Chahar Shanbeh Suri

This is the first year we have participated in celebrating Iranian New Year, or NoRouz (or Nowrooz or NoRooz or Nowruz, take your pick). One of the celebrations, called Chahar Shanbeh Suri, occurs on the last Tuesday evening of the year, and is kind of the kick-off for the 13 days of NoRooz celebration that follow. Chahar Shanbeh Suri is a cleansing/purification ritual that is based on Zoroastrian tradition, and involves jumping over fire to rid yourself of illness and misfortunes experienced in the previous year. Every year a friend of ours hosts this event at Alki Beach, and Iranians from all over the region come to participate. Like I said, this is the first year we've participated, and I'm ashamed that we haven't done it before now. It was so much fun - the kids are already counting down the days until next year's ceremony. So here are pictures of our first fire-jumping:

The kids helping Ali set up

The fires

Saying "SO LONG" to illness and misfortune

I couldn't resist this last picture - it doesn't have anything to do with NoRooz, but it's the sunset over Alki. I LOVE the Pacific NW!

NoRooz Mobarak! (Happy New Year) Sad Saal be in Saal-ha! (Wishing you 100 more Happy New Years)

Our Damn Cat

She's nothing if not persistent. She's allowed inside, but only on her pillow (husband's allergic). Whenever we're in the house and she's not, she becomes very demanding and makes it crystal clear that she's being excluded. If you turn up the volume on the video, you can hear her whining. If we don't respond, she climbs the window (see pictures). Please notice the awning and roof to her custom-made, lovingly crafted personal cat home in the background. Zoya and I spent the better part of a Saturday making that for her, and all she uses it for is as a springboard to climb the window, and nothing else;[.

I think I'll go wash my grimy windows. They really don't look this nasty in person (or maybe I'm just used to them).

Identity Crisis

Over the weekend I went from this (I'm the one on the right - ha ha!)...

...to this...

...before finally settling on this...

Here is the opinion poll from home: Zoya and I LOVE it, husband likes the red better, but thinks he can grow to accept this one, and Dylan, who has never been able to adjust immediately to ANY kind of change, HATES it! Who knew that something as trivial as hair could elicit such varied and passionate responses?!

Thought For The Day

I'm addicted to "This American Life" podcasts. I always miss the radio program on Friday nights, and was so excited to discover they have free podcasts of all their shows. I was listening to a show today entitled "Testosterone," a broadcast that I think women, especially the mothers of boys, should listen to. The opening act was a manly man who, due to some undisclosed illness, suffered a complete depletion of all his testosterone. He talked about the effect that had on his personality, who he was, or who he thought he was, and he said this:

"I grew up in a culture, like all of us, that divides the soul from the body, and that that is your singleness; that is your uniqueness, and nothing can touch that. And then I go through this experience where I have small amounts of a bodily chemical removed and then reintroduced, and it changes everything I know as my ‘self.’ And it violates the sanctity of that understanding. That understanding that who you are exists independent of any other forces in the universe, you know. And that’s humbling. And it’s terrifying."

I have to think on this a little longer to figure out why I find this so profound, but I instinctively love it. Maybe it's the neurobiology training, with all the study of brain chemicals, and learning how their deficit or presence can elicit emotions like fear. Or maybe it's that little bout with depression that I experienced, and along with that experience, the absolute understanding (and I was REALLY a skeptic) that depression is not anything other than CHEMICAL in nature, unlike what so many arm-chair psychiatrists think (that means you too, freaky Tom Cruise).

If you want to listen to the program, go to www.thislife.org and find the February 28th show. You can no longer download it, but you can play it on your computer!

Fancy Fairy

My friend and Nbio classmate Lara has some pretty remarkable talents. She's an aerialist who started and runs her own business (check out the video tab on the website to see a sample of her work), and also performs with another company she helped start up (Circus Contraption is really popular in Seattle, and although I've not seen any of their full performances, I've heard they're fabulous). The Aerialistas perform a free show every year at Seattle Center's Winterfest. The first time we went to see them, the theme was of the ethereal woodland fairy variety and ever since then Zoya has desperately wanted to be one of them. She was 3 at the time, and when we came home from the performance, everything that even resembled a rope was something she tried to climb and perform on. After we came home from this year's performance, she discovered that one of the posts on her bed served as an adequate substitute for ropes. She now makes up and performs various "fairy tricks" for us (I think she's up to 21 of them - all different poses). I think when she's a little older I'll have to enroll her in Lara's school! Here are a couple of pictures:

~o~o....G-I-D-D-Y....o~o~

To begin, I've been going to school to get my undergrad degree since April 2001. If my mental math still serves me, and I hope it does since I need it to get my last physics class off my back, that would be 7 years. (I'm not actually counting the fact that I really started my higher education career in the fall of 1992, because if I did it would be more like 15 1/2 years and that's just embarrassing! But I digress.) So 7 years to do what many (most?) people do in 4 or 5. Now granted, most of that time I was going part-time while I played mommy in my other life, and I did take a couple of quarters off to do important things like give birth, but still...7 years. And I have to register that I am really, REALLY sick (and tired) of being in school. Nonetheless, I have been diligently and more recently grudgingly taking my classes one at a time, trying to get through so I could finish. Up until yesterday, I thought that was going to take 3 more quarters and 13 more credits.

And then I talked to Tom. Turns out my trusty adviser had left a couple of transfer classes out of my degree progress report since I transfered to the UW. With the corrections he made yesterday, I have only ONE organic chem class (3 credits) and ONE undergrad research stint (2 credits) left to graduate.

♪ a a a a a a a a a h h h h h h h h h h h!

That's the sound of the angels singing! So, provided that I can make it through O-chem (I took the first two classes in the series 4 years ago, so it might be a challenge), I will GRADUATE in JUNE!!!

Funny that one of the things I'm looking forward to most when that happens is that I can change my blogger profile to read, "Neurobiology GRADUATE" instead of whatever it says now.

Ode to Fifth Grade Band

I don't think this needs any commentary :)