Vegas vacation

So last weekend was the USA bodybuilding championship in Vegas. A HUGE congrats to Holly Geersen for taking 2nd in the heavyweights. Holly and I have been good friends for about 5 years now and I was just beyond excited for her--she looked fantastic. I'm so jealous of her legs!! I was also screaming my head off for Kris Murrell, Chris Sabo, Karen Choat, and Claire O'Connell who all had excellent top 5 showings. Oh, and I'm a new fan of LW winner Rita Rae. It makes me very excited about some of the upcoming female pros in this sport. Isabelle in particular will be some tough competition for all of us!!

On the men's side, my boyfriend Branden Ray finished 2nd in the LHW class. He was conditioned and dry but just lacked some of the detail that the more seasoned competitors displayed. Standing next to the best guys in the country really lets you know what you need to work on. But we give each other so much support and motivation that we will both be fierce next year lol!

I ended up staying in Vegas a few extra days while he was doing shoots. We had some time at night to walk along the strip, ride the roller coaster at NY, NY and go to a comedy club--that's one of our favorite things to do. I didn't want to leave :( But eventually I had to come back and finish my experiments. I can't believe I missed the earthquake while I was driving back! When I got home, stuff had fallen out of the kitchen cabinets and my TV and trophies fell off the shelf but no real damage occurred near here.

OK, I'm trying to finish up tonight. I've been working sooo late...but I can also sleep late most of the time so it works out. Some kinda cool news--my paper will be featured as the theme for the cover art of Nature Chem Bio in September along with a special news and views highlighting the work. So I guess everything worked out after all :)