7/29/02

I had kind of a non-week last week. I went to the synchrotron, and learned some useful stuff, but the synchrotron itself is a ways away from campus, and in a big concrete room, and data acquisition itself is pretty boring. I certainly had the time to put some entries in, but time seems to get pretty fuzzy when you sit in a concrete room for 12 or 14 hours. It wasn't a waste of time, I found the things I did pretty interesting, but it just wasn't anything to write about, unless you have a degree in physics. Since *I* don't have that, I can just barely even explain what it was that I did, so I won't bother y'all with the details (unless I already have).

Excellent news on the home front: Jeremy got a job! He had an interview and they had left a message offering the job to him before he even got back! It's full time, so he quit at the Red Cross (which was 2 days per week). He seems to like it all right so far. He's taking care of the bills, writing educational pamphlets, and generally being a Jeremy-of-all-trades for this small non-profit patient advocacy group. It's walking distance from both where we live now and where we'll be living in less than a month (almost the exact halfway point), which he likes, and he likes the folks he's working with, and is enjoying learning all the grown-up jobby stuff.

And he has business cards!

Me? I still feel like we're on vacation. A few more weeks and it'll be the longest amount of time we've ever had of daily face-to-face contact.

Wifeyness is fun!

7/22/02

So, everyone who's weblog I read is on vacation right now. This stinks a bit.

Even more so, because I'm going to join them. Expect messages to be lighter than in the past for, oh, the rest of the summer. I'll still write a few times a week, but dang, girl, I'm getting busy, and want to go soak up the sun while I still can. By sending out a warning, I don't have to feel so guilty about not writing. K?

7/15/02

Hoo boy. Had a pretty busy weekend. Good, but busy. And all my chemicals are finally in today, so I can start my synthesis. Will get back soon. Until then, look at The House on the Rock, one of the things we did this weekend. Just let me say, the website does not do the place justice. You could walk through and look at every tchotchkie imaginable, and you'd only be halfway through. I laid down and took a nap when we got back, just because I was so tired of so much LOOKING.

7/11/02

I have several different stories from the last week that I've ended up saving because entries have been getting long, and my patience has gotten shorter. Haven't even gotten to the stories I've wanted to get to, without other stories getting in the way of my stream-of-consciousness-ness. Ah, well. Things to look forward to, since things are being put off yet again, due to actually getting stuff done today.

I got to wear a space suit! And play with plasma! Yay! Anne showed me some things in the clean room here on campus. Looked like those guys in that Intel commercial, only without the disco ball and "Play that Funky Music White Boy" playing in the background... except in my head. It's way less fun to actually really be in a clean room. I don't really see how wearing ugly white nylon clothes over your regular clothes really keeps a room that much cleaner. The shoes, yeah, I can see that. But it feels very strange to be walking around looking like this. It's like Burquas In Space.

Ok, moment of terror, I'm sitting here in a computer lab with folks in it, and I was just looking for a picture of what I was wearing--the most recent link I stuck in. So I'm in Yahoo, under "clean room equipment", and one of them apparently went out of buisness and sold their web name to a porn site. Ack! I'm being all innocently nerdy and Barely Legal signs start flashing all over the screen.

I tend to squeak when things like this happen, which makes people look at me. Whoops.

7/10/02

Last week, I found out something new about this place.

Fireworks.

They're LEGAL.

If you're not from the east coast, this probably comes as no surprize. But I thought that you couldn't get them anywhere except South Carolina, where my stepbrothers picked some up on their way back from Florida one year. Oh, you'll hear an occasional bottle rocket or short burst of firecrackers wherever you are on the Fourth of July, but it's always a somewhat secretive and short display of rule-flouting.

Jeremy and I were cat-sitting last week for a friend of mine that lives about 20 minutes away from the U, and driving down the main drag of her town, there was a Wal-Mart with a good-sized tent out front with a huge Day-Glo orange sign for FIREWORKS! FIREWORKS!

I gawked like the Yank that I am, but promptly forgot all about it, until the Fourth.

ALL FRIKIN' NIGHT, people were setting them off. I think every dang person in the neighborhood lit a half-dozen. One of the cats was so nervous, he kept jumping and looking at us dolefully, as if we were doing this as some kind of sneaky catsitting trick.

Just something I'll have to get used to for the next few years, I suppose, like the Midwestern accent and unchewy bagels.

7/9/02

Ahhh, getting teased by many a person for describing them on the website, now that people are looking. Ah well. The way I write here is the way I talk to friends/family, which is also the tone of voice of the emails I send. I tell whatever the funny story of the day is, which frequently involves my hubby or parents. If it had been this time last year, my housemates would have been included too. I almost never speak in a way that would embarrass me if the person I was referring to was standing right behind me. Of course, I'm not easily embarrassed, so maybe that's not the best example, but whatever. I love you all. And don't worry, I'm not giving out anyone's credit card numbers. :) Actually, I'm more excited by the proof that people besides Jeremy are reading my blatherings.

Thinking of how hard it is to embarrass me reminded me of actually BEING embarrassed, of course ("Don't think of White Elephants", ya?). So I'll share. Those of you who have already heard this story can attest to the fact that it's pretty much the same one I've previously told, just in more detail.

Picture it, Syracuse NY, 2000. My best friend Dan and I were going to the big mall, a trip everyone in Ithaca does once or twice, typically when you just can't stand the sight of Cayuga Lake anymore and need to just go SOMEWHERE. We brought Jeremy along, since he was feeling just that brand of small-town-college-student-without-a-car malaise, and as much as he hates malls, just about anything was better than the current boredom. Dan needed some more dining hall shirts, I needed a new bra. You know, the kind of stuff you go to a mall for.

We look at shirts, go to Border's, buy pretzels, people watch. We head to Victoria's Secret, and I point to the bench outside.

"Sit, stay, good boys."

Ya right. Just like the unmanageable puppies they are, they follow me in.

I need to pause in the story to give some character description, here. Dan and J are an odd pair. They both care about me as much as I care about them (plenty), and try to play nice. But each appeals to me and interacts with me in a very different way, because they're both very different people, and each has proclaimed the other "wierd". There's a special brand of discomfort between them that says "T has told me way too much about you. T's told YOU way too much about ME. Let's pretend we know nothing and keep walking." I tend to have simultaneous conversations with both of them about two completely different topics when we're all somewhere. It's an amiable silence between them, but silence nonetheless. These are NOT two people you expect to join forces for much of anything.

There must be some kind of Sneaky Boy pheromone or something, because suddenly, I'm standing in the middle of piles and piles of underwear with two guys that have instantly, silently agreed that getting me kicked out of the store is a great idea.

J threatens to make a marionette show with crochless items.

I look for something plain but pretty in my size in vain, and Dan says, 10 decibels too loud, "What's wrong, T, can't find something to fit your ENORMOUS JUGS?!?"

One of them points to something complicated-looking and says "How does THAT work?"

They both touch the shiny things and threaten to go to second base with the foam mannequins.

I go try on something, once I find something in the appropriate size (I'm not that huge, really), come out, and Jeremy whispers in my ear "Guess what we're wearing?"

I have no choice but to buy something. The salesladies are giving me the most evil looks I've ever seen in my life. I pay and leave as quickly as possible, and beat them both soundly as soon as we leave.

Heck, they deserved it.

7/1/02

I talked to my mom yesterday, who I think had finally looked at this page for the first time (en route to the wedding pictures). "It's this cute little journal thing, huh?" she said, carefully avoiding saying what I figured she was thinking: "T, putting all of that personal stuff online? What if someone READS it?!?"

She manages to make me feel like not writing, even without saying that, because she has such good stories, and tells them so well, that I may as well not even bother.

I bow down to the Master.

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Warning: The rest of this entry is all chem talk. Not only is it chem talk, but it's "I can't be too specific, just in the really odd chance that some other research group is doing almost the exact same thing, reads my little web page, and scoops me" chem talk. I'd do it all pictographically, like I did previously, but this isn't something so easy to turn into an exercize in Microsoft Paint.

So, there's this very long chemical synthesis that I want to do. I don't think any of the individual steps will be a pain, in and of themselves, but it's this 10 step synthesis, and the paper that describes it says that they purified it after every step. Purification, for those of you that don't know, is often a way bigger hassle than the synthesis itself. All in all, if I do every step the day after the last step was completed, this'll take me about a month to do. I'm not particularly looking forward to making this stuff (especially because I'm terrible at the purification), but the things I can do with the final product are so cool, that I really want to get started already.

Last Monday, I ordered all the chemicals and assorted doodads I needed to do the first 4 or 5 steps of the synthesis, to keep me busy for a week or two but not have a 1000$ bill for my advisor the first time I order chemicals. I figured everything would get here by Wednesday--the chemical companies are very quick with their shipments. I only needed one of the chemicals I ordered for the first two steps.

Of course, that one is the only one that still isn't here. Arg!

This is why I'm sitting here writing, instead of doing cool chemical things. There ARE things I can do besides the synthesis, eventually--there are a bunch of instruments I need to learn how to use--but almost nobody is here this week, and in order to learn about these instruments, I need someone to SHOW me how to use them. So, back to reading people's research papers.

Actually, reading about other people's research can be pretty interesting. Folks come up with some pretty crazy ideas, and it's even crazier when they work. It's just that scientific papers are pretty dense, and if I'm really trying to understand what is being said, I need to sit with it for an hour or two, and occasionally look things up in my textbooks, and write up all my questions. It's really hard to read more than 3 papers before my brain starts swimming and I need to do something that doesn't involve too much thinking.