joe’s berry blend) and adding some stevia. Delish!

And yes, I sometimes drink OJ out of a wine/champagne glass..

Well I’ve gotta run back to this experiment…Happy Monday! Have a great week!!!

-Lauren

Note: Check out my brother’s new blog. He was trained as a division one college athlete and is studying exercise physiology. Anything questions fitness-related, he’s a pro!