NaBloPoMo #16: Hope in the Darkness

The last few days have been full of hard, upsetting news that make me feel helpless and sad and lonely. Just to name a few - the attacks in Paris, a friend's husband dying from cancer a few days before he would have turned 33, news that a favorite author's husband died from cancer, the day my sister's dog was in such pain it was time to make THAT call to the vet. All so very different but all cause pain and sadness and hopelessness. Days like these make me want to just stay in bed with the covers over my head but I choose to get up and keep going. Hug all of my loved ones tight, cling to my faith, and focus on the so many good things that I have in my life. And remember that there is hope and it will outshine the darkness.

NaBloPoMo #15: Sunday Sky

NaBloPoMo #14: Some days there are just no words

NaBloPoMo #13: Friday links*

*Friday links are a selection of some of my favorite posts, recipes, articles, and photos from this past week.

Happy Friday! Every year it seems the closer we get to the holidays the faster the days fly by, so I am looking forward to a couple of days of relaxing, reading, knitting, and watching Carolina sports. 

Adam Lucas - my favorite Carolina sports writer. 

An article about the basketball team touring the Naval Academy

A yummy crockpot meal I plan to make this weekend 

A great post about not wishing our lives away

*photo source

NaBloPoMo #12: Inspiration

As I was driving in to work this morning, I was racking my brain trying to think about what I would blog about today. Then, as I was about to turn into the street where I park, I saw this 
sign:

And I remembered an article about Oliver Smithies, who won the first Nobel Prize at UNC in 2007, and it said: 

"There stood Linus Pauling, the future winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the Nobel Peace Prize, when a young Oliver Smithies, an undergraduate at Oxford in the 1940s, became so enamored with the presentation that he decided then and there to dedicate his life to biomedical sciences. Nearly seventy years later, when Oliver Smithies won his Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, he knew exactly what he wanted to do with his prize money: fund an annual symposium to bring Nobel laureates to UNC to inspire students." 

Research can be tedious, slow and frustrating. Weeks or even months of feeling like you are taking one step forward, two steps back can make you lose sight of the big picture and instead focus on the day to day grind. But signs like the one I saw today are a reminder that over time, years even, the work we do can add up to something pretty amazing. 

Inspiration can come from within us or from around us, if we just take the time to stop and look.

NaBloPoMo #11: Routine

Monday's prompt: What is the first thing you do every single day?

The first thing I do is watch the local news for a few minutes to get the weather and traffic reports,

then I get up and make the bed,

have breakfast: oatmeal + egg whites + fresh fruit and a green smoothie,

  

shower (if I'm not going to the gym) then drive to work. 

NaBloPoMo #10: Fall Foliage

Peering through raindrops to get peeks at fall foliage on the UNC campus today.