You Are an ISTJ (Introvert, Sensor, Thinker, Judger)

ISTJs represent between 11 and 14% of the U.S. population

Meticulous and thorough, ISTJs are known for their exceptional ability to notice and remember details and facts with extreme accuracy. With ISTJs, their word is their bond and they are often described as serious, focused, down-to-earth and supremely reliable people who offer a consistently realistic and practical perspective. Characteristically quiet and hardworking, ISTJs have great practical judgment and can cite accurate evidence to support their views and apply their past experience to their present decisions.

ISTJs typically communicate in a style that is clear, direct, and businesslike. They highly value common sense and knowledge from first-hand experience, and find comfort in their daily routine and familiar ways of doing things.

Interesting. It's kind of odd that the questions I answered for this result were very difficult for me. Instead of trying to analyze my personality, the quiz (or whatever it was) actually presented me with each category, gave me some attributes of each, and said "pick one." I wasn't particularly confident for any of them, because I saw my characteristics spread across both columns. I tried to pick the column that outweighed the other.

It's interesting, I guess. I actually wonder more than a little bit about whether or not I'm an introvert. One of the things that always sways me to the introvert side is a statement something like this: "If you've spent two or three hours socializing with people, you like to be able to be alone for a while and recharge your batteries." I think this kind of defines me. I like people. I like to be around people I'm familiar with. I like to develop comfortable relationships and I like to talk to people.

At the end of the day, though, I'm all exhausted and I just want to sit around and do nothing. Sometimes sitting around and doing nothing is actually all it's cracked up to be (or possibly more than that, depending on what it's all cracked up to be).

We have apple-scented hand soap in the bathroom right now. I like that we just reuse the old hand soap dispensers; it's labeled lavender or milk-and-honey or something, and currently the dispenser is filled with lime green soap. It's very pretty - and obviously not lavender or milk-and-honey. I like the way it smells.

Schubert sleeps like it's his job, I'm telling you. He's passed out on the ground just outside my room, but if I called his name he'd whip his little head up, look at me, somehow convey his immense distaste for my disruption of his nap, and put his head back down with a little sigh. Every time I see him as I'm walking around the house, I say hi to him. "Hey, boo," usually.

So I finished my synthesis. I should feel relieved, but I'm mostly freaking out about it. I mailed the sample yesterday like FX told me to and I'm very nervous about that tiny little vial making it all the way to North Carolina. I brought him the tracking number - the guy at the Physical Plant printed out the label for me - and he looked at it and said, "It didn't ship overnight? Why not?" and looked at me over the top of his glasses.

I fear disappointing other people like it's my job, and that look was like a fist to my stomach. Sucking in a breath, I looked at him and asked, "You wanted it sent overnight?"

"It doesn't matter now. It's already been shipped," he said, and turned away - into his office - with the label in his hand. I'm sure by this point I had gone through the full range of shades between white and bright red and I'm not sure which end I started on and which I ended on, but by the time I re-entered the lab, Adam looked at me and said, "What, the boss wasn't in his office?"

"Yeah," I said faintly, "He was."

"Oh," said Adam, "You looked like you hadn't been able to find him."

Actually, I'm sure I still looked rather shell-shocked at this point and I was beating myself up for not having told the guy to ship it overnight. I looked at Adam and wound up telling him what had just transpired. "But he never TOLD me to ship it overnight," I said, "I didn't know!" Which was true. I spent a summer working at Sonnet, and I took care of all of the shipping there - we never shipped overnight/express unless we had to because it was so much more expensive.

"Well," said Adam, "It's just North Carolina, right?"

"Yeah," I said, miserably.

"It'll be there in two days. Maybe it'll get there tomorrow. It's not like you were shipping it overseas."

This made me feel mildly better, and I headed over to the other side of the lab to attack the cleaning again, fueled by my red-hot desire to make FX see that I was competent. In retrospect, this was, of course, wholly unnecessary, but there's no reasoning with me when I think I've messed up.

FX came back through the lab later; I think he actually knew that I was upset with myself. He looked at the lab, with its electrical devices all put into cupboards, its chemicals squirreled away into drawers and refrigerators, its naked benchtops and its fume hoods still damp where I had scrubbed away eighteen years of gunk with a 10"x4" scrubbie and glass cleaner, and he said, "Well. It looks fantastic."

Later, I was able to laugh at this ("fantastic like Pad Thai!") but at the moment I was suffused with this incredible, glowing relief that was screaming "HE DOESN'T HATE ME!"

I'm so insecure sometimes.

As I was packing up to leave (there's nothing more for me to do in that lab, really, so I was cleaning up my desk and things), Adam had come over and was perched on the desk opposite, watching. We had some conversation about what he was going to do without me, and then I made some throwaway comment about how it felt really sad to be taking my spec book home.

"Just leave it, then," said Adam. "It's YOUR desk."

"But I can't," I said, "Because what about Kun?" (That's pronounced "Quinn", apparently... this led to a great deal of confusion between first Adam and me and then between Justine and me.)

Adam wrinkled up his whole face and then laughed. "Kun is NOT going to have this desk. He's gonna be with me. SOMEBODY'S gonna have to babysit him."

This was another of those things that I felt great relief after hearing. I guess you could say it was a weird day.

Yesterday I wore my red flats. I wore them for a sort of stupid reason, and I regretted it enormously at about 2:30, when my feet were really hurting. I also managed to hook one (the left one) on a garbage can WHILE talking to FX, which is why I can't walk and talk at the same time.

I trip-hopped, managing both to stay upright AND to extract the bar from the garbage can from my shoe while on one foot. Then I looked at FX, there was an awkward silence that maybe spanned two seconds, and I said, "Well, darn." And laughed. It diffused the situation (although he wouldn't have said anything anyway - it's sort of an unwritten code between us, because I didn't say anything when he whacked the back of his head on the hood a few months ago).

Anyway, my feet are still sore. Not because of the trash can. Because of the shoes.

It's weird that finally today I feel like I can write. I feel like I've had terrible writer's block for ages, and I've wanted to get this stuff down for a while.

On Tuesday, when we got the OFFICIAL-official final NMR, FX had Dave pull up the extracted spectrum against the synthetic (mine). "Well, look at that, Shannon!" he sort of trumpeted. I've been trying to figure out why this was so jarring to me. I think it's because he doesn't use my name unless we're introducing ourselves.

You know, like "Hi, Shannon, how are you?"

Anyway, yeah.

I filtered out my P-2-nickel catalyst by running that solution through filter-aid in a pipette... later on, I looked at it and the black nickel-boride-whatever it is (I should know! I should know! I wrote a paper on it for Dr. D!) looked like it had actually sort of melted itself to the filter-aid.

After a few moments of fascination, I threw it away. I threw away a lot of stuff yesterday. A LOT OF STUFF. I also cleaned up the shelves above the sink, because something that had been chock-full of some salt had exploded and there were little salt-sculptures of chalk-white crystals all over the shelf. There was also a salt-cicle, which I pointed out before dropping it in the sink, where it dissolved in the running water and disappeared down the drain.

There was broken glass in that drain. I think that broken glass is what caused the little cuts in my fingers. They almost look like paper cuts, or like I slipped with a razor blade while stripping labels off bottles. Nevertheless, they don't hurt, they're just annoying and I probably jabbed my fingers into the glass while I was trying to get something or other to go down the sink. I cleaned it out, though, eventually.

My life is so weird, I swear. Actually, it's not that weird and it's even a little bit comfortable - except that my fingernails are getting way too long. But since they aren't actually flaking or chipping (a miracle!) and I haven't played piano in three years,I kind of like to let them grow. I'll let them go until my hands look alien to me and then I'll shop them down to a comfortable length, where I can type with the pads of my fingers and not worry about the clicking of my fingernails on the keys.

Real fingernails should NEVER feel like fake fingernails.

I feel that this entry has been particularly apropos, because I actually talked about things that happened in the lab (even if they didn't happen to actually be CHEMISTRY-chemistry, if you know what I mean).

Tonight I feel sad. I'm not sure why, exactly, I feel sad. I could understand if I was just stressed (I'm that, too), but I'm sad.

Tonight we had roasted chicken and tabouleh and hummus and sweet potatoes and brown rice for dinner. I made the tabouleh. It wasn't difficult: it comes with directions on the box, and Mom was in the kitchen the whole time making other portions of the meal. And I was sitting there at dinner, thinking to myself about how tabouleh tastes like summer (it's the cucumbers, I think, and the lemon), and then I just thought about how healthy the meal was and I felt quite satisfied with myself.

I could live off of tabouleh. For a while, anyway, until I got sick of it and wondered what on earth I was thinking when I decided I could live off of it.

I think I'm sad because I'm seeing the end and suddenly I'm thinking about all of the things that I have to do before the end gets here, and I'm totally overwhelmed. And when I get overwhelmed like this, I kind of just want to curl up into a ball and cry and maybe cease to exist, just a little bit.

I'm terrified of my own future.