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[1999]



Thursday, August 13, 1998

Last weekend I took a trip to New York City to visit my friends Claudia and Julianna and do a bit of cultural stuff. The bus ride there was another hideous experience, with no air conditioning for the first hour, and the 90 degree heat plus humidity inside the bus caused someone to pass out, and we finally arrived two hours late. But then I met with Claudia and we saw "Lethal Weapon 4", which was quite entertaining, and stayed up late into the night talking. We also went to see the Shakespeare in the Park performance of Cymbelline, which was incredible. Production, acting, and the play itself, which was a hysterically improbable romance that takes advantage of all the ploys of nearly every Shakespeare play: Cross-dressing females, banished lovers, evil step-mother queens and their pitiful sons, king's sons disappearing in infancy, etc. Definately worth the two hour wait in line.

Research is looking a bit more up this week, with some things that are actually working and a lot to keep me busy. I can't believe I only have a week left, or that nearly the whole summer is gone. Preseason for soccer starts in nine days, and I'll be heading back up to Swarthmore and finishing my summer stint in D.C.

Maya is at long last coming to visit this weekend. We're going to visit the Star Wars exhibit at the Smithsonian, take pictures, go dancing, and generally paint the town happy.

Wednesday, August 5, 1998

Just spent an incredibly fun weekend visiting my sister up at Swat. We did a lot of chatting, rented "Better Off Dead" for a bit of 80s nostalgia and some John Cusack, saw "Saving Private Ryan", which filled up the gore quotient for the visit easily, but was a very good film, and bought Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, which isn't too hard, but pretty and fun in any case.

Unfortunately, my luck with my research seems to be running out, just as I'm really feeling invested in the outcome. DNA isn't cutting properly, mysteriously seems to disappear from my gels, and none of the bacteria I transform grow at all. Very frustrating... I so wanted to get a lot done while I was here on my own, but it just doesn't seem to be happening.

I'm off this weekend to visit my friend Claudia in New York City, which should be some terrific fun, and busy besides. I seem to have many friends residing in the city right now...

Tuesday, July 21, 1998

Hanging in here my 6th week at NIH - just over a month from now I'll be returning to Swarthmore to batten down the hatches for my senior year. I'm having a great time here, but beginning to feel a bit sad - I'm not doing the original thinking I was hoping to this summer. I'm enjoying the things I doing, but it just isn't exercising my brain at all, and I'm trying to think of a good way to bring this up without sounding unhappy.

Went home this past weekend for a couple days to go to the dentist, visit with the family, and shop for bridesmaids' dresses with my older sister, who's getting married in October. We found a beautiful dress at the first store we tried - in fact, it was the first dress I tried on, which was quite amazing. We're not a shopping family, so it was a relief to find things we liked so easily. Being home with Diana around meant I didn't get much sleep, though, so I'm trying to catch up now...

It's absurdly hot here - upper 90s all week long, with a heat index past 100 every day. I was spoiled for the weekend, at home in Michigan with decent summer temperatures - it was actually cool in the mornings and in the shade. I'm glad they finally fixed the air conditioning in here.

Thursday, July 9, 1998

Well, due to the computer system being down I have been unable to access my website since I returned from France, and as a result this page has been out of date for some time now. I'm settled into work here at NIH, busying myself with making green flourescent protein (GFP) constructs with proteins of interest and viewing them (with aid) on the confocal microscope, a big, half a million dollar machine that I'm a bit scared of at the moment.

I also celebrated my 21st birthday last saturday on the mall with about 500,000 other people watching the fireworks. There were many friends and they even made a cake and sang. The fireworks were absolutely amazing, like nothing I'd ever seen. It was a great time.



Last Modified: 9/7/98
Susan Hunt