9/30/02

There are more butterflies here than any other place I've ever lived.

It's such a happy thing, to be standing around waiting for the bus (an otherwise hateful activity) and watch a dozen butterflies playing in the grass that's in the park on the edge of the lake that's right across the street from the apartment.

I love this place.

9/27/02

Where has my class rage gone?

I feel like I've been getting more and more complacent. Complacent yet stifled--is that even possible? I think this has to do with the fact that most to all of my daily contacts are either personal interactions with middle class people (like J, who is wonderful but priviledged), or middle-class interactions with everyone else, regardless of their background--i.e. all my job relationships.

This wasn't a problem in the dining hall--some cooks, some student managers and I were always ready to roll our eyes at the chickenheads complaining about the lack of low-fat capers at the salad bar or something, but working in food service IS a working class place to be, so I guess that's what the content of our socializing SHOULD have been. Also, I suppose I still don't know everyone here well enough to be my slightly rougher self--I'm shy with introductions but get progressively noisier the more comfortable I am with you. But why is THAT? By the time I'd been in the dining hall for half a year, I ran the place, pretending that I was going to touch one of the male Kosher cooks with my filthy filthy girl-hand, and sing whatever song came into my head, and talk about whatever family problem was getting me down that day.

Again, that wasn't that unusual there, though.

People just don't DO that here. Some folks complain about their profs or advisors or homework level, but conversations always begin and end talking about work. At the highest level of personability, I know the names of most of the significant others of the people I talk to regularly.

I suppose now that I think about it, this has really been the first time that I'm spending time in a purely middle-class world. I've done research before, but I've always been doing a part-time gig at the dining hall. I spent a summer tutoring, but I was tutoring working-class kids, and they understood me and my style a lot better than they understood the Socialist son of two academics that I shared teaching duties with.

Jeez--this all just clicked.

No wonder I was so lonely this past year.

9/25/02

I feel like giving y'all out there a taste of the chemical world. I'm waiting for a machine called a rotovap to get all the solvent out of my sample (kinda like boiling salty water until just the salt is left). But it's taking a while, so I'm going to give you a partial "Day-In-The-Life" instead of going to lunch, for the moment.
***********************************
LABEL PRECAUTIONARY STATEMENTS:


HARMFUL
HARMFUL BY INHALATION.
IRRITATING TO EYES AND RESPIRATORY SYSTEM.
CALIF. PROP. 65 CARCINOGEN.
ANTICIPATED TO BE CARCINOGENIC.

TARGET ORGAN(S):LUNGS
******************************
This is a segment of an MSDS for a material that I had in my fume hood today. An MSDS stands for Materials Safety Data Sheet, and explains the dangers of a particular product. Chances are that your workplace has a binder somewhere full of the MSDS's for the cleaning products used by the janitorial staff, at the very least, if you work anywhere. OSHA requires them, so people are informed, in case they don't want to expose their fetus to mutagens or are sensitive to iodine (which I am). Very useful, but sometimes a bit overboard.

What do I mean by overboard? Well, guess what the listing above is from.

Go ahead, just one guess. I know you know the name of SOME chemicals... maybe a chlorofluorocarbon? Sulfuric acid? That reason you're not supposed to mix ammonia mixed with bleach (ammonium chloride)?

It's sand.

SAND.

Yes, little did you know that those trips to the beach were bringing you to death's door!

Now, this isn't to say that I don't play with plenty of things every day that I probably wouldn't want to inject into my system, or consume large amounts of, but you have to take these things with a grain of salt. Hmm... salt. Let's see:
******************************
ACUTE EFFECTS
MAY CAUSE SKIN IRRITATION.
MAY BE HARMFUL IF ABSORBED THROUGH THE SKIN.
MAY CAUSE EYE IRRITATION.
MAY BE HARMFUL IF INHALED.
MATERIAL MAY BE IRRITATING TO MUCOUS MEMBRANES AND UPPER RESPIRATORY TRACT.
MAY BE HARMFUL IF SWALLOWED.
TO THE BEST OF OUR KNOWLEDGE, THE CHEMICAL, PHYSICAL, AND TOXICOLOGICAL PROPERTIES HAVE NOT BEEN THOROUGHLY INVESTIGATED.
INGESTION OF LARGE AMOUNTS CAUSES VOMITING AND DIARRHEA.
***********************
That last one is news to me, but I wonder exactly how much... a kilogram? This one, they're actually pretty mellow. Imagine what happens when you get to something that you really SHOULDN'T put in your mouth. This next one is for acetone, also known as nail polish remover. It's commonly used for cleaning glassware in the lab. I get some on my hands almost every day, and one time about a month ago, I was opening a drum of it, and they had the drum overfilled, so that it sprayed all over the parts of me that weren't covered with my lab coat and glasses: face, lower arms. Keep this in mind.
***************************

FLAMMABLE (USA)
TOXIC BY INHALATION AND IF SWALLOWED.
IRRITATING TO EYES AND SKIN.

TARGET ORGAN(S):
EYES
KIDNEYS
CAUSES EYE AND SKIN IRRITATION.
KEEP CONTAINER TIGHTLY CLOSED.
KEEP AWAY FROM SOURCES OF IGNITION - NO SMOKING.
AVOID CONTACT WITH SKIN.
TAKE PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES AGAINST STATIC DISCHARGES.
IN CASE OF ACCIDENT OR IF YOU FEEL UNWELL, SEEK MEDICAL ADVICE IMMEDIATELY (SHOW THE LABEL WHERE POSSIBLE).
**************************
Note: "Skin Irritation"= "It feels cold because it evaporates quickly."

Oh, the things I do in the name of science. And that concludes today's voyage into the world of a scientist.

9/24/02

Just call me Julia Child. Or maybe that red-headed Italian guy on the Food Network.

So, for dinner on Sunday, I made a multi-colored antipasto of roasted sweet peppers, and made a main dish of risotto with crimini mushrooms and sundried tomatoes.

Sounds pretty fancy. Tasted pretty good, and it wasn't too complicated. The risotto was creamy, as it has been described to me on TV shows and in cookbooks.

Hooray for experimenting at the Farmer's Market! I tried an orange pepper, tasted about like a red, a little sweeter than the greens. And crimini mushrooms, well, I liked them. J thought they tasted bitter. Just mushroomy, kinda like portabellas. Yum-may.

On a totally unrelated note, I've been enjoying looking at this science-ed website. It doesn't seem to be organized particularly well, but once you find an interesting spot, it's enjoyable. And the questions people ask are pretty funny, although I can forgive the small children asking if you can reach your brain if you pick your nose hard enough.

9/19/02

My advisor co-works on this research project I'm doing with some folks from the Vet School. We had a big group meeting there today, so the two people that are also working on this project with me over in engineering hopped on a bus and chit-chatted our way there. It just happened to be a between-class time, and the bus got completely packed full of kids pretty quickly. A TON of them got on at the bottom of a gentle slope that is "the steepest hill in town!", only J and I laugh at it, because it's nothing compared to Ithaca. Anyhow, a good 3/4 of the kids that got on at the bottom of the hill got off at the top--about a block, block and a half distance all together. It would have been faster to walk! God, these plains-grown children have no hill endurance.

After everyone got off, I mentioned this fact to the girls I was going up the hill with. I described the 40 degree slopes, covered in snow, that I've walked up and down hundreds of times--to get to class, go to work, visit my honey. Walking from Ithaca to Cornell proves that it IS possible to walk uphill with the snow-filled wind in your face both ways (the space between the two is shaped like a U, and the wind is just evil).

A guy standing next to us chuckled, pointed outside, and said "Yeah, it's not exactly Buffalo St., is it?"

He KNEW!

He had to get off at the next stop, or I would have talked to him more, but he said he was an undergrad at Cornell. Go figure. Of course, there seems to be about 15 major schools where everyone just moves from one to the other for undergrad, grad, and professoring of which the UW and Cornell are two, so I've met a few folks that have spent time in Ithaca before, but I was much amused that the one person standing closer to us than anyone else knew exactly what I was talking about. Un petit monde, n'est-ce pas?

9/18/02

J and I saw Monster's Inc. last night. There was a free showing here in the engineering building, so we got some dinner on State St., and headed back down there.

It was hi-LAR-ious.

It's one of those movies where I can just tell that I didn't catch every visual gag the first time, and when I see it again, I'll point to a tiny corner of the screen and say "Look what that store is named!"

As it was, it was perfect. Enough entertainment for grownups and kids, I would think, although I only saw it with 18-24 year olds.

I had a big doofy grin on my face all night just thinking about all the silly things. It was one of those movies that, very simply, made me happy.

9/17/02

How come about 10% of the people that find this site were searching for water spots on Yahoo? I would never even have though to look up such a thing.
Hello out there? I think you're looking for something like this. Or mayhaps this? Or this, which is my personal favorite, although it's probably not what they're looking for.

I also found some dirty stuff, but I'm just going to leave that alone. I mean, just read the last entry I did, mm-kay?

Hey, look at that, I guess I AM a useful source of water spot information!

And, really, I should be grateful that people don't come here looking for terrible disgusting things.

9/16/02

Every online journal or blog I've read, you can tell the writer has a certain level of disclosure that they won't go past, and if you read a few entries, you can usually figure out where that level is. On the journal side, for some folks, this level is so high that I can't even believe that they THINK the things they write about, much less write them (like Doug with HTML coding skills). On the other side, there are plenty of pure bloggers that just list links to news stories that they think are interesting without even much opinion thrown into the mix. In between, there are people that don't talk too much about their job (usually after getting caught or fired after a particularly vitriolic post), folks whose significant others are shy, some prefer to keep their kids out of the eyes of anyone who might be even remotely sketchy. Every person's line makes sense to them, and as a reader I always understand their points of view, even if I know that I'd never take advantage of the information they give.

Where is my line drawn?

Most of my friends can attest to the fact that I'm a pretty uncensored person in real life. Sometimes this entails accidentally mentioning someone's very funny outfit a half a decibel too loud so they hear me, but I've also gotten caught the opposite way (praising a new student worker a few hours after a shift ended, only to have them be right behind me--score!). So my loudmouthedness has both helped and hurt me over the years.

But, just because I have a big ol' mouth doesn't mean that I say anything REALLY cruel, and if I start to tell a story and I realize that part of it involves something I was told in strict confidence, I'll babble incomprehensively about an unrelated detail of the story until I end up switching the subject to one of MY secrets, instead.

In other words, as a result of me trying not to say some things about my more private friends, everyone knows all my bidness.

This whole online thing is a different beast, though, since, at any particular moment, anyone can look at this. Having some future employer read about the time when I was three that I woke my mom up and threw up all over her probably isn't a good thing. I worry less about employers than family, though, since this site is mostly for them.

So what's my criterion?

A: If one of my adorable little sisters read this, would I get an angry call from my dad?
B: If my sweet wonderful gramma reads this, will I get an angry call from my mom?

For most people, the idea of an 8-year old, or a gramma-year old finding their website would be amusing. "My grandparents using a computer?!? A small child typing a url?". But they'd be wrong. I Instant message with both my sisters on a semi-regular basis, and I just got an email from my gramma this morning that said "Hi honey, I like reading your website."

Proof, yet again, that my family is hipper than yours.

9/13/02

Dream Sequence, 2am:


The phone is ringing, and I can't find it.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

Another damn telemarketer, I think. We've been getting a lot of those calls the past week--at least one in the morning before I leave, at least another when we're home in the evening.

Ring.

Our phone is in the mailbox. This isn't strange.

"Hello?"

"Oh, hi. This is Phil. I thought you were coming in today. The dinner shift starts at 6 now, mmm-kay?"

It's 6:15.

"But, Phil, you're the manager at the Dining Hall. I worked there when I was in Ithaca, but I've been in grad school for just over a year now. I'm halfway across the country. I don't work there anymore."

"Now, look, you know what's going on, don't play dumb. You know that Dan is quitting."

"Well, yeah, but..."

"But what? You know it's your turn now. You were supposed to be here an hour ago, and no one's on the salad bar, so just... just come in, mmm-kay?"

I can hear, and almost see, my old housemate Bryan walk into the office and in a barely restrained voice, say:

"Where the hell is she? She was supposed to be here an hour and a half ago! I've been bringing out condiments ALL NIGHT, and my tendonitis is flaring up... ow! ow!"

I have a hundred arguments in my head. I don't have any dining hall outfits with me, I'm in WISCONSIN, fer chrissakes, and... and...

I look down, and I'm wearing a buttondown shirt, khaki pants, and a black apron.

Panic sweeps over me. I'm late!

"I'll get down there as soon as I can."

Click.

9/10/02

Plenty of grumpiness-inducing things are going on right now, but I don't feel like talking about any of them right now. Instead, this:

We had a little field trip in my class today. As we were all standing around this big evaporator thing, I was spacing out, and looking at the other people in the room. I noticed a guy across from me had shorts on with a label that read "Tonny Hilfiger".

I thought this was funny. I wonder how much he paid for it.

9/5/02

I'm getting worse and worse about writing. Here are some reasons. They're not excuses, really. Excuses are "I didn't do such-and-such because I had to do something else that I didn't want to do, or something happened to me that I didn't want to." The reasons here are all things that I enjoy, more or less.

1: Mr. ChemGrrl. Little explaining needs to be done here.
2:Neopets. This is such a terrible, stupid guilty pleasure that I can't even stand myself, but it is, indeed, pleasure. Go try it. Discover just how insanely detailed this little stuffed-animal world is. I dare you.
3: Living farther away from campus=a smaller percentage of my time being spent with my brain attached to a T1 connection.
4: Living farther away from campus while the weather's still nice= not having a reason to even WANT more of my brain to be attached to at T1 connection.

Well, that's that. Enough for now.

Had a good labor day weekend, how about you? We fed my friend Edna and her sister who was up visiting, and all sat on a blanket in the park across the street, watching the ducks on the water. The ducks, geese, and seagulls came up to investigate what we were eating. I would have given them some rice or bread, but there were a lot of them wandering around in the park, and I didn't want to be the center of a Bird Stampede. After that, we watched the Royal Tennenbaums. I found it very strange but sufficiently entertaining to keep me quiet the whole time.

Anybody want to see products like Pumpkin Poo (candy), albums by Eric Crapton, and a chocolate bar called Asse? Go look here. I laughed my bottom off, sent it to J, then he did. (courtesy of Jon-Jon.)