I'm In Love

No, not with Mark Sanchez. But can I just say "WOW!" I think I will start watching football more often. My dad and I watched the Jets/Bengals game and I discovered Mark. At first I was rooting for the Bengals because their helmets are cool...but I think I can live with the fact that the Jets won.

He was the star quarterback for USC... I applied there for graduate school. He's Mexican, I'm part Mexican. Maybe this is a sign that I should go to USC if they let me in, and that I should watch football on a regular basis.

I'm in LOVE with my new cats!

This is Dean. He is about four or five months old and very playful. He's as feisty and cute as can be.

This is Keegan, he's about 1 year old. Keegan is an Irish/Gaelic name that means "small flame, or ardent."

Keegan is kind of shy, but very cuddly. He sits real happily in your arms and purrs while Dean runs all over chasing things. Keegan is so lovable.

My Mom and Jordan drove out to Kanab, to visit the Best Friends Animal Society. They are a shelter that accepts all strays and doesn't euthanize them. They go into situations where animals are mistreated and rescue cats and dogs. They even care for animals that are unadoptable because of cabrónes like Michael Vick; some of those dogs will never be able to go home with people because they are so messed up. They have a home at Best Friends though. Everyone that works at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab is happy and loves all the animals. My Mom said that four people came out to say goodbye to Keegan when they found out he was being adopted.

Keegen was found by park rangers on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. He was huddled in a dilapidated barn; it had recently snowed and there were no footprints around so they knew he was hiding in there for a while.

Dean was dropped off with his brothers and sisters to the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary when they were 10 days old.

Check out my dad's "guns." He works out.

Thank you Best Friends, we are all so happy! I still miss Sugar and think of her a lot, but I'm happy to have my new cats.

I still can't sleep

It feels like I haven't slept in ages. I lie awake all night exhausted but unable to fall asleep.

I told this to my mom last night and then asked her if she'd give me one of her Ambiens. She said:

"Yeah, sure." and pointed towards her bathroom and continued,

"On the far right in your dad's medicine cabinet you'll find his prescription... it's marked Ambien CR. They're little round blue pills... did you find them?"

I helped myself to one of his pills and went to bed. I woke up at midnight and threw up (I guess that's your punishment when you skip Relief Society to go to out to eat with your sister and friends).

I finally fell back asleep only to wake up a few hours later with the cramps from hell. Sorry if that's too much info... the name of my blog is Upchuck Online after all. That's the great thing about blogs; you can write anything you want even if you don't have anything significant to say-especially if you don't have anything significant to say. I look back over my old posts and it turns out I don't have anything significant to say. Seriously, I blog about my coats! How lame is that? Now I'm blogging about puke and cramps.

I need something inspirational to blog about. Hmmm...

Okay, how about this:

Did you know that you can clone a mouse from a stem cell? You can totally bypass the whole sperm and egg thing, and grow an entire mouse. A stem cell is a type of cell that has the potential to become any type of cell in the body-like a skin cell, or a heart cell, or a kidney cell. Now scientists are showing that stem cells can become an entire organism- a clone of the mouse you took the stem cell from.

Get this, you can take a skin cell or a heart cell or a kidney cell and turn it into a stem cell. You add certain DNA that programs the skin cell to revert back to a stem cell. It's called an Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell or an iPS cell. I worked on helping to make iPS cells over the summer in Mario Capecchi's lab-did I mention I worked for 2007 Nobel Laureate Mario Capecchi? Okay, I did. Like a million times.

Now scientists are taking iPS cells, and cloning entire organisms from them! They took some skin cells off of a mouse tail (or whatever I don't remember what cells they used), turned them into stem cells, and then took the stem cell and grew an entire mouse! Theoretically, I could snatch one of your hairs, turn the living cells at the follicle into stem cells and then clone you.

Watch out.

That may sound kind of like the twilight zone, but I think it's inspiring. Some day they are going to be able to use this kind of technology to grow hearts and livers for people, or to treat diabetes. Scientists will be able to take skin from your body, and grow you a new liver that your immune system won't reject.

This kind of stuff is so fascinating to me- it's why I want to go to graduate school and be a molecular biologist.

I Can't Sleep

Don't you hate when it's the middle of the night and you can't sleep because a million different things are running through your mind?

After cyber-stalking people on Facebook and checking everybody's blogs I mustered up the courage to check my grades. This past semester wasn't my greatest. Oh well. At least I passed physics- I was afraid that I would have to retake it (I got 39% on the final... you'd think I'd be too ashamed to let you all know my score). My senior year at BYU is starting to be affected by the "I-don't-shiv-a git- syndrome" that plagued me senior year at Dalat International School in Malaysia. I do want to get into graduate school so I guess I'll shape up next semester. I'm taking biochemistry... doesn't that sound delightful???? I worked with a biochemist over the summer- he said it's cool stuff and that it's different from organic chemistry. I'm still suspicious because it is chemistry after all.

I went and saw Where the Wild Things Are at the dollar movie.

I really, really wanted to like it, but it was soooo depressing (much like this post?). I also fell asleep through part of it, maybe I missed something important. I couldn't wait for it to end.

On the other hand,

Avatar was AMAZING!

My little sister's boyfriend Brandon has a good review here. He sure knows a lot about movies.

Check it out!!! I went and got a pedicure today.

Ugly toes are unacceptable-they are an abomination. Even in the middle of winter when you can't wear sandals and people don't see them. You might think my toes are pretty ugly-pedicure or not. Don't tell me though because it would offend my sensibilities and injure my vanity. This obsession with feet stems from my parents. My whole family is obsessed with feet. The first thing we look at when people step on the elevator or pass us as the grocery store is their feet- if they've got sandals on. I'm pretty sure I've posted about feet before. You don't have to get expensive pedicures but if you're going to wear sandals the least you could do is cut your nails and clean the dirt out of them.

I was hoping to see some whales while in Hawaii.

I didn't see any, but then again I didn't look very hard. I laid around like a beached whale-it's about as close as I got. I don't even know if killer whales migrate to Hawaii. I bet other whales do. I think whales are my new favorite animal... right up there with elephants.

I'm getting sleepy. Hope my rambling didn't make you sleepy.

"Laying around all day sure takes a lot out of you"

Mele Kalikimaka!

We are in beautiful Hawaii! Upon landing Sunday afternoon we were all shocked to see how much Hawaii resembles Penang. It's kind of weird to be in a tropical climate, but still in America. At times it looks like we could be in Malaysia or Singapore, but it's America. Everyone speaks English and drives orderly.


We went to Pearl Harbor yesterday. It was amazing to think of the thousands of people that lost their lives, and the hundreds still entombed in the USS Arizona. I love to travel and live in other parts of the world, but I'm proud to be an American. A lot of people have sacrificed so much so that we can enjoy the freedoms we have.



There are some amazing views and sunsets in Hawaii..


And some pretty hideous ones too. (look in the background...yes, we laughed and took photos because we Gaddis's are just like that)


Here we are boogie boarding.


I made a new friend while walking around Waikiki


Jordan looks pretty hot huh?


More to come later.

I am NOT a hoarder...

My mother has literally been begging me for permission to take pictures of my room: Please Malaina! I'm begging you!!! PLEEEAASSEE!!!

Why? You might ask...

Because she wants to send them to Oprah or Dr. Phil to get me on one of their shows about hoarders!!!

Apparently, Oprah will see my disastrous mess and send her staff out to Provo, Utah to help me get organized. My grandparents came by for a visit earlier today- my mother brought them down to my room for a freaking tour. Now, my grandma is begging me to let my mom send pictures to Oprah. She says, "They'll fly you out for the show and put you in a hotel. A really fancy hotel. Man, if I had a room like that I would send pictures in a heartbeat."

It's not that bad. At my house, we don't tidy or clean... we "de-shit-sify." Truly, we do. My mother has used that term for as long as I can remember. Well, I deshitsified my room in less than an hour. All I really had to do was wash some laundry, hang up my amazing technicolor dreamcoats, put my shoes away, and throw out garbage. A lot of garbage.

The following is directly taken from wikipedia:

There is no clear definition of compulsive hoarding in accepted diagnostic criteria (such as the current DSM), Yet, Frost and Hartl (1996) provide the following defining features:^[3]

• the acquisition of and failure to discard a large number of possessions that appear to be useless or of limited value (I get rid of stuff all the time... guitars and gold purse are not useless!)
• living spaces sufficiently cluttered so as to preclude activities for which those spaces were designed (I can sleep and get dressed in my room just fine!)
• significant distress or impairment in functioning caused by the hoarding (I'm not distressed over my room)
• reluctance or inability to return borrowed items; as boundaries blur, impulsive acquisitiveness could sometimes lead to kleptomania or stealing (I don't steal, and I return things I borrow... okay, maybe the library books racked up to a $16 fine because I was a little late getting them back... but that doesn't count).

This is a picture taken off of wikipedia of a real horder. Maybe my room was slightly reminiscent of the room pictured above and I just provided an image from the least disastrous angle. That doesn't mean I'm a hoarder- maybe a big, fat, lazy, slob- but NOT a hoarder. We are all given talents... housekeeping is not one of mine. I can play guitar and spout off a bunch of random science mumbo-jumbo, but I'm not good at keeping things tidy. I'm good at paying people to keep things tidy... my little sister gets $20 a month for cleaning the bathroom... I honestly don't remember the last time I cleaned it. Problem solved. Someday when I'm rich I can extend maid services to my room.

Switching to a whole new topic:

We went to Temple Square tonight- it was cold, but beautiful.

some yahoo in shorts...

Megan playing around

I love this picture of Megan!

Jordan was cold and cranky... and sick of all the photo-taking.

I ran into my good friends Joyce and Devonne. It was so good to see them.

Happy are we.

"It's frickin' freezing in here Mr. Bigglesworth!!!" (name that movie).

Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas, Mele Kelikimaka.

I'm going to Hawaii tomorrow so I guess I should pack. Maybe I'll blog, maybe I won't. Depends on whether or not Jordan will let me use her laptop.

Seriously though,

Merry Christmas!

Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoats#2

My amazing technicolor dream coats are becoming a pain in the ass. I switch coats so often that I forget which coat pocket I left my keys in. I'm locked out for the second time in 3 days.

I was going to wear my purple peacoat but then thought, no it's not cold enough for that, today is a pink leather jacket kind of day. Well I'm sitting on my front step in my pink jacket and my keys are in the pocket of my purple coat in my room.

I'm thinking about getting my dad's ax out of the garage and pulling a Jack Torrance on the front door.

At least it's not snowing.

Malaina and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoats

Instead of working on my semester paper for English 316 (due tomorrow), I've decided to blog about my crazy obsession with coats.

I can't seem to stop buying them. Buying a new coat is as exciting as buying a new pair of shoes or a new purse. Just when I tell myself, "OK Malaina, this is the LAST coat, you don't need any more!"- I see a one-of-a-kind, hot pink leather jacket in a shop in Buenos Aires, or a vibrant, orange pea coat that's on sale because of Black Friday. How am I supposed to pass up these opportunities? It's not like I'm going back to Buenos Aires anytime soon, or Black Friday comes more than once a year- you gotta' strike while the iron is hot!

People tell me I'm ridiculous, but the only thing ridiculous is my shockingly small amount of closet space.