Back without missing a beat

Today was my first day back in the world of the living and working. I am one week behind where I'd like to be on my research (don't even ask about the grant, ugh), but everyone at the lab seemed very understanding of my situation and I've been approved to tack on an extra week to my allotted time in order to ensure that I have all the time I was supposed to be given in order to complete my project. So that's some good news. Also, I didn't have much trouble picking up where I had left off, which was surprising because I was gone all of Spring break, back for a single day (the entirety of which I felt quite fogged in my mind), then gone for another week with... whatever that garbage was.

I am so glad to be back at it. I'm looking forward to finishing this project and hope I impress the lab enough to consider giving me a job. The alternative, hunting with the rest of the out of work and desperate, does not look very promising at all. Either way, though, this experience has convinced me that infectious disease is definitely my niche and something upon which I'd be thrilled to focus my career of research.

Yesterday was also a fantastic day. I finally felt well enough to venture out into the world, and it was just in time. We had planned a few weeks ago for my brother, father and both of their significant others to come up to visit us here in KC to celebrate my birthday and yesterday happened to be the day we'd planned it. I asked my dad to bring a few tools I needed to take care of a bunch of chores I've been neglecting for quite a while. He got here around noon and I got started right away. By 6, I had trimmed the hedge, replaced a screen on the front storm door, re-splined a screen in my bedroom, removed all the dead vines that were hanging on the house, taken the folks shopping at Costco and Home Depot, hung a shelf in the bedroom and removed a stump from the front yard. OK, to be fair, I didn't do all that single-handedly because my father helped a lot and it was thanks to my brother's Jeep and chain that the stump got pulled. Considering that we prepared for the company by cleaning the house top to bottom, this was a very productive weekend.

For the real birthday celebration, we hit one of my favorite restaurants, Sakura. They have a sushi train up front, which is a great way to introduce newbies to sushi, but the real show is in the back where they have hibachi grills. I ordered some fried Philadelphia rolls for the table (I only had 2 rolls and I think everyone but Dad loved them), and I only ate half of my entree: KC strip and scallops. It was the first time I've ever eaten scallops; I was very surprised to find how much I like scallops considering how unimpressed I've been with shellfish in general, aside from shrimp -- I don't care for crab, lobster, clams or crawfish. If they weren't so expensive, I'd be thrilled to have scallops a lot more often. Anyhow, seeing my brother, father and his wife was great, and dinner was a lot of fun. Our Teppanyaki chef was very skilled and personable, and we almost went 5 for 5 on catching the shrimp he tossed at us. It's a shame my brother's girlfriend couldn't make it. By the way, check me out. I'm lookin pretty good, huh?

This post is getting longer than I'd intended, so I'll have to leave Saturday's weigh-in and my return to working out for tomorrow's update.