GO DAWGS!!!

It was the best game we've had all season.... In fact, it was our only SEC win this season, but to Mississippi State fans, it was the most important SEC game to win. Even if we don't win any other games all season, the only game we care about winning is when we play Ole Miss (aka the "Egg Bowl"). And win.. we did! And I had the ultimate pleasure of witnessing it in person! I hadn't been to a State game in 2 years, and I am absolutely thrilled that I got to be there for this game! Let me remind everyone of the final score... Mississippi State 35, Ole Miss 14. Once again, that's 35-14 Mississippi State just in case you didn't get it the first time. Woohoo!! That's a pretty sad score for all you Rebel fans out there... HA! We did have a little mercy on Ole Miss because we could've (and should've) very easily scored another touchdown in the last 40 seconds of the game to make it 42-14, but we had a little courtesy and took a knee. If you look closely in this picture, you can see the giant golden egg trophy that we vie for every year being carried off the field by the MSU team. The trophy is home once again. GO STATE! GO TO HELL OLE MISS!! I thought this was a bit funny here... You can see where we put the visiting team's band. Waaayyyy up in the very top! They'd better be careful not to fall off sitting way up there! Haha.


"Hail dear 'ole State,
Fight for that victory today
Hit that line and 'tote that ball
Cross the goal before you fall,
And then we'll yell, yell, yell, yell!
For dear 'ole State we'll yell like H-E-L-L!
Fight for Mis-sis-sip-pi State,
Win that game today."

My Bulldogs made me so proud this weekend, and it completely made up for any embarrassment that I might have felt at any time this season for being a Bulldog fan. So for that I just have one last thing to say... GO DAWGS!!

Am I Crazy?

Would you be offended if a guy who you'd only met twice and who hardly knew you (but was trying to talk to you, get to know you, etc.) sent you a text message that said "I didn't tell u how hot u looked saturday... I wanted to down u and make your toes curl rite then"? Am I crazy or is that just slightly inappropriate at this stage in the game?

New Living Room

It's late, so I'm not going to talk long, but I bought new living room furniture last week! I don't have it yet... they did not have it in stock at Miskelly, so it will be mid-December before it comes in and then gets delivered, but that is fine. I'm so excited though! I got a Lane sofa, chair and a half, and an ottoman. (It is not the color of the one in the picture on the web site... I love red furniture, but that doesn't work when your walls are red.) So it is kind of a golden, camel-type color. I just can't wait for it to come in! :D

CMA's in NYC!

I hope everybody is watching the Country Music Awards in New York City right now! I love the CMA Awards!... I love Garth, I love Martina, and I LOVE A.J. singin' "Wonderful Tonight"! And there is still more goodness yet to come (Sugarland and Bon Jovi, Keith Urban, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, Gretchen Wilson, and more)! Just wait till the duet of Elton John and Dolly Parton! (I never knew Olivia Newton John won the CMA Vocalist of the Year in 1974... did you?)

Oh yeah...

More news:

I FINALLY (almost 3 weeks later) heard from the other insurance company today that they will be paying for 100% of the damages to my Xterra. FINALLY!! Praise the Lord! So now that the body shop can begin work on my car it will be at least a month before it is ready. :( Maybe by Christmas I will get it back? There is over $8500 worth of damage to my car. Since that is about half of the total value of my car (according to KBB), the way I see it is that I will be getting half of a brand new car!

Time for a little R & R

Tomorrow is Veteran's Day (11/11/05), and since it is now a holiday that is observed by state employees, I get a nice long three-day weekend! Awesome! I'm going shopping tomorrow after I get a haircut, and Saturday night I'm going to "the races"! Don't ask me about any more details than that about "the races" because I don't know any more. Either ask AL or I'll let you know on Sunday.

Everyone enjoy your Friday! I know I will.

P.S.

The oocyte that I injected yesterday fertilized!

Proud Mama

I had a busy (but exciting!) day at work today...

Last Thursday at work, we had an egg retrieval, and I got to do my first real (not practice) ICSI (aka Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection) on 2 oocytes! And you should understand that these 2 eggs were not good quality at all (appearance-wise, at least)... they were very homely! (Which is why I got to inject them.. because they were so crappy-looking.) Well, only one of the two fertilized, but it developed very nicely, and then today it was a beautiful blastocyst! That meant that it had to be cryopreserved (frozen) today because this lady already had her embryo transfer on Sunday. I was just so proud that an egg that I injected (and an ugly one at that) went all the way to form a gorgeous blastocyst!

So, since I did so well with that ICSI, I got to do it again on our case that we had today. I only injected one egg today, and it wasn't quite so homely-looking, but we'll just have to see in the morning if it fertilized or not.

Mother Hen

***Warning: the following post was created while under the influence of Combunox.***

Just go ahead call me Mother Hen because I laid my eggs today.... 20 of them to be exact. Well, really I didn't lay them, but I did have my egg retrieval today, and it went really well. I got to have a couple of margaritas given intravenously (aka Versed and Fentanyl), which was a really nice feeling. I won't say that it was completely painless, but it wasn't bad at all. Now I am just feeling like I have bad menstrual cramps, but I should be fine enough to go back to work tomorrow. But anyway, the procedure was really short, and after it was over, the lab ended up with 20 oocytes. Yay! That's a really good number, so good luck to my recipient! It's in the hands of the lab for the next couple of days, and then it's up to her uterus. I'm glad, but also a little sad, that it's all over with on my end. I've really enjoyed doing this, and I would definitely do it again. Plus, I'm a little bit richer now that it's over! $$ :D

I finally found some good pictures to show y'all (I've been looking on the 'net for some all along):

This is an ultrasound picture of follicles. What you see here is basically one ovary with the fluid-filled follicles (the big black circles) that have developed on it. Today in the retrieval, we watched on the ultrasound as he went from follicle to follicle aspirating the fluid out of each one. As he would aspirate, the black circle would slowly disappear.

This is a a mature oocyte (under high magnification). When you first find oocytes, they are surrounded by cumulus cells that will later be stripped off of the egg for further manipulation. You can actually see the oocyte with the naked eye, but it is necessary to use a microscope to see it well. After the cumulus mass is stripped away from the egg, the egg is about the size of a dot that a pen would make on a piece of paper if you just touched the pen to the paper and didn't move it.

This is not the best picture, but this is a fertilized egg. My eggs were put with sperm this afternoon, and so hopefully in the morning they will look like this. Tomorrow will be considered "Day 1" after fertilization.

This is a 4-cell embryo, and this is what the embryos look like on "Day 2." They will have cleaved, and they are usually between 2 and 6 cells on day 2.

These are 3 gorgeous 8-cell embryos on "Day 3." Most of the time on day 3 they will be 8-10 cells. Day 3 is generally the day that they are transferred to the mother's uterus.

This is a picture of 2 expanded blastocysts, one of which is about 50% hatched. This would be about Day 5 or 6 after fertilization, and occasionally embryos are cultured to this point before being transferred to the mother's uterus. Between this stage and the stage in the previous picture, the cells have divided so much that they have begun to organize, and at this blastocyst stage, the cells have formed an embryonic mass (which will eventually form the fetus), and the cells around the edge will eventually form the placenta. At this stage, the blastocyst will "hatch" out of the "zona pellucida" which is like the shell around the outside. Once they hatch, they can implant on the uterine lining and begin to grow into a baby!

For more cool images, check it out here.