3/31/03

I managed to simultaneously burn 3 of my fingers on Saturday.

Our wafflemaker (which we actually still use a few times a month, thanks D!) has nice hard plastic things on 3 sides that get fairly hot during cooking, but not nearly as bad as sticking your hand right on a metal thing. The back still remains burn-i-licious, however.

As I was putting batter in, I somehow managed to push the thing back a few inches, which meant it was really close to our plastic rice steamer. Burning hot metal + well-loved plastic appliance does not make a good combination, but instead of grabbing the side handles to move the iron forward, I, of course, grabbed the back part.

I don't know how I forgot that my fingers are more tender than the rice steamer, but I did. Forgive me, it was a gray chilly Saturday and I'd just woken up.

So I hopped around and yelled and ran my poor digits under cold water for 5 minutes. I thought they were going to get really bad--usually when you can see the burn right away you're in trouble--but they haven't been too bad. I used up some aloe plant, and have been over-favoring them.

So let's take a quick stock of the last week-10 days, shall we?

--burned a thick line of waffley goodness through 3 fingers.
--Got a sliver of glass in my finger after dropping a container full of soup. Subsequent infection.
--several blisters due to my soft girlish hands becoming reacquainted with extensive vegetable chopping and screw tightening.
--Broken down car (twice).
--Very inefficiently went through my beamtime. Part of this inefficiency was due to the abovementioned car-ass and the beam being located so dang far out of town.
--Two good friends leaving/graduating within the next month.
--Grumpiness-inducing test.
--Random three-day constant heartburn--probably just stress.
--The return of annoying, needlessly complex and disturbing dreams that make me more tired than wakefulness.

Oh, and my sister-in-law is worrying about me, which is more on the "good" column than the bad, since she's sending her love, but you know you're in trouble when an architecture student fears that your schoolwork is getting to be too much for you.

Grr. It all just makes me want to go home and eat the beans I put in the crockpot this morning.

If they're crunchy I'll probably cry.

3/28/03

Back in high school I bussed tables at a country club that was only a few blocks from my house (a side note: this place is so old-money that it doesn't have a dang website--I checked). A few of the summertime waitresses spending the time between semesters getting their asses pinched by creepy rich men took me under their wing, and told me college stories (mostly involving someone being drunk or getting lucky), swore in new and creative ways, and took several years off of my life by keeping the changing room constantly filled with cigarette smoke. At some point, the summer before I left for college, we went into the pro shop and each bought a shirt with the country club logo stamped to the front. Strangely, I've had this sweatshirt for 6 years now--it's been washed dozens of times, the fluff is all pilled up, the elbows are baggy--yet it's never quite been comfy.

Part of this discomfort may be due to the fact that I'm a poor girl wearing a shirt doing rich people advertising. I sometimes wonder--what people think when they see me wear this sweatshirt? Are they impressed? Do they hate me? Do they not even notice, and I'm just projecting all of my class hatred onto them? And it is one of the older things I own and still wear on a regular basis--it IS actually a well-made piece of clothing, unlike the junk I normally have on. It's just that I occasionally return to this question--should I even be wearing this shirt? The country club was and is the symbol of just about everything I dislike in the world--a sea of tanned, self-satisfied, white male faces, telling loud dirty jokes to each other and me, expecting me to laugh and very gently swat them on the shoulder like most of the girls managed to do. I just couldn't. In high school, at least, my job wasn't to engage them, but only to clear away their dirty plates, which I could handle without embarrassment.

Then I spent about a month there after my freshman year of college, making a little bit of money before I went to Star, and was promoted to waitress, as I had finally turned 18. I was stuck then. To start with, I'm just a terrible waitress, as was proved time and time again as I remembered a request for mustard 20 minutes after it had been made, forgot to bring the salad before the main course arrived, and occasionally bungled orders entirely. I would have scraped by at a diner or a small pizza place, but I was also faced the terrifying prospect of entertaining the members and their guests as I brought them their food, remembering each member's name, which I had to enter into the computer system, and trying not to cry when told to go into their locker room and serve gin and tonics to a room full of half dressed guys playing poker. I couldn't handle it.

Hmm, I was just about to say that being upwardly mobile means never having to pretend that a jerk is funny. Then I realized, oh wait. The members had to pretend that the rest of them were funny. Not all of them were terrible horrible people. Some of them asked me about school, remembered my name, and made occasional pained faces when their golfing partner was being particularly raucous. But that golfing partner wasn't just telling a blue joke, he was also helping him get that major DOE contract, or giving him some free legal advice, or writing the letter that would get his child into Princeton. Being rich, incredibly, doesn't mean being able to blow off other rich people. Maybe Bill Gates or Oprah can, but not the multimillionaires running their father's company.

Maybe, what being upwardly mobile really means is getting GOOD at pretending that jerk across the table is funny. Or being glad about it.

Oh, god, I should have just stopped when I got a little bit ahead, educationally. I'm an absolute zero when it comes to sucking up.

3/27/03

Test was okay, but now I have lots of angry, but will share later.
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Okay, now it's later. I guess I'm not going to share, anyhoo, because it was just me being dumb, and I hate practical jokey things, and I'm not mad anymore. It just entailed sharing too much information. What the hell else is new?

Here are some things I've found recently that I keep forgetting to share:

As someone that had to memorize it in fifth grade, and as someone who's currently working on a Powerpoint presentation, I enjoyed this very much.
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Now we're safe: J's been spending all our money on EBay this week. The purchases? 1) A DVD player. 2) Potassium Iodide pills. I guess now when the dirty bomb hits a nearby farm and methane from all the cows spreads the radiation around, we can watch popular movies with our choice of Spanish or French subtitles without fear of thyroid cancer.
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Two new varieties of TChemGrrl-crack have arrived: John Scalzi's move to Moveable Type means that he's posting a lot more, and has comments. His writing is both funny and luscious, I have no idea how he does it, but the change means more reading for me, so yay. The second variety: Puppetmaster 2. The basic idea: a whole bunch of people write about their random and/or boring lives, but one of them is being completely made up by another person, who is simultaneously writing about their own boring life AND the other person's boring life! Despite the excessive usage of the word "boring" in the previous sentence, it really is pretty addictive. I keep finding myself reading someone's really deep thoughtful post, and being touched, but then thinking "Boy, So-and-so. They just CAN'T be real."
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Speaking of boring life, I must not be the only one having kind of a slow week. The evidence? My site statistics have been way higher than usual recently. Sadly, this means about 7 people per day. But lots of folks from places I don't know about offhand, which means they're probably not members of my family. Well, howdy. I'm glad the influx is happening right after I made the site pretty. It seems kind of strange that the increase in traffic is accompanied by a decrease in more disturbing search hits (most of which demonstrate my inability to spell "crotchless"). Someone's really been searching high and low for tchotchkes, only they found stuff from before I learned how to spell the word.

I guess it's not the world's most complimentary thing to get lots of search hits based on your misspellings. Oh, well, gotta bring in a crowd somehow.
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My exam wasn't too bad, I don't think. I've been getting worse and worse at predicting my own grades, though, so don't hold me to that.
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It's my Uncle Al's birthday. He's a wonderfully crazy dude. For example: during my freshman year of college, he kept hearing about this crazy thing called "E-mail" sweeping the nation. Not having a computer, but wanting to get involved, he'd send me small jewelry boxes filled with stickers and such of letter "e"'s. Get it? EEEE-mail? HAH! I love him. If you know him, wish him a happy day.

3/26/03

Studying for an exam tomorrow (at the same time I'm taking data, and sewing patches on J's Tae Kwon Do uniform, no less). Wish me luck.

3/25/03

Site redesign is going up as you read this (or recently went up). The design might be kind of, erm, inconsistent for the rest of the day, as I readjust everything.
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Whew, now that's over and done with. Everything should be purty and internally consistent. I was originally planning on making things sort of springy looking, but that inexplicably turned into this. I don't really mind, in fact, I think this is the nicest I've ever managed to make the page look--it seems very soothing. Everything's in the same color scheme! Different shadings of things, so J's dad can read it! I even used my mad html skillz to make all of those dark stripes that are zigzagging all over the place. It looks much more soothing now. I am pleased. It even looks like it should on Netscape, something I NEVER manage to get quite right.

So, what do YOU think?

3/24/03

You can tell that winter's cruel sneaky little hands will soon be beaten back by the pointy Stiletto heels of summer.

Why?

A major road repaving project going straight through campus began today. I can smell the tar from my office.

If anyone in the South is reading this, there are two seasons in the chilly places of the world--Winter and Construction.

Meanwhile, I'm still working on the site redesign. I'm not thrilled with it just yet, it'll need some tweakage. Just new colors, not too big of an overhaul. I like my general layout. It's fairly uncluttered and basically user-friendly. It may be butt ugly, but I find that less worrisome. And anyway, I try to make up for that with pretty pictures up top. The current one (up as of today) is the result of wasting film from the disposable cameras left from the wedding (which we JUST finally finished), and a completely uncreative use of Photoshop.

It's about time to make some new pictures up top. I got a good pile of interesting ones, thanks to the aforementioned film wasting. And once I get a digital camera (sometime soonish), I'll have all kinds of wacky things, I'm sure.
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There are ways of being both polite and committed to a cause. I was flipping back and forth between the Oscars and a thing on PBS about sharks, so I didn't catch everything, but I respected what I saw of the guy that won for Best Actor--seemed like he had the idea. But what I saw of Michael Moore last night--BOTH his speech AND the booing--was just very, very depressing--just rudeness all around.

So I've rewritten it in my head. If you're reading this, Mike, and have access to a time machine, just go right on ahead. Regaining my respect will be thanks enough.

What Michael Moore Should Have Said:

Thank you, members of the Academy, friends, family, and each and every one of you that helped this movie come into being.

The purpose of this movie was to show how we, as Americans, have allowed violence to overcome our entire culture. Both the Academy, by their votes, and regular people, by their movie ticket purchases, have shown that the time has come to question this culture of violence not only here, but around the world. I'm honored to have been given this award, however, while this may further my own career, it does little to actually reduce violence or help the victims that exist worldwide.

That is why, I challenge you, members of the Academy that voted for my film, you who wanted to promote my message, to give 100, 1000, or 10,000 dollars to the International Red Cross, a group that goes into the most dangerous of places armed with food, medical supplies, and shelter. Tell them I sent you. I've seen what's in my gift bag, I KNOW you guys have the money to spare.

In this dark time of our nation's history, a million dollars coming straight from Hollywood tonight would send a powerful message of hope and peace from America to the world.

Thank you.

He would have gotten a standing ovation, would have shown his anti-war sentiment (and promoted it instead of making it look dopey and paranoid), would have poked holes in the establishment as only he can (but in a nice way), and finally, he might have actually created something that could help people around the world, instead of just creating more anger and annoyance. And it takes less than 90 seconds to say, I just timed it.

(Side note: I don't necessarily agree with him on this or any other particular issue, but I do agree with him often, which is why last night's embarassment really bothered me. This was the only thing I could think of to do.)
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My finger is infected from a little sliver of glass. It's right in the spot that my pencil usually sits when I'm writing.

Ouch.

3/21/03

It seems like being happy right now is poorly timed with respect to a more global outlook. However, the way I see it, the only thing *I* can do about the war is sit around, wait, worry, and watch the news. This is exactly the kind of activity that drives me up a freakin' wall, so I'm going to continue my willful ignorance of how happy I should or should not be until someone gives me something real that I can DO. The only think that I've thought of so far--giving blood-- is something I can do the week after next, when I'll be back on campus.

So, by ignoring problematic things I can't control, I can focus on delightful things happening in my immediate vicinity.

Exhibit A: I'm brilliant.
Nothing like some social acceptance from someone you've never even met but ADORE to improve your mood.

Exhibit B: I could show you, but it wouldn't mean anything to you anyway--I just barely understand. Meaningful data!
I've been playing with the beam all week (see recent entries for explanation). For the first time, I actually got results! All by myself! I was showing someone else how to use the instrument and work up the data, so it's not actually my own research that's being helped by this news, but finally being competent in the thing I'll be doing my master's defense on in 3 months is lovely. By the end of today, I'll actually be able to look at data of my own.
Wowie Zowie.

Exhibit C: Speaking of my master's defense.... oy. Actually, my department calls it the Reserach Readiness Exam, which is their foofy-ass way of saying "Master's Defense", since if you pass, you get your M.S. Neat, huh? Anyway, I've been kind of nervous about this thing. I've gotten a lot of things done in the lab, but very little of it is complete, or novel, or entirely my own work, or extremely scientifically interesting. One guy in my class has gotten a PATENT since he started, for goodness' sakes. Several other people have their names on papers. I've gotten some things done, but it all seems pretty weak by comparison. So I talked to my advisor about this, since it's coming soon.

"Oh, are you kidding? You'll knock their socks off." was my advisor's response. Since he's not known for instilling false confidence in people, I'm taking this as a good sign.

Exhibit D: I just had a donut. It was yummy.

Now I must do something with the happy energy! Plans include finishing The One Hundred List and changing the website style around a bit while waiting for my data to do its thing.

3/19/03

I may have mentioned this previously, but my sister-in-law is going to be studying in Rome next semester. We're all very excited about this--mostly because it means we can go visit her. I realized that, since it's not every day you can go back to the home of your paternal ancestors, it might be cool to visit the places my great-grandparents came from.

(a side note: ALL of my great-grandparents were part of the mass immigration of dirty people that "real" Americans hated at the time (Irish and Italians). This is why any mention of someone not wanting to let "those" people into the country in my presence is met with derisive laughter.)

Asking my dad about his grandparents was pretty unhelpful--only one of them was alive when he was born, and he didn't know the names of the others (or the maiden names of his grandmothers). So my mom emailed the few aunts and uncles in my grandparent's generation that are still around and up to the task of remembering the year their parents came over.

Last night, one of my grandfather's brothers called and got me some more information about my father's father's side of the family. He's got pictures that he's going to send copies of, too. It's just really nice to know this stuff. The folks on that side of the family mostly had kids a little later in life, so the folks that are left are pretty old. Apparently this uncle's daughters are putting a lot of family stuff together, which is great. I can't wait to see what they've found.

The more I find out about these folks, though, the more curious I am: a young man, single, orphaned at some point, comes over here from Sicily in steerage. Eventually he marries a widow whose first husband was kicked in the head by a cow. That's about all I know, along with the name of the family that raised this orphan as a child. But what were they all like? I can only sort through the facts, stories, and lies that became truth.

3/18/03

Oh, hey, I've been writing in here for over a year, and I forgot to notice, or celebrate, or anything. But happy anniversary to me. I only really got rolling about this time last year. This page originally only had one thing on it--a bunch of blather about loving Jeremy, as part of a sort of scavenger hunt type of thing I did for him last year when we were far apart. But I continued to be lonely and sad out here in the middle of nowhere, but was finally getting fairly busy, so I started writing about random stuff.

Then this became a place to find out wedding info.

Then I put up some pictures.

Then everything went back to normal, or at least as normal as things ever are.

Good for me.

Good for you! I may not be the most popular kid on the block , but thanks for listening.

I hope you enjoy the little world I've created for myself and the people I love here. I know I enjoy it.

3/17/03

Happy Irish-American Stereotype Day!!

I made an attempt at my gramma's rolls. If she'd made them, she would say "Eh, they came out okay, I guess (sigh)". But this was just about the most successful gramma's roll attempt by a non-gramma entity.

I'm quite pleased.

And full.

Also made some butternut squash soup stuff that turned out pretty good. J tried to make fried plantains, but put a little too much salt into them, which made my tongue burn. We have another plantain that isn't quite ripe yet, though, so he'll make another attempt soon.

Enjoyed the warm weather by going for a run for the first time since, well, since a long time ago. I'm pretty sore this morning, but I have rolls to comfort me. Mmm.

I may be writing more than usual for the next few weeks, because I have beam time, which means long stretches of boring time interspersed with 10 minutes of interesting time. Expect loquaciousness.

3/14/03

Oh, by the way, I'm working on adjusting the sizes of all the pictures in the various photo albums so that they won't look wierd. Previously some of them were being forced into lengths and widths that they didn't appreciate, much like my waist when I try on a pair of pants theoretically designed for a woman.
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J and I were going back and forth about this Elizabeth Smart thing yesterday. He thinks that the reason the news people aren't showing much of her is because she's gained weight and is now less cute than she was before.

My personal conclusion/tinfoil hat theory: she's pregnant, her family isn't going to get rid of it because they're Mormons, and the media doesn't want The Symbol of All That Is Good And Pure In The World to be sullied by the ugly side of a religon that isn't Islam, considering the current state of affairs in the world (which, in case you haven't noticed, I refuse to talk about).

Really, I'm not usually this cynical, just in this particular situation, things seem excessively fishy. Nothing good could have come of this entire story, except that she is alive. She may want to be dead, and the rest of her life may be lived in pain, fear, and guilt. Her father is quite possibly the creepiest human alive, with absolutely no sense of family protection, allowing mentally ill people into his home for no reason, and is now so obviously not saying something that I want to slap him. The whole thing just gives me the willies, and showing the same still photo over and over again along with old home movies of the "normal child" doesn't help.

I really hope for everyone's sake that I'm wrong, and life goes back to normal. I'm just highly doubtful.

3/13/03

First some background:
So, our group (the folks that work for my advisor) gets together on Wednesday mornings for group meeting. Every week someone gives a little talk about how their work is going, and then the next week they're in charge of bringing breakfasty foods in. Usually this consists of some bagels, some donuts, and some juice. Yesterday someone brought in donuts and juice, but it turns out someone in the group is diabetic, so no donuts for him. I filed this away in the back of my head for the day that it's *my* turn to bring in food, since my original plan was to make a bunch of the banana-almond-chocolate chip bread that was so popular at my dinner party in January.

Apparently, I filed it a little TOO far into the back of my head, because I had a dream about it last night. In it, I'd scrapped the idea of making banana bread entirely and had decided to make a breakfast tortilla/wrap type of deal--I even had a miniature version of the wrap station I worked at in the Ithaca College dining hall that I brought into the meeting room.

I woke up and my first thought was--"Ooh! I should have wraps at my next dinner party!"

Oh-so Martha Stewart.

Seriously though, the party had worked out so well last time that I've been considering having a similar shindig again soon, but I was also trying to think of some kind of entertaining food--you know, something a little different. Pasta is boring. I think making wraps would be fun--people have no choice but to get a little messy, I can show off my mad dining hall skills by teaching fine wrap-wrapping technique, and they're yummy, so long as you have enough variety, and are flexible enough that just about everyone can be happy.

So, those of you in the area, keep a weekend in early April available for Wrap-o-mania night!

(ok, so maybe I'm "oh-so Martha Stewart", but only if she didn't have any taste or class. There are some distinctions to be made.)

3/11/03

Would you like some Jingoism Sticks with that?

I think I'm going to go jump off a bridge now. Wake me up when things stop being plusungood.

(heads-up via Officemate Elizabeth)


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When in Austin, I had minimal computer access--about 20 minutes over the course of 5 days. So I wrote stuff down that I wanted to share. Here it be.
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I noticed the birds as I was walking by a post office right after it had closed--the parking lot was nearly empty except for a few trees along the edges, and a huge flock of dark-colored birds. Since I can only name about 10 species of birds, at first, from a distance, I thought they were crows. But I saw a whole bunch more of them over the course of the next few days (there were more of these birds than pigeons), and seeing them close up, they're a little bit more gracefully built than crows, and are a dark brown, not black.

But the most obvious difference was their distinctly un-crowlike song. Instead of the more traditional "caw-caw" sound I'm more used to hearing, these guys made a sound reminiscent of the spaceship warning alarm in old sci-fi movies. Get a bunch of them together, and it sounds like the Federation is under attack.
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I had trouble finding a place that served breakfast the first morning I was in Austin. To get breakfast at the hotel would have just been ridiculously expensive. 6$ for oatmeal! Good gravy! Sixth St., which had been described to me as a busy place, is about 80% bars and clubs, and so was unhelpful. I eventually found a Mexican diner where I had huevos rancheros with really fresh tasty tortillas. Simple, tasty, good-sized portion, and $4.50.

Fortunately, lunch was easier to find. I went into a friendly-looking little place and ordered some kind of crepe thing that was purported to contain "spinach and cheese", which I took to mean that there would be a crepe, with some spinach inside, and then maybe a slice of cheese on top. They should reword their menu to give their clientele a better idea of what this food is by calling it "crepes with spinach AND CHEESE!!!"

When something is too dairy-riffic for me, then you've put too much cheese on it.

The weather was beautiful though. While walking from talk to talk, it was nice to sit outside and listen to kids playing across the street, and these crazy whistling birds in the trees, and the physicists sitting across from me talking about things I'd never think of.
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If you ever need to find yourself a secret location--say, you need to give your Russian agent the nuclear plans, or tell your significant other that the baby isn't his--well, I know a place.

Step 1: Go to a physics conference. Make sure it's a big one, so that it takes up the whole convention center.

Step 2: Enter a woman's bathroom.

and voila. Chances are you'll have at least an hour or two of complete solitude in which to complete your secretive deeds.
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Synchrotron scientists are a really close bunch of folks. I'd never really thought about this much before I went to a session on synchrotron measurement devices. But, there really aren't that many synchrotrons in the world. Even if 10 scientists are really specializing in the measurments at each facility, it makes a fairly small club compared to, say, polymer films or biophysics (two other sessions I attended). I went to this particular session because I do spend time at our school's synchrotron, even though I'm no expert in the field. But I've had enough beamtime to be curious about what the top-level people ARE doing, and also to understand a few words of their talks.

The talks themselves were fairly interesting. It's nice to learn about parts of an instrument I regularly use but don't think much about, without asking the technicians and sounding like a total idiot. But when the time came for questions, each speaker knew all of the questioners on a first name basis--something I hadn't seen at any other session. The presence of interpersonal connections between the men in the group (for most of the session I was the only woman in a group of 20 or 30) vastly improved the quality of the talks. Their tone was uniformly that of an excited kid FINALLY getting to share their great new toy. As a result, we all got excited about their work and tried to think of ways for it to be useful in the real world.

It was the best session I went to of the whole conference.

3/10/03

I just noticed that I hadn't changed my date setup to 2003 yet. Whoops. Consider it fixed (soon).

The trip back was uneventful. I took a lot of pictures, which for me is about half a roll of film. But I got the pictures of everything I wanted to. Now I just need to get them developed.

I bought a cute little wooden frog/percussive instrument at one of the many Shops Full of Clever Little Things You Won't Find Anywhere Else that they have in Austin. The frog holds the noisemaking stick in his mouth when you're not dancing around tapping him on the head and scratching his back. He was irresistable, and continues to be--every time I see him sitting on the bookcase, presenting me with the little drumstick like a dog showing off a new fancy bone, I need to go over and give him a little tap. The sound is vaguely reminiscent of spring peepers, making him all the more frog-like.

I don't make many non-food impulse purchases, but I'm glad I decided to get him. Am I materialistic because palm-sized 8$ wooden frogs make me happy?

3/7/03

I only have 10-minute units of time at these conference computers, but I just thought I should say--it's going to be 75 and sunny here this afternoon.

bwah hah hah hah.

Had some difficulties getting here (snow in Chicago when I was supposed to be flying through so I got delayed). A longer story will be forthcoming once I have hours and hours to futz around.

Also, once I get back home, I have some retroactive entries for you all (I've just been writing stuff up in my notebook). Expect musings on strange bird calls, the difficulty of finding breakfasts, and "WHOOP-WHOOP" sometime soon (Monday or Tuesday, I expect).

3/4/03

I checked my office mailbox this morning, and there was something in there for me, with a "Dr." in front of my name that I'd never seen there before. It was a strange moment--I've tried not to say "Dr. 'Chemgrrl'" at any point, for fear of jinxing it. Also, it sounds strange, and a little scary. There isn't anyone in my family that's a doctor, and my last name isn't particularly common, so I've never heard the combination. Seeing it on paper is even wierder. I mean, it's still going to be 3-5 years of hard work, but really now. Doctor. Yipes.

At least they spelled my name right.
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Well, I'm off! The poster's printed, just going to get a quick haircut (I'm simply too shaggy for words), and get the last couple of doodads together. Wish me luck. Pictures will certainly be forthcoming. I was going to get a digital camera, but they didn't have any at Sears except the psycho-expensive one, and I have a gift certificate, so I'll just wait a little longer.

3/3/03

It's my mama's birthday tomorrow. Wish her a happy one, if you know her.