a good wow moment/s

so i've been such a slacker lately on the board, that i want to apologize. i promise to do better in checking up on all of you. i always look forward to hearing everyone's progress and getting tips. i've been super busy finishing up my 2 biggest projects at work. once i get these off my bench, i can finally start on my phd project. then again, i have to train 2 students this summer, so i don't know how far i'll get. i've also been whipping the house into shape. there are only 2 rooms left to paint before i hit up the 3 rooms that need organized. i'm so excited about putting stuff on the walls now!!! there go the last boxes of things from the move! woohoo.

anyway, i've had a few tiny wow moments the last few weeks. i can cross my legs! oh yeah! i don't need to push my knee against something to do it either. i fit on 1 sofa cushion. my big giant hips have shrank enough to fit on 1 cushion. who would have ever thought? my size 28s are HUGE now, and i'm comfy in a 26 with room. i can put on tshirts that are from the deep, dark recesses of the closet now and not have to stretch them out to go over my hips. and best of all, my labmates keep commenting on how well i'm doing and shrinking up right in front of them. always nice to hear positive comments. however, the biggest thing of all....I HIT MY FIRST WEIGHT LOSS GOAL!!!! i am now 298 pounds!!!! i've lost all the weight i gained after i broke my leg/blood clot incidents/parents divorce. the next goal is to get to 275 which is what i was at for my friend's wedding in 2002. every goal after that is a 25 pound goal which is associated to a particular event in life. well, until i hit 200. i actually can't remember when i weighed less than 210 in my life. i know it was in middle school/early high school. so yea!!!!

i'm excited to hear about how well some of you are doing. my condolences and thoughts for those who need them. oh, and good mojo to all of those recent and upcoming post ops.

have a great day!!!!

Allisha, Congrats on every wow moment, both big & small!          What kind of lab work do you do? Medical or ? I work in a lab too. I work in a tech service lab at Lilly's. Technically, my job is to put together lab models which mimic what goes on in productions so that improvements in the process can be experimented on in a small scale. I do that yes, but I also serve as our department's IT person so this week, I'm busy helping the 'real' IT guy upgrade our stuff.                 Sherri

i do mostly molecular biology stuff. pcr, cloning (bits of genes in e. coli not sheep and dogs and horses lol), quantitative real time pcr, protein expression, cdna libraries...etc. i work on an agricultural pest of wheat, so i look at population distribution and larval gene expression during feeding and development. we're trying to find natural ways to kill off our insect before it does damage by creating new wheat germ lines without having to make transgenic plants. my phd project is characterizing populations of my insect from israel and contrasting it to our populations here in hopes of finding out how the insect work biologically. they've known for 75 years how to combat it, but not much is known about how the insect does it's damage.

i interned at two different pharmaceutical companies in college (opti-med labs and schwarz pharma) and tried to apply to lilly after my undergrad. however, they decided that i was only smart enough to sweep out animal cages because my undergrad gpa was too low for a lab job. if they could only see me now. :D

Allie, Congratulations on all your WOW moments!  Everyone of them is HUGE because it brings you one step closer to your long-term goal of a healthier life!