Not going to talk for too long here, just wanted to let everyone know that I'm still alive, the final wedding plans are going very well, I'm having a lovely Memorial day. And Jeremy is done with school! Yay!
Okay, I'm leaving for Ithaca tomorrow morning, and for the next 4 weeks (until June 13, 14, or 15) I'm only going to have occasional dialup capabilities (eww 56k). For those of you coming to the wedding, hope you have a good time, and I can't wait to see you! For those of you not coming, have a good early summer. I'll be back with piles and piles of pictures, and stories, etc, etc. There still may be an occasional update so I don't have to write a 30-page essay when I get back about everything that happened, but it's going to slow down a lot around here for awhile. Be well.
ps--I feel better after everything that happened yesterday. I *think* I found what I was looking for. But I still won't finish the synthesis in time. Oh well.
Had a grumpy day yesterday (you can probably tell from the entry). Just wedding grumpiness decending upon one and all. Still, a lot better than most weddings, I'm sure.
Today was also grumpy. I was doing stuff in the lab, and things didn't work out right. I was doing a kind of long process in which you can do this:
Only I did it and ended up with this:
Which made this happen..
Which made this happen..
And then this happened.
Well, I managed to put my head back together, but I'm tired after all that. Please be gentle.
Why bother?
Ahh... done with finals.
AHH!! Wedding stuff!
Well, the wedding list is semi-finalized. Slogged through a lot of its minor details (like how many people are eating salmon), and have a pretty good second-to-last draft, once we know if a few people are hanging out with us on the boat. This kind of thing stresses me out in a completely different way than finals, but finals are done, so I won't have much scholastic stress for a few months. And I won't have much wedding stress in...two weeks and a day. Dear Lord! I should be more stressed than I am.
One more class down (the education one). You know what I did last night? I worked on my quilt. Ahh, the joys of feeling relaxed enough to... well, to be totally nerdy, but whatever.
Going to attempt my Super White Girl (SWG is embroidered on all my undies) version of Tamale Pie tonight. As if Tamale Pie isn't already such a white people construction.
Someone recently (I can't remember who) got on my case recently about me calling the way I make just about any ethnic dish the "White Girl {fill in the blank}". I say, fuggedaboudit. Each and every one is completely non-authentic in its own way. My White Girl Stirfry? Frozen vegetables in a pan (not wok). My White Girl Quesadillas? Often made with American cheese. White Girl lentil stew? NOT so spicy it doubles as wallpaper remover.
Also, hey, I don't belong to any ethnic group allowed to make fun of itself. I may as well show my distaste for The Man by minimizing my allegence to it(him?).
Hooray for Po White Trash!
Happy birthday daddy!
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Well, it's official. I am not a human being, I am a cartoon character.
You want proof?
An iron slid off a shelf and landed on my head today.
I've been cleaning up and re-organizing my room lately, getting ready for Mr. Boy to join me in my tiny apartment (we'll be moving into a much bigger nicer less hellish place in August). I pulled a few sheets off of a high shelf in my closet because I hadn't folded them very well, and some q-tips had been living underneath the sheet pile and fell down. I leaned over to pick them up, and KATHWUMP went the iron on the back of my head. I don't know how it fell, but I have a little egg on my head to prove it. I'm okay, though. I don't look like a manhole cover with feet right now--at least the non-cartoon laws of physics still hold.
Oh, and I THOUGHT I was totally done with the driving directions, but I wasn't. NOW I am. I hope.
I got a lot done today. I LOVE the end of the semester, I completely finished with two classes today!
Seminar: So totally done, all of my stuff is in the recycling. Handed my stuff in two hours ago.
NMR: totally done, but still have to throw stuff in recycling. Finished this afternoon.
Teaching class: One email, should take a half hour. Tomorrow.
Phase Transformations: Non-cumulative final on Friday. Sporadic studying until then.
And then wedding stuff. And lab work stuff. But all that's more fun.
Whoohoo!
So, yeah, I keep mentioning my unhealthy obsession with the dang Blind Date Blog Game, and so it continues. I keep getting in trouble, saying the things that I'd say about people on Survivor (there's a Yahoo group), and then the people that we're talking trash about will be all like "what? why do you hate me so?" Of course, I don't really hate ANY of them, just like I wouldn't hate Richard on Survivor if he walked up to me and said hello. I'm just ghetto-talkin'. But it's a delicate balance. It's hard to get used to game show contestants that talk back.
Things may be a little slow this week. The above list is still not completed, and I have a bunch of lab work to get done before I leave for Ithaca. Oh, and I have to go check to see who's written stuff on Blind Date Blog 10 times a day.
These are just plain nasty. I don't know why I bought them. I mean, normal ribs might be nasty too, although I don't think I ever had them. Jeremy has, though, and told me all about how he really liked to eat them as a child because it was one of the few situations where eating messily was practically encouraged.
I just bought them because of that story, they looked vaguely interesting. Nope. Hellishly salty. Painfully saccharine. Excessive use of Red Lake #2.
Time to go get some Tums.
Anyone want to go paintballing in Ithaca on May 26th and watch Dan get all psycho-warrior on us all? I really want to go kick his behind. I think he said we need 10 people to sign up for time. Rawk! Wayyy better a pre-wedding party than going to a place like "Pecks" (Dan's idea for a inversely gendered "Hooters").
Ugh. What a gross day outside. I spent most of the day under the covers trying to stay warm, since I guess the landlords turned off the heat last week. I went outside for a little while, to get dad's birthday present and some lunch.
Yawn. I guess it's partly the weather and trying to keep warm all day, but I'm not feeling very sparkly. I am very much looking forward to having my Boy Shaped Bed Warmer (tm) here, even though by the time he DOES get here (in mid-June), it's probably going to be pretty dang hot.
Hell, the heat doesn't bother me, I always try to snuggle anyway. I suspect that J's whiteness is actually kind of like polar bears. Polar bears, if you didn't know, only appear to be pure white all over. Acutally, they have clear white fur on top and black skin underneath, so that their body heat radiates back off of the white fur and is reabsorbed by the black fur. This would explain several things if it was also true of polar bears:
1: His insistence that he is "black on the inside".
2: His heat-handling ability is much weaker than mine, and yet
3: He seems to be quite toasty in the winter.
4: He keeps requesting that ringed seals be included in the reception buffet.
Hmm... I feel a photoshop moment coming on....
Sooooo close to being done. SOO close...
So today's the last day of classes here. I asked J-Ro recently if there were any traditions here, like Fountain Day at IC (now "get drunk and throw food at dining hall people" day), or Slope Day at Cornell (which still exists, even though it's even worse). I guess things are surprizingly calm here, by comparison, and considering this place has a German-style beer hall ON CAMPUS. Mostly, people keep quieter because there's only one day between the last day of class and the first day of finals. Yes, they have finals on a SUNDAY. How suck! I only have one this semester, next Friday, but I have a bunch of final-ish things to hand in on Monday. Almost done with 'em, though. So today and tomorrow are mostly relaxing, light work days. May continue a little side project that I haven't put up here yet, but it's much less taxing than the driving directions, so I'm not too worried right now.
I'm still having way too much fun with Blind Date Blog. Kinda like Survivor, only the last guy and girl left go on a date. And normal people get to vote. It's a lot of fun, there's this section on Yahoo where you can talk about the people competing--saying the kinds of things that one would say while watching one of the catfight episodes of Survivor. Only then you read the people involved's online journals, and they say "some person on Yahoo said I sound dumb. I cried." It has just enough cruel possibilities for Dan to enjoy.
I enjoy it too, but just a little bit. ;)
Have a good weekend, ev'rybody!
Doing my homework, like a good girl. Sort of. More like doing my homework last minute, like a procrastinating girl. But there's a lot of things I crossed off my list in the last 3 or 4 days. Next week: room cleaning! Yay! I love throwing away all the homeworks from my completed classes. I'm also moving my textbooks to my permanent office (next 4 years permanent at least). And I have a lot of textbooks, so that'll add more room in the aparment than you'd think. Gotta make room for J, don'cha know. I think we'll have enough room. I've put a bunch of my sweaters in a bag and stuck them in the closet, I'm slowly reducing my plastic grocery bag population (which was reaching tribble-esque proportions), if I really needed to I could clear out the entire space under my bed, currently occupied by many, many boxes. I figure they'll be good for moving, which I KNOW I'll be doing in 3 months. But they do take up space. I'll leave them for now.
I'll wait until the windows are bowing out with the pressure, is all.
Ahhh.. y'know, as a child, I was not a big fan of the whole "bathing" thing. Hygene, who needed it? I think I started regular showers sometime around 6th or 7th grade, just because I was tired of my mom getting on my case about it, not because I actually had any awareness of the odor or greasiness of my body.
In one particularly memorable episode, my poor mother tried (valiantly as always), to convince me that being in a bathed state was somehow preferable to an unbathed one, this time coming at me before my hair had even dried. "I always feel so nice and CLEAN after a shower. Don't you feel so NICE and CLEAN right now?!?!?
Well, I didn't feel any different. But at least I've been able to make fun of mom about that one for the last decade.
But y'know what does give me that feeling?
Cleaning up my messy code.
Yes, going through my code. Making sure all of my line breaks line up so that they make sense to me, checking all of my links to make sure I entered them correctly, looking at every page and fixing little grammar errors--I finish that, and I do indeed feel all nice and clean.
Especially tonight, when dusting off my code is my own personal reward for having somewhat successfully finished one of my classes this semester. I had my last test in NMR this afternoon, and didn't do too badly, I don't think! This was a practical, which means my TA sat next to me with a notepad, watching me fiddle with knobs and using entirely unscientific words to describe things:
Sweet North Dakotan TA Guy: And what might be the problem with leaving the reciever gain on too high?However, he said that I'd done really well when we finished. Maybe a semester with me had just frightened him into giving me a thumbs-up, but hey, I need all the A's I can get! Whoo-hoo!
Me: (Typing while I talk, because he has to sit there with a watch and time my data-taking) Your baseline will get all.... crunchy.
SNDTAG:Crunchy?
Me:Yeah, gimme a sec, I'll think of the real word as soon as I smack this automation routine's bitch up.
SNDTAG:Smack this...(quietly passes out in a corner)
Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! This is the closest I can get to the sound of me laughing really hard. Which I am.
I know I said recently that I got this site meter thing (you can see it on the bottom of the left hand side menu), and how it has all these fancy features, like seeing how people got to the website, and what domain name they're coming from (like "aol.com" would mean they were using AOL). So, I'm looking through how people came to the website: what was the website that had my address on that they clicked onto to see me? So, I found this, which hopefully will get fixed soon, and wasn't my fault, at least.
"One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong..."
Poor William Duax. He's just doing his medical research, or something, and now everyone thinks that his research is the wedding details of a young grad student and her fiance.
The whole reason I found out that this was there to begin with was that some poor sap who really DID want to know more about this guy clicked the link and found me. Which I think is even funnier, in my strange little world.
I think I know roughly how this happened, and have emailed the folks involved. Some of you out there might know, too. I just don't want to be mean about it. I don't FEEL mean about it. I just think it's the funniest thing I've seen in a good long while.
As it was, I was in a good mood today. Had a rough night last night--it always takes me a few nights to "relearn" how to sleep in warm weather. My test went GREAT--I think. At least, I thought I knew the answer to every question and was the second one done. Today was the in-class component of my NMR exam, tomorrow, I actually do the stuff on the instrument and hopefully don't blow anything up. At least it's open notebook.
Then, since it had cooled down a bit, I went home and slept for 2 hours. Got up in time to eat some lunch, went to my last Science Education class, which had been awesome. I was sorry to say goodbye to the random people I probably won't run into again--when am I ever going to go into the astronomy building?--but I think we all left feeling good about the overall experience.
Then I came here, read some funny greeting cards, checked my email, and had the sweetest email from some friend of J's family that I met just once. She got here from the driving directions (that hopefully everyone has now, or will soon), and was amused, and thought me and J are just the bee's knees. Of course, I looked at the last several entries through the eyes of a very nice almost-total stranger, and realize that I don't think I sound all that sweet, but I'm glad other people think so. :)
And NOW, it's time to go make some matzo ball soup! Yay! What a good day.
This must be short, I A: have a test tomorrow, and B: have been spending too much time reading this. Addictive in the worst possible soap-opera, Survivor with dirty thoughts kind of way. If you feel like wasting a few hours, go there.
The weather has been quite nice the last few days. There are some trees, somewhere, that have a very strong, beautiful smell. I'll smell this sweet flowery smell, and look around, and not see any nearby flowers. They must be somewhere. But a springy smell cheers me up. No more 40 degree days! We had enough of those the past month, when it was supposed to be in the 60's.
Oh, and there's a white lilac bush that's blooming that I've been passing daily on the way to my classes. I love lilacs. They're perty, they have a relaxing smell, and if you wear a bunch of them on your head your family can see you. I learned that at graduation last year. They found me, in the middle of 1000 kids on a football field! That is my graduation-time advice. That, and goofing off with your friends is a lot more fun than listening to the commencement speaker.
Jeebus hell.
So, I think I mentioned recently that I put up a new site counter, after the bottom of this page randomly got Hoovered into the void a few weeks ago, taking a week's worth of entries, the counter, and some code along with it. Well, this new one is way fancier than the other one. If you click on it, it brings you to the hosting website, and I can find out how long people are looking at pages, where they're coming from, that sort of thing. Really, pretty dangerous, considering that now I can pretty much see who's coming in and my voyeurism is getting the better of me. I'm going to try not to any more, and just see how many times the page is getting looked at, instead of being all "Oh, hi Jeremy!" Unless someone else at his school thinks I'm the bomb.
Did a big pile of errands today. Went to the farmer's market, and got the scones I've been jonesing for since I ran out of my stash in December (fortunately, I've had an alternate stash of collegetown bagels which I finished a few nights ago to get me through). Sooo yummy. Got my little sister her birthday present. Went grocery shopping, and now I have to eat my way through as much as I can without buying anything else for the next 2 1/2 weeks (then I'll be in Ithaca and honeymooning for 3ish weeks). Went to Target to return some duplicate wedding items and to add a whole bunch of stuff onto the list. The people are clamoring "Let us give you more crap! More more more!" No, none of it is crap, it's all high quality merchandise. Of course, y'all COULD just give us some money, it's easier to bring halfway across the country. Or love, that's also easily transportable (and cheap!). But at least now that we know where we're living next year (and that it IS "we" and not "lonely me" that will be living there), I was able to put up a bunch more stuff than before, when I was just hoping we wouldn't be living in a sewage line with the rats and alligators.
Ohmygawd, flashback! Does anyone remember the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle" movie? I just remembered one scene, where they order pizza, and they say their address is something like "207 and an 1/8th Main St." The pizza guy stands partway between two buildings, all confused, until the manhole cover slides over, Raphael pays the guy and makes off with the pie. Now I'm picturing me and Jeremy being heroes on the halfshell, and we're green... (when the evil Shredder attacks...dangit why can I remember THIS but not the conditions for martensitic growth?)
Since I seem to be going with a stream of consciousness theme today, I'll keep at it. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles also bring back memories of being in 6th grade (you know, in that two year period where every single person was an unpopular loser?), and my Big Bad Unpopularity Trait was that...
*gasp*
I listened to the Beatles.
And for this heinous offense to the MC Hammer listeners' good taste, I was labeled "Teenage Mutant Ninja Beetle".
It's funny now, partly because it's SO much a product of 1990. There will never be another time in history with this particular confluence of ideals and available cultural references. No child will never again be called a "Teenage Mutant Ninja Beatle".
Thank God.
So long as I get to be the most successful person at the 10 year St. Paul's reunion. Dear Lord, that would be in another year! I wonder if people will actually get one together, you better believe *I* ain't running that crap, although I'd definitely go. But I better hurry up and get my Ph.D, just to be safe. A one and a half year Ph.D? Ya right.
Ok, so maybe I'd just settle for being not the least successful...
All right, now I can finally shut up about the driving directions area of the site.
It's finally all done.
I think.
If you came here from there, then howdy. Don't worry, nothing embarrassing to see here. My usual blathering, just without any interruptions.
So, I saw a jazz concert with J-Ro last night. Was really great. Just two campus groups, but the recital hall was small and the sound was HUGE. And we both especially enjoyed the second half, when they played songs called "TJ" AND "Jamie"! My song was tres 70's funk, hers was mellow and romantic.
One kind of funny thing happened there. There was one guy that played both the first and second half (a small jazz combo for the first half, a 20ish person group for the second half), and was by far the best soloist of the first half. Cute too. I have an occasional tendency to fall in love with musicians for the duration of a concert, and then totally forgetting that within 5 minutes of leaving the concert. So when I saw this great musician come back on stage I nudged Jamie and said "That guy is HOT". Jamie looked over at me kind of oddly and said "I was just about to say that that guy looks like Jeremy."
I hadn't noticed. But he really did. A little taller, a little bit stranger facial hair, but yeah, he was basically J, with a saxaphone. Strange how even when I'm pretending to be all naughty, my subconscious still goes for my honey.
Ok, time to finish up my lab work, I needed to leave my molecules cooking under an ultraviolet lamp for the last 5 hours, and they ought to be just about ready now.
Grarrrarrrpf.
This is the sound of one TChem frustrated.
Also, the Turd Monster, oddly enough.
So I'm taking this class in NMR--Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, which is a method of figuring out the structure of molecules using an instrument which is also referred to as an NMR, even though the acronym only really describes the technique, not the instrument. I took a similar class before in Ithaca, when we had one perfectly nice high quality NMR to work with. Our department being so small, it really was our pride and joy. I knew how to work that instrument. I never messed anything up. I figured out the structures of unknowns.
The doggamn thing didn't make me cry.
Now, I'm here, and I thought I was just taking a refresher course, learning how the instruments here work. Yet every week the stupid computers, or the instrument, or SOMETHING, manages to find a way to make me growl and tear up. I track down a TA, they come in, figure out the stupid thing I did wrong, and I say "I didn't THINK I did it like that.."
But I did.
And it was really, really dumb.
Somehow, I'm still doing pretty well in the class, but we have two exams next week (a hands-on one and an in-class mostly theory-based one) and it's freakin' me out. I just hope I don't cry at the end of the lab practical like I did last time. I still did ok, I was just WAYYY too stressed about it, like the internal pressure made me spring a leak.
Keep me in mind next Tuesday morning, since MY mind will probably be jumping out of my ear and running away to join the circus about that time.
Last night, I was not in a cooking mood, so I went and got pizza at this new place a few blocks from me. The only thing I'd really heard about it was that it serves Macaroni and Cheese Pizza, but that alone piqued my interest. When I went, they also had taco pizza (with sour cream, no less), buffalo wing pizza, and some "normal" varieties. Some night they supposedly had pate pizza. Honestly, I went mostly out of curiosity about the Mac&Cheese. But at the last minute I wimped out and got mushroom, figuring if they did a good job with something less out-there, I'd come back for more.
It was tasty.
So tasty, in fact, that after I finished it I bought a slice of the Mac and Cheese.
Even better. Mmmm. It was a pretty thin crust, and I'm usually a super thick crust kind of gal. But their crust must have been made by magical Pizza Crust Elves, that's how good it was. And their Elves could kick the asses of those Keebler wimps any day.
And the macaroni? It worked, somehow. I think it provided me with the squishy carbo-ness that a doughy crust usually gives. I might not get it the next time I go, but I will definitely go again.
Not much else happening. Getting sick and tired of wedding details, and sending and/or recieving a dozen or so wedding-related emails a day. I look forward to it being over, and having wonderful memories of what a good time we all had at the reception and after-shindig, and having J here, and sharing our lives for the next 50 or so years.
But mostly it being over.