10 Hottest Girls Playing on the WTA Tour At The Moment

1. Ana Ivanovic
2. Maria Kirilenko
3. Sania Mirza
4. Elena Dementieva
5. Jelena Jankovic
6. Daniela Hantuchova
7. Elena Vesnina
8. Tatiana Golovin
9. Sorana Cirstea
10. Ioana Raluca Olaru

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical): Alize Cornet, Ashley Harkleroad, Nuria Llagostera Vives, Amelie Mauresmo, Flavia Pennetta, Maria Sharapova, Nicole Vaidisova, Venus Williams

I thought this would be easier, but it's almost as hard as the men. I got the top 8 and filled in the rest. Definitely I have slavic taste. Some people can look amazing when done up and then somewhat ugly or boring on court. So it was hard, and I think I always slant towards the pretty anyway (had to resist giving out too many honorable mentions)...

Ten Hottest Guys Playing on the ATP Tour (at the moment)

1. Mario Ancic
2. Marat Safin
3. Novak Djokovic
4. Richard Gasquet
5. Gilles Simon
6. Fernando Verdasco
7. Juan Carlos Ferrero
8. Rafael Nadal
9. Janko Tipsarevic
10. Robby Ginepri

Honorable mentions (not in order): Dmitry Tursunov, Tommy Robredo, Tommy Haas, Feliciano Lopez, Andy Roddick

Other than the top 6, this was really hard. Seriously the WTA is much hotter. Probably because all the hot guys play soccer haha.

I should stop working, Tennis results of awesome, Weird conversations

I went to work at 8:45 AM and came back at 10 PM. Argh. It's because my stuff is too slow. Because at work I read half of Book 7 of the Narnia series, stalked tennis scores, spent time talking to labmates and friends, watched the MLS All-Star Game, and spaced out. But I guess other people don't even try to work this hard, so it's my own loss. Only one week left! There's only so much I can do, but I hate not finishing things...

Well, talking about tennis, this week has been very interesting. And overall very good. Unfortunately Mario Ancic couldn't be a part of the very good, losing to Frank Dancevic in the first round and being sick for the millionth time. But Marin! He is in a quarter final and is set to face French hottie, Indy tournament winner, and Federer-beater Gilles Simon! I feel like Gilles is going to win it based on experience and Marin's tendency to choke when he has great opportunities like this, but of course it's MARIN ALL THE WAY! AJMO! Novak, meanwhile, is back on track and so is Andy Murray. They will also face each other in the QF! Now please win Richard.

Also, Jelena has a chance to get #1 in the world. It's cool and everything, but I just think that Ana and Jelena will be flip-flopping for the rest of the year. And once Ana and Jelena both have their #1 stint, they can concentrate on real things - Grand Slams! Rankings are only good for entry into tournaments (like please Marin keep winning so you can be seeded) and otherwise it's not too important. It's like your body weight - it keeps track of things but it isn't the most important thing in the world.

Anyway, on to more fun! So my roommate was like "So you think Eastern European guys are hot...what is it about them?" And I don't know how the hell to explain it. Seriously, me about judging hotness? You are asking the wrong person. For me I think it is the cheekbones, but it was awkward and yeah. He asked me about actors and actressed and I was like "Um..." So my ass is being kicked for not watching enough movies - whatever. Tennis is my life, and I have a thing for athletes so actors aren't always as hot. So yeah I fail at that conversation but it was interesting considering I was trying to form my top 10 list of hottest guys playing right now on the ATP tour. And miserably failing at that. Well for me Mario is #1, and Marat has to be there, along with Novak and Richard. Maybe Gilles Simon, Fernando Verdasco... I will make a list soon, I promise. And you may enjoy it, maybe.

Not a "Major" Problem, But a "Master" Problem

So the Roger's Cup aka the Masters Series event in Canada kicks off tomorrow and the draw is quite interesting.  But for my sadness, they have to first draw Mario Ancic vs. Frank Dancevic, and then the winner of that plays Novak Djokovic!  Now I've recently been in such a Mario-obsessed mood that I want him to destroy Novak should they meet.  But I'm sad if Novak loses, because then we'd be going back to where we were before, with just Fed and Rafa.  And I want Novak to be a contender mostly because I don't want it to be just Fed and Rafa and no one is anywhere close.  Now in my fantasy world Mario would be a contender, but he's just not quick enough.  Maybe he can gain quickness - let's hope!

I guess what would be ideal, considering that I can't change this draw, is that Mario and Novak are as far from each other as possible at Cincinnati so Novak can regain his "lost" points there.  Basically he'll end up having the same amount of points if he loses in the 2nd round at Toronto and wins Cincy.  Other fun things could include Fed losing to Gilles Simon, who I watched on TV today and his looks are totally growing on me.  Richard is still the hottest Frenchman currently, but Gilles is close.  PHM, who is (for once) not going to go against Marin Cilic (after 4 straight tournaments) unless they meet in the final, is strangely handsome and yet not.  Something about him is just a little off.  There is JW, who I absolutely love (though not at the level of Mario!) and would sleep with if he asked me, but he's not hot as in attractive.  And Gael is hilarious but totally not hot/attractive.  Jonathan Essyeric is cute, has the boyish look kind of like Marko Djokovic (they are "bishounen"-like, but too young to really be men yet), and Jeremy Chardy may or may not be hot - I haven't seen him.

Haha, went off on a major tangent.  Talking about other hot people, Niko Kranjcar just got married to his longtime and beautiful girlfriend.  I wish I was a Croatian woman - I would be so pretty!  Anyway, I am quite happy for him.

And other hotness-related/crush news, I am increasingly attracted to Fernando Verdasco.  He no longer has the longish hair that needs a bandanna look, and I love his coloring.  He actually looks kind of Filipino-ish with that coloring.  Anyway since Rafa and Carlos are too manly, Robredo is being a bum, Juan Carlos Ferrero is hot but too old for me, Ferrer was never hot in my opinion (and don't ask me about Nicolas Almagro), and Feli is just not my type, I have concluded that Nando Verdasco is the Spanish tennis player I'm most attracted to.  According to MTF he is also very nice to his fans!  Too bad he had that incident with Roddick and tends to go against players I like - I might have liked him in a different universe.  Oh well.

I hate waiting x 100

I am currently spending way too much time on facebook and craig's list look for roommates and housing options. And waiting for people to respond really sucks. I want to know NOW. And IMing my brother also sucks since he doesn't respond. I guess I should call him.

Tennis will finally be back on ESPN2 this weekend. I am so into tennis right now that it isn't funny. And I still can't believe that I didn't bring up my racquet to at least fail at tennis. And now it's too late to bring it up because I'm almost done with work! Yay! (But then I start to work too much, trying to get more done before I leave - like purifying a ton of enzyme that I won't be able to use up haha).

Seriously, the housing thing is making me too anxious. I can't get anything done - no real reading (finished book 6 of Narnia series and the occasional online fic) and no real writing done either. Though randomly I started trying to read German stuff online - yeah, random. I really need to get German music, though. It might make me remember that I know German.

Stupid Toilet, and Other Shit

I think today was one of those days that wasn't meant to go well.  Seriously.  Well the morning went fine, and I was at lab and I was like, "Hmm, the shaker is not shaking.  Oh, the power is off.  I better set the temperature too."  Except I FORGOT to turn on the heater.  So yeah, shaking my unhappy E. coli cells at like 15 C instead of 37 C.  Then my lovely reaction looks lovely and all, until randomly my spec decides "let's allow water to condense on the cuvet and allow the baseline to go crazy" and it's so messed up that even adjusting the baseline to one value doesn't work.  So that's thrown out.  Luckily I still have 20 mL or so of this stuff left, and I have an even older batch if I really need to go there.

So yeah, I'm depressed about wasting my time at lab.  And then while I am at home, I try to flush the toilet and the stuff isn't going down.  I plunge it and all and the toilet overflows!  And I have toilet water all over the floor in the smaller bathroom.  So I get to try and dry that up, but meanwhile my bacteria are growing and I need to induce them so they do the right thing and make me some protein.  But in my rush I forget to bring my ID card.  So I can't get into the building.  So I have to walk back to the apartment, grab the ID card, and then run back.  Well the only good thing - I got to see the girl I had a crush on last summer twice!  And she talked to me both times, asking to borrow a protein ladder and then telling me where she returned it.  Woot.  Though unfortunately I don't have a crush on her anymore, because I didn't get to test and see if I would stutter badly or whatever with her.

Other bad shit that happened this week include getting sunburned and it still hurting, getting lost in the dungeon in VP2 and playing so much that I missed volleyball on TV, missing volleyball on TV again.  And not having a life that week - that's pretty bad.  I even spent my "off" day looking up housing info.  And this week is not going to be any better, because I am suddenly motivated to do all this labwork that ends up taking a long time because these enzymes are "slow" (well compared to what I worked on for my thesis).  So yeah, I'm going to be in the lab a lot.  So probably a lot of cereal consumption this week - yum.

I shouldn't do this

It's past 10 PM and guess where I am at? I am still working in the lab, running simultaneous experiments on the stop-flow and on the spectrophotometer. I guess this is what happens when you grossly underestimate how much time you need to do your experiments. So after about 13 and a half hours I just want to go home and sleep. But I pushed myself to do this, and being the scientist I am, I hate wasting good enzyme. So I am still shooting it (or using little bits of it at a time while the machine mixes a bit of enzyme with a bit of substrate). Then because I am at a very high concentration of substrate, I need to do hella washing of the syringes with anaerobic water. And then finally load the oxygen scrubber. So hopefully I am out of here before midnight.

I pulled a few crazy-ish days last summer, but at least I planned for it. I came in at 6 AM and expected to leave at 8 PM, and appropriately brought breakfast, lunch, and dinner with me. Today I only brought lunch, a plum, and a tupperware of cereal for emergencies. Well looks like I'll need to load up on the emergency food again.

Even though basically no one is here, the whole "being at lab instead of at home" doesn't give me too much comfort. I miss things like my laptop and having knitting. And even the noise/life from my roommates. Talking about roommates, I need to find one in Seattle. One of my labmates came by and talked to me about what's going on (I don't see him much). I am putting off thinking about grad school just like I put off thinking about college. I want to enjoy my last summer of "freedom" for as long as I can.

It's funny. This stuff is so monotonous in practice and somewhat the reason why I am ditching biochemistry for pharmacology (because this was the most interesting stuff I thought I found in biochemistry). Yet the results are so cool. The more I work on this stuff the more I get this "nostalgia" for it. Yes I could have been complacent and done this forever, but I need a change. That was why promoting myself during grad interviews was so hard - because this stuff is quite different. Now I love the stop-flow machine because it just seems so cool, so I would love to use it in some way again in my career. But there is more to life than work, and what I love most of all is having more knowledge, more tools. This is partly why I love languages and playing instruments. I definitely would have tried to learn how to play more instruments if it wasn't so expensive to do so... I would also pick up more sports training if it was cheaper... But that's how life goes. There are only so many hours in a day.

Well, I'm about to finish up here in the lab. As soon as I get home it's brushing teeth and then SLEEP!

The Incredible Wimbledon Final

It was amazing, truly.  I saw the first 2 sets, the third set up to the first rain delay, and the fifth set and I have to say the quality of play was amazing, the grit and showed by both men was tremendous, and the result was perhaps perfect in the end.  I was pro-Rafa winning the title, and I also did not want it to go to Monday, so it ended right on time!

It was crazy!  At the beginning I think Roger was winning more points, but Rafa was winning the big points.  Not to say Rafa wasn't playing well, quite the opposite!  But the 2nd set probably should have been Fed's, had he played how he played later.  But somewhere he had a bump in the road, and dropped his serve twice!

Things started to change in the 3rd.  Rafa probably should have won that set.  But he couldn't break Fed at 3-all and then came the first rain delay!  And then the part I didn't see, since I was returning to Ann Arbor, was from 5-4 in the 3rd set to the beginning of the 5th.

It must have been very disheartening to have championship points and lose the tiebreak the way Rafa did in the fourth.  But he kept his head steady and fought off some break points at like 2-2 or something.  And though they were physically fit and running everything down like whoa, they were getting a bit mentally tired.  I don't think darkness had too much of an influence, but there was still wind so there were more strange bounces and errors.  Rafa was slowly getting more and more chances on Fed's service, trying hard each time to break.  To fight off most of them, Fed used his big serve and hit aces and service winners or serves that basically set up his point.  But in the end it was too much.  The balls were heavy, he might have been mentally down a bit, and Rafa finally seized the moment.  9-7 in the fifth.  If it had been much longer, they would have stopped play, because it was about 9:15 PM London time and the sun was setting.

Frankly I lived somewhat the points and screamed at the TV.  But not nearly as bad as the AO final between Jo-Wilfried and Novak, which was not nearly as dramatic.  I can't imagine how it was like to be a Federer or a Nadal fan, watching this final.  I don't know if they still can't believe it; I kind of can't feel it.  And Rafa is still going to be #2 in the world, but I believe he can get #1.  Please!

And I thought, even before this match, that Rafa could become the greatest of all time.  Even over Federer.  And I hope he can do it!  And his higher profile certainly has to help Federer.  I'm a greedy whore and want this generation of players that I am watching to have the greatest of all time so that I can say that I got to watch it!  At least, I may have seen the greatest Wimbledon final ever.  And that is truly how amazing it was.

And with Wimbledon over, I can't wait until the next biggest thing - the Olympics!  Let's see them duke it out for the gold!

Wimbledon Day 13, and Other Things

It's been awhile, let's just say.  I was on vacation with the family, which went just as expected, and I followed Wimbledon quite religiously.  EURO 2008 final happened (which I still haven't watched), Olympic trials for track and swimming are going on, I am about to go back to work.  So let's start with tennis.

The ladies' final was contested today and Venus was the deserving winner.  Probably on her best day Serena should have won, but I am no Serena fan so I had no problems with Venus winning.  Plus my sister likes Venus.  Nestor and Zimonjic won the men's doubles, and the Williams won the women's doubles, and quite-the-hit Laura Robson of Great Britain won the girl's singles.  She's cute, especially with wanting to go to the ball with Marat Safin.  And talking about Marat, he made the semis and played quite well against Federer.  Needs those big matches to get good play during the tense moments, but there is a ton of hope for him.  He's going to be ranked 40 on Monday!  But in the end, it's Federer vs. Nadal in the final.  So, vamos Nadal!

In terms of my favorites, it was overall good from Mario and Marin, especially Mario.  Marin could have had his breakout into the semis, but he's not mentally ready.  And I'm not sure he could trouble Clement when Clement is playing well anyway (WTF was he doing at 134?).  But good for him, I hope he can push towards a seeding at the U.S. Open.  Mario, meanwhile, is going to jump to #24 in the world!  Andy Murray vs. Richard Gasquet did come to pass, and it was a crazy match supposedly.  I only caught the end because of vacationing (exploring Botanic gardens on the 2nd Monday of Wimbledon sucks when you miss a day of 16 4th round matches), but Andy Murray's great hussle and subsequent firing up was replayed.  I guess it was overall good, because Great Britain really needed someone like Andy to do well.  But Richard, leading 2-0 and up a break in the third...  Hopefully he improves on his 2nd-round showing at the U.S. Open from last year.  Jelena lost, which I expected, in the 4th round vs. Tamarine Tanasugarn, and Svetlana also lost early.  Sveta needs to stop being a mental case.  But she doesn't feel that great on grass, though she does the most serve and volley.  She needs to improve her tactics real bad.  Dinara, also not home on grass, lost to Shahar Peer.  So on the women's side nothing awesome happened, well except for the awesome run by Jie Zheng.  I like her, I really do.  I will definitely keep an eye out for her.

In other fun, Marin is going to play against Paul-Henri Mathieu again if he gets to the 2nd round at Gstaad.  Crazy, they just met at Wimbledon and at 2 grass tournaments and two other times earlier this season.  Marin hopefully wins the 6th meeting and takes the H2H to 3-3.  But seriously, they must be attracted to each other.  Haha...

There was no way I was going to avoid the EURO 2008 final result, and it is the best thing ever!  Ghosts from the past have been certainly thrown off a cliff, never to be seen.  Seriously this little sequence, starting with EURO 2008 and Turkey's craziness, has been totally unexpected.  Maybe this different wind had spun its way through Wimbledon too.  Nevertheless I wouldn't trade anything for this.  Now if we were in Spain during this time...it would have been insane!

Swimming and track and field Olympic trials are going on, and I catch some news and some TV.  Watching Michael Phelps, I can't see how the hell I found him attractive 4 years ago.  His face is butt ugly!  I guess he does have a great body, but seriously Ryan Lochte is much better looking, which doesn't mean much.  Meanwhile, the only unexpected in track was the injuries that caused Tyson Gay and Allen Johnson to pull up lame.  And meanwhile I am waiting for Olympic rosters for soccer and gymnastics to come out.  Only about a month left before they start!