He's back!! He's back he's back he's back!!
I am still making negative progress. Well, actually, I suppose negative progress would imply that I've found that I've done something wrong and I have to retool everything. No, I have no had to retrace any steps yet, so I guess I'm making no progress rather than negative progress. And when you put it like that, it sounds positively - well, positive!
Anyway, he seems just as puzzled as I am, which is nice in a way because it means that I'm not a complete idiot. Unfortunately, because of Dave's shifting alliances (I don't know if they're alliances or if they're shifting, but it certainly makes the whole situation sound slightly more exciting), we can't do many of the diagnostic tests that we'd like to do. Things like NMR at all, and more specifically, quantitative C-13, MS, possibly IR but really that's not Dave's domain.
Well anyway, this morning FX came in to visit me and he sat down and said, rather theatrically (for him... you see, for anyone else I'm sure it would have been relatively deadpan but I'm getting used to the way FX communicates), "I have finally returned." Then he wanted to see my NMR which, of course, was somewhat unhelpful.
Then I vacuum-pumped my sample and found that it was two-thirds less than its initial weight. That's always quite disheartening.
My teeth hurt again today. I'm not sure what sets them off, but it does make eating quite a painful ordeal.
Hahahaha okay so FX told me at least three hours ago that he'd be back in an hour. Whatever. I got the GC up and running finally - the pigheadedness triumphs again! - and I pulled another paper for lactonization and I think he might like this one better. They're just all under such dilute conditions.
So I'm sitting here, whiling away the time by reading and trying to actually select useful bits of information from the articles that I managed to find. It's kind of peaceful - and he knows as well as I do that we're pretty dead-ended right now. I could always do the second alkylation again, but he hasn't told me to and besides, the glassware isn't in the oven.
I'm listening to Regina Spektor because Gaby burned me a CD, and my favorite song is called "Human of the Year", not particularly because of the lyrics but because of the melody and the way it changes and somehow, at the same time, doesn't change at all and the way her voice soars through it and then suddenly ebbs away. There's something about her voice that grabs me.
I always feel like there's a sort of sarcastic, maybe even mysogynistic undertone to her songs that I never fully understand. Sometimes I wonder if artists or authors or directors or anyone in charge of any sort of media do that on purpose - bury something too deeply to really be anything but aware of it. Kind of like that huge rock in the ground that you spend days trying to dig out when you're a little kid but you never get any farther than deep grooves in the dirt that always come back to the stone.
But that's an unnecessary metaphor. All I'm saying is that I feel like there's something there that I'm not getting, which usually frustrates me but I think I've come to a place in my life - not necessarily a pivotal place - where I can sometimes just let things go because it's easier. In little tiny ways, like not knowing the layered meanings to Regina Spektor's bizarre lyrics.
Wow. Today has been the most bizarre day ever. FX is back, Dave is being semi-difficult because his instruments are all set up for solids, Chatterjee just cornered me in the hallway to ask me if I thought that if he told kids that he was dropping one of his exams (he only gives three!), it would be more fair (fairer?) than last year. Personally, I thought he was perfectly fair if a little lenient LAST year, so... I guess fair's fair. Abrams cornered me earlier to ask if I'd thought about being an undergrad TA for general chemistry lab.
FX actually asked me what classes I'm taking this semester! I don't know why it surprised me so much. I guess I was not expecting him to be so... small-talk-y. Maybe he still feels like he's on vacation. He just seems more approachable lately (not that I ever shy away from approaching, but you know what I mean) and it's nice. I like it. I missed him a lot and now that he's here I feel so relaxed even though I have only seven more days in the lab and who knows what's going to be accomplished by August 28?
I recently decided to let all of my fingernails grow out. I've been doing quite well about not biting them for quite a long time, but I left the fingernails on my pinkies to be bitten. It was kind of weird I guess to bit only those two nails, but for some reason it worked. Anyway, I decided not to bite my pinky nails - a conscious decision.
They've grown out a couple of millimeters, probably, and they look so funny to me! My hands don't look like my hands to me anymore. I guess that's really weird, as far as weird goes, but those two nails are changing the aesthetics of my entire (two) hand(s)! Because I do, you know, have two of them.
In any case, the day is done.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Ninth Post
I realize it has been a very long time since I have updated, oh loyal readers mine. I apologize. I suppose I have been tired and busy, busy and tired, and also I have been having SYTYCD parties. Luckily for you, the season finale for SYTYCD is tonight from 8:00-10:00, and after that I will be SYTYCD-free for approximately three weeks. That is a total guess. I have no idea when the fall season starts because I always fast-forward through Cat Deeley’s plugs.
Besides the fact that SYTYCD is ending and that I have been doing chemistry, I suppose there’s not all that much to be said about my life. Oh, right, except for the fact that FX has taken himself off to France for two weeks and left me here in the lab to fend for myself. “Treat it like independent research,” he says, trying to sound reassuring. I thought I would humor him; I didn’t point out that I’ve never done independent research before.
In any case, I’ll admit that he is good about emailing me back every night. He even answers my questions, as long as I format them like this:
Questions:
1. This is a question?
2. This is another question?
The question marks are rather perfunctory, because clearly, what I have written is a statement rather than a question, but if it is a question, it needs to be punctuated by a question mark. Hey, if you think about it, I’ve just handed you a catch-22! If it is a question, it is asking something and needs a question mark. However, it is clearly not a question because it doesn’t demand anything from anyone. The clear conclusion is just that I’m lying to you, and doing a pretty bad job of it.
Anyway, he answers the questions like that. He actually goes back into the body of my email and inserts his answers after the questions, like we did on little homework sheets back in high school and middle school and, oh, I suppose once in a while in college, too.
Dave Kiemle is quite put out with FX (“Fran”, he calls him, as in “How is chemistry going without Fran?” or “I need to send a nasty little email to Fran”) because Chris brought in a gypsy moth pheromone for some purpose that required that Dave work with it. Dave got mobbed by gypsy moths. It’s basically impossible to wash off a pheromone, so Dave has to live with being mobbed by gypsy moths for another couple of months or so. If I was Dave, I would be pretty unhappy, too.
It is halfway through Thursday right now, and lest you think I am not doing anything (that was what happened yesterday, due to circumstances nearly entirely out of my control – mainly that FX is 5 hours ahead of me), I am running mad distillations. That’s mad as in quantity, not emotion. In any case, I’ve kept relatively busy for four hours, which is more than I can say for yesterday.
Justine is quite pleased that FX is not here, because he scares her for some reason, and unfortunately, he seems to always pick the times when she has decided to pay me a visit to, well, pay me a visit. Now my lab can be a sort of refuge for her, because she knows that FX is not going to randomly drop by. Brendan doesn’t scare her because he’s friends with Jeremy, who is in her lab.
I really miss FX a lot, though. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit that, but I wish he’d come back so that he could conclusively tell me something, or offer me solid advice, rather than “use your judgment”. I don’t know. I guess I miss him coming in and jumping out of my skin – not because he’s here, but because the door slams JUST that loudly. I am not kidding you in the least here. It is an extremely loud door.
One of the nice things about this lab is that it is on the third floor, which is not only where Justine works, but is also all yellow. The second floor is turquoise, the fourth floor is salmon. But here, everything is kind of sunny yellow, which tends to bolster the spirits unless they’re lagging quite spectacularly, in which case it seems to be laughing at your misfortune.
Bad news of the day: the left channel of my earbuds has cut out entirely. This is extremely unfortunate. I feel like I’m the only person in the entire world who has this much trouble with earbuds. Maybe there’s something wrong with my ears. My ears break earbuds. Lame.
Anyway, here I am, waiting for my distillations to run and dreading having to run a column tomorrow for the products of the cleavage reaction – because that’s inevitably what is going to happen. It is going to make me fully appreciate flash filtration, I’m sure of that. There is no WAY I am doing a gravity column. I will think on my feet. I will make something happen. I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I’ll do it.
I just keep reminding myself that the experience of having to improvise (only to a degree, you understand) and of being relatively unsupervised in the lab is going to have really awesome aftereffects down the road, because I keep getting ridiculously stressed out. I think, instead of stressing, I’m just going to not think about it. That tends to work pretty well for me. Nonconfrontationalism ought to be my middle name, but it’s much too long, and besides, Microsoft Word is protesting its status as a valid word.
Hahahaha!! I just found a substance in Aldrich that costs more than platinum oxide: 2’,3’-dideoxyinosine, which is a nucleotide antagonist and just so happens to cost $31 for ONE MILLIGRAM. How do you even package one mg? Awesome. I want a copy of this book.
Besides the fact that SYTYCD is ending and that I have been doing chemistry, I suppose there’s not all that much to be said about my life. Oh, right, except for the fact that FX has taken himself off to France for two weeks and left me here in the lab to fend for myself. “Treat it like independent research,” he says, trying to sound reassuring. I thought I would humor him; I didn’t point out that I’ve never done independent research before.
In any case, I’ll admit that he is good about emailing me back every night. He even answers my questions, as long as I format them like this:
Questions:
1. This is a question?
2. This is another question?
The question marks are rather perfunctory, because clearly, what I have written is a statement rather than a question, but if it is a question, it needs to be punctuated by a question mark. Hey, if you think about it, I’ve just handed you a catch-22! If it is a question, it is asking something and needs a question mark. However, it is clearly not a question because it doesn’t demand anything from anyone. The clear conclusion is just that I’m lying to you, and doing a pretty bad job of it.
Anyway, he answers the questions like that. He actually goes back into the body of my email and inserts his answers after the questions, like we did on little homework sheets back in high school and middle school and, oh, I suppose once in a while in college, too.
Dave Kiemle is quite put out with FX (“Fran”, he calls him, as in “How is chemistry going without Fran?” or “I need to send a nasty little email to Fran”) because Chris brought in a gypsy moth pheromone for some purpose that required that Dave work with it. Dave got mobbed by gypsy moths. It’s basically impossible to wash off a pheromone, so Dave has to live with being mobbed by gypsy moths for another couple of months or so. If I was Dave, I would be pretty unhappy, too.
It is halfway through Thursday right now, and lest you think I am not doing anything (that was what happened yesterday, due to circumstances nearly entirely out of my control – mainly that FX is 5 hours ahead of me), I am running mad distillations. That’s mad as in quantity, not emotion. In any case, I’ve kept relatively busy for four hours, which is more than I can say for yesterday.
Justine is quite pleased that FX is not here, because he scares her for some reason, and unfortunately, he seems to always pick the times when she has decided to pay me a visit to, well, pay me a visit. Now my lab can be a sort of refuge for her, because she knows that FX is not going to randomly drop by. Brendan doesn’t scare her because he’s friends with Jeremy, who is in her lab.
I really miss FX a lot, though. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit that, but I wish he’d come back so that he could conclusively tell me something, or offer me solid advice, rather than “use your judgment”. I don’t know. I guess I miss him coming in and jumping out of my skin – not because he’s here, but because the door slams JUST that loudly. I am not kidding you in the least here. It is an extremely loud door.
One of the nice things about this lab is that it is on the third floor, which is not only where Justine works, but is also all yellow. The second floor is turquoise, the fourth floor is salmon. But here, everything is kind of sunny yellow, which tends to bolster the spirits unless they’re lagging quite spectacularly, in which case it seems to be laughing at your misfortune.
Bad news of the day: the left channel of my earbuds has cut out entirely. This is extremely unfortunate. I feel like I’m the only person in the entire world who has this much trouble with earbuds. Maybe there’s something wrong with my ears. My ears break earbuds. Lame.
Anyway, here I am, waiting for my distillations to run and dreading having to run a column tomorrow for the products of the cleavage reaction – because that’s inevitably what is going to happen. It is going to make me fully appreciate flash filtration, I’m sure of that. There is no WAY I am doing a gravity column. I will think on my feet. I will make something happen. I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I’ll do it.
I just keep reminding myself that the experience of having to improvise (only to a degree, you understand) and of being relatively unsupervised in the lab is going to have really awesome aftereffects down the road, because I keep getting ridiculously stressed out. I think, instead of stressing, I’m just going to not think about it. That tends to work pretty well for me. Nonconfrontationalism ought to be my middle name, but it’s much too long, and besides, Microsoft Word is protesting its status as a valid word.
Hahahaha!! I just found a substance in Aldrich that costs more than platinum oxide: 2’,3’-dideoxyinosine, which is a nucleotide antagonist and just so happens to cost $31 for ONE MILLIGRAM. How do you even package one mg? Awesome. I want a copy of this book.
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