Beard Love

Me: “Your beard tickles.”
Him: “It’s trying to give your face a hug”

Delicious Chemistry

Why We Become Scientists

 

Atomic Trolling

 Fun fact: heat is actually caused by nuclei getting angry.

Split Up

Just When You Thought It Was Safe…

This Is Me In The Morning

Tiny Brain Is Tiny

 Tiny spare brains in a jar, for all those times when yours just won’t work.
Or an actual sized brain of a creationist.
You decide.

Swag

If anyone knows the name of this comic, please let me know. I’d like to read more of their stuff ^__^

True Story

3…2…1…

National Hug A Hedgehog Day

I have decided that it is imperative to national security that our country declare a National Hug A Hedgehog Day. Since all the politicians are busy doing whatever silliness they’re up to right now and not focusing on important issues such as this one, I am taking the liberty to declare today, May 2nd, National Hedgehog Day!
So go don your thickest leather gloves and jacket, chase a little spikey bugger around, and give it a big ol’ hug of super special love.

Fun fact: When the male hedgehog wants to have sex, he chases the female around screaming his head off until she gets annoyed and lets him have some sex just so he’ll shut up.
It makes me wonder if some of my ex-boyfriends were female hedgehogs disguised as men.

Best Lunchbox Ever

 I need this lunch box.
Like, right now.
Though, if I work in a hospital, then I run the risk of having my delicious turkey sandwich transplanted into some random guy. And I love my turkey sandwiches too much to risk that happening.
It would probably suck for the guy too.
As delicious as turkey is, it is a poor substitute for the organ responsible for blood transport.

How To Find An Engineer

The Final Frontier

Microbe Painting

While in college, I spent a few years working at an art gallery. I absolutely loved it. It was an excuse to get out of the lab and meet people, and many artists appreciated my insatiable passion and constant pursuit of what I loved, even if they didn’t know what the hell a Gram’s stain was. Either they appreciated it, or lovingly put up with it. Either way, it rocked.
Right before one of my coworkers left to pursue greener pastures in another state, he painted me this incredibly adorable microbe painting.

I want to hug it forever!
^_^

Eddie Izzard

I’ve been a fan of Eddie Izzard since high school, though I never dreamed I would have a chance to see him. Shows like Eddie Izzard are too big for Alaska, which due to our location has a hard time time attracting big names and is notorious for having shows cancelled. In the past few years, White Stripes, Lamb of God, and Godsmack (in Fairbanks) are among many cancelled shows. Even our own Jewel has cancelled on us twice. It’s just one of those things you come to terms with when living up here. (Fortunately we have a fairly dedicated music community which has pushed for big acts, and the recent filming of movies here has expanded our name as an entertainment venue). We also have a pretty religious and conservative community. Anchorage has a pretty strong progressive community, thanks largely to the university, but even that population wasn’t enough to pass the recent controversial Prop 5, a proposed law which would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation for housing and jobs.  In 2012 Anchorage, Alaska, one can be denied a job based on their sexual orientation. It’s not right, but it’s how it is for now.

Given the conservative atmosphere and our less-than-desirable venue, I would have never of dreamed of seeing Eddie Izzard’s act in Alaska. But the concert board of the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) brought him up. Tickets sold out in less than 10 minutes. So they offered a second show. Those tickets sold out in less than 1 minute, even with a “two-tickets-per-person” restriction. I didn’t even try to get a ticket; I didn’t want to get my hopes up. But the super awesome Margherita surprised me with a ticket, which has earned her eternal hugs.

Our show started at 10:30 pm, but people were already lining up by noon. When I arrived at 7:30, over 20 people were waiting. It really encourages me to see so many people with my kind of humor. I found these super awesome people armed with board games and tauntaun sleeping bags. 
I grabbed a spot near the front of the line, armed with ALL THE COFFEE!!!
Soon my friends arrived and joined me (bringing with them more coffee, because they’re awesome and they love me).

We were all quite excited.

His nails were fabulous, his goatee was adorable, and his act was brilliant, based mostly on history, religion, Atheism, and the stupidity of creationism/intelligent design. My face hurts from laughing so much. A few of my favorites:
 “Anchorage, what kind of a name for a town is ‘Anchorage’? That’s like naming a town ‘Bus Stop’.”
“Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin lived two vowels away from each other on alphabet street.”
“We have to hunt in packs! Like cigarettes!”
“Can we kick animals in the bollocks?”
As well as watching him fight an invisible badger on the stage.

Oh, Mr. Izzard, you have made my life complete.

Abstinence-Only Education

I have always been adamantly against abstinence-only education, despite my super-religious family’s attempts to convince me otherwise. Let’s face it, it’s detrimental to students, almost always religiously motivated, does more harm than good, as abstinence teens are just as likely to engage in sex, and much less likely to use protection. But today I’ve found a comic which has convinced me that it is possibly to teach abstinence-only methods in an honest and responsible way:
Actually, the whole comic was pretty damn funny.  Another charming gem was their proposed plan to convert Americans to the metric system:

Coffee Pun

I saw this on my coffee today. It took me 15 minutes before I could start actually drinking the coffee because of all the giggling it induced, because all I could think about is how Sir Cumference probably had an epically dapper mustache and would do mathematical measurements on the circumference of boobs.
Yay for 2 days without sleep and unexpected science puns!

The Snowiest Winter

Way back in September, I decided that this was the winter I would go through sans-snow tires.
Every Alaskan, at one point or another, is tempted to do this, for various reasons. And I certainly had a list of reasons. I’d been driving through Alaskan winters for over 7 years with relatively little damage. The past few winters hadn’t been too snow heavy and I was good at regaining control of a car on ice. I  leave plenty of space between me and the person in front of me, especially at stoplights. I don’t have much in the way of road rage. It’s typically neighborhood roads that are the iciest and worse to navigate. The main roads are usually just fine, and my home was directly adjacent to a main road, eliminating my need to navigate those  pesky neighborhood roads. Besides, I lived close enough to the university that I usually walked.
Yes, I decided smugly, this winter I would be just fine without my snow tires.

Unfortunately, Nature had other ideas.
Nature decided it would be just dandy if this winter was the snowiest winter in recorded history, bringing in over 133 inches. The picture above was taken during a snow storm. During the second week of April.  April!
Of course, this was the one winter I decided “Nah, I can totally survive without snow tires this winter.”
Murphy is laughing in his grave right now.
On the plus side, it gave me the opportunity to explore cross country skiing again.

It was my first time on skis since high school. I still can’t downhill ski to save my life, but cross country skiing adventures are some of my favorite high school memories. (Right after dissecting cats, shooting rifles, and doing interpretive dances for French class. My high school was pretty awesome.)

It was a beautiful opportunity to enjoy the last remnants of winter and welcome a very sloshy spring breakup!

I finally purchased XtraTufs, which are an actual fashion statement in Alaska, especially Southeast Alaska. It’s not uncommon to see women wear them with skirts. I bought them because they’re one of those things that you never appreciate until you need them, and also because my parking lot is completely flooded, as shown above. I literally can’t get to my front door without going through 6″ of water. I really, really want to release a horde of rubber duckies in my parking lot.