Flaming hoops, daytime TV and another shirtless McConaughey!

’t was a few days after Christmas and no one was in sight,
No techs and no students in lab gowns that are white!!!

I’m still relishing working all by myself in the lab! Ah, the quietness (when my very loud music is off that is.) My only interruption today was lunch with a friend leaving for her Ph.D. Little does she know of the gruesome road ahead: deadlines, papers, experiments and qualifying exams! Thank goodness that’s all behind me. Now it’s proposals, grants, students and faculty-promotion worries for me. Thinking about it, really it’s not that much different from being a student: same ***t, different flavor! Humans like to make life hard on themselves and for each other, don’t they? We like to create goals and objectives to be attained in a particular time frame. I understand that without goals and objectives we’d go nowhere; however, does it have to be so cumbersome? It always seems that the powers that be, those above you in the chain of command, like to set up those giant flaming hoops in your career/education. This sometimes sucks the fun out of it. I should try and remember these particular sentiments next time I set a deadline for one of my students! After all, I am the loner Lonely Boy, not a misanthrope. I do not dislike humans; I just don’t want to be around them all the time.

So far I still find academia and research to be fun; you know, it’s the thing for me. Ten years down the line, not sure. I know some people manage to stay in the same job for a very long time without losing their minds but I’m not very confident I can do that. I’m always wondering what the next thing is for me. Perhaps I will lose this restlessness with age (I’m a faculty member now, so I’d better!!!) Susan Lucci has had the same job for 40 years! Yep, today is a special day for those who care about soaps. Not the sanitizing variety, but the ones on TV. “All My Children” is celebrating its 40th anniversary. What a feat! Some of the original cast members, including La Lucci have been on the show since day one. That takes balls. I applaud La Lucci’s balls! She, however, will be the last original cast member standing this time next week. The only other original cast member, Ray MacDonnell, is retiring and his last shows air this week. The ever-pregnant Kelly Ripa of the “Live with Regis and Kelly” fame and the “Hope and Faith” flop will return today to the show that launched her career for the 40th anniversary celebration. Things, though, haven’t been so good for other soaps lately. Few months after the longest running soap Guiding Light went off CBS’ airwaves, the network canceled As the World Turns. Proctor and Gamble, the company that put the "soap" in soap operas is giving up on these shows and will no longer produce them. No more soaps from Proctor and Gamble, that's the ones on TV, not the sanitizing variety.

The face of daytime TV is no longer the same; soon there won’t be ay Oprah either, she will end her show in 2011. Yep, God herself is resigning. Ah, things change! Know what doesn’t seem to change? The state of shirtlessness in the McConaughey clan! Matthew McConaughey and his girlfriend Camila Alves welcomed a little baby girl this past Sunday. She was born shirtless. Takes after her daddy. Wonder what her abs look like!!!

Daddy for the second time, Mathew McConaughey, bizarrely  caught with a shirt on!

There you go. We’ve covered lab stuff, academia, babies, McConaughey (it’s impossible to “cover” him!) and soaps today. Speaking of soaps, if you’ve been following my own little drama on this blog, I mustered the nerve to ask OKteChy22 out on a date! Not while chatting on MSN though. I was too cowardly to do that, so I sent out an email with my request. Pressing the send button on that email 21 hours, 34 minutes and 18 seconds ago was not an easy task. I’m still waiting for the response. What will the answer be? Will we go out on a date? Will I be ignored? More to come as my story unfolds!

-Off to watch some shows online while my gel runs (that’s an experimental reference. Got nothing to do with hair or sex!) TV’s winter hiatus is finally over and there are new episodes of some of my favorite shows. I live vicariously through your adventures Peter Griffin!