Two Frustrating Days

I decided, partially at the behest of my mother, to copy-and-paste these two lovely anecdotes here for my own remembrance. They were both written to Justine, so either I really love telling her stories and she brings out the writer in me, or she's a great sounding board for complaining. Either/or, I suppose, and probably both.

The first is my retelling of my trip back to Evanston after my trip home for the weekend.

Oh man. The trip back was a nightmare. Let me see if I can describe it and do it justice.

On the way to the airport, I realize that I have left my cell phone charger at home. This is the prerequisite to the building hysteria.

So I get to the airport, and I've figured out that I'm going to take the bus back to Evanston, and the flight gets in at 7:55pm Evanston time, and I'll wait around for a while and then catch the 9:11 shuttle, because it runs fairly irregularly on Sunday nights. And I make it through security - the guy there, not too bad looking either, hands my my license back and goes "6'1"? Nice." - and find my gate and sit down to find that my flight is leaving at 7:45, not 6:55 as advertised. (I still don't know why there were so many delays. As far as I can tell, the weather was not that bad.)

So I figure, hey, this is okay, I can roll with this because it just puts me at O'Hare closer to when my bus is scheduled to leave. Fair enough. I get on the plane, we all settle in, and the flight attendant (sort of older but not old, and quite bitter and jaded, which ordinarily would have amused and fascinated me but I found it grating because I was getting stressed) informs us that we can't leave for another 15 or 20 minutes because of weather and traffic into O'Hare.

Okay, so I'm going to miss the 9:11 bus. That's okay, there's one at 9:41. I'll just take that one, I'll be back in Evanston by 10:45, I can shower and go to bed and be ready to face research on Monday morning.

So we land at O'Hare, and the flight attendant informs us that it's going to be another 20 minutes before we can get off of the plane, because there's no open gate for us. At this point, I'm getting really antsy; my legs are starting to hurt and I'm getting that sort of tight contained feeling where I just want to punch the window out and jump onto the tarmac. But I don't, because I have exceptional self-control. Or maybe I just don't want to get arrested.

Finally she informs us that there is a gate open for us; G12. Now the thing you have to understand about O'Hare is that it's huge, so all domestic American Airlines flights go to this one terminal. We start taxi-ing to our gate and I realize we are at a completely different terminal. Now, maybe I'm unreasonable, but I'd just like to know why we couldn't have moved into position before this, so we could quickly maneuver into position at our gate, since obviously we couldn't possibly be at a different terminal.

So she starts apologizing for people who are missing their connections because by the time we get to our gate it's 9:35pm and we were supposed to be there at 7:55pm. Only she sounds pretty insincere and starts droning on about how you should go talk to the people at the gate blah blah blah, which everyone knows and no one is appreciating her "helpful hints". And yes, it's not her fault, but sometimes you just ought to keep your head down.

I get off the plane and it's 9:38pm and by this point I'm frustrated and angry and sort of near tears, so I keep closing my eyes and telling myself to stop being a baby about it, and I have to pee so bad I'm about ready to burst and I'm not going to make the bus anyway because I have to take the shuttle to the bus stop, which will take five minutes or so. So I take care of business and try to figure out what to do.

Well, I can take the bus, but the next bus doesn't come until 10:56, and I don't want to wait around for another hour. I'd rather be moving, so I decide to take CTA (the train) because even though it will take just as long, at least I won't have the dead time. This is a Very Bad Decision.

So I hop on the blue line, having paid my fare, and I ride it down to transfer to the red line, and once on the red line I can take the purple line right up to Evanston, walk a block and a half and be back at my dorm room. At this point I am feeling a little on edge because I have never taken the blue line before, but I figure I have a map and there are lots of helpful posters on the trains, so I'll be just fine. Right? So I figure out that I can go from the blue line to the red line at Jackson; I hop off at Jackson and walk across to the red line, where I set my stuff down and get ready to hop on the first red line that comes through. By this point, it's about 10:35 or 10:40, and I'm feeling okay.

Some random guy - a black man in a uniform that says UHAUL Spokesperson on it - starts talking to me, and I'm pretty relaxed, pretty calm, because I've done red to purple before and it's a piece of cake. So I'm carrying on a bizarre conversation with him because he just won't stop talking, but I figure, hey, I'll just ditch him when I get on the train and it'll be fine. Ya get some crazies. He was pretty harmless I guess.

So we're standing there, and standing there, and it gets to be about 11:00pm, which is just too long to have to wait for the red line, which is supposed to run every 8-10 minutes. It's a 24 hour line. This voice comes on the loudspeaker and informs us that the red line is not running underground right now, and we will have to go up to Wabash and Adams to catch it (a station that does not usually have the red line running through it). So my new BFF informs me (quite needlessly) that we have to go up to Wabash, so I follow the people to this stop.

We get up there, and the CTA attendant lets us in for free because the transfer should have been free, and we head up to catch the red line. At this point, I'm feeling pretty tired and incredibly annoyed, but things are going to be fine, right? So we stand up there and watch as not one, not two, but THREE red lines go south (the wrong direction) while we see three or four brown lines and three green lines, but no red lines. And by this time I'm really frustrated and I don't know what's going on, and I'm texting my mother, having given up on saving my phone's battery because maybe this is an emergency. I also texted Dessi, because I was going to stop in and say hi to her when I got back to the dorm.

My mother calls the customer service line for CTA; Dessi texts me the number of a cab service. I have no cash. My mother calls me and informs me that red line service has been restored to Jackson, of which no one saw fit to inform us. It is midnight. The last purple line train leaves Howard for Evanston at 1:20am and at this point, I am really starting to panic. I'm taking deep breaths and closing my eyes and trying my very hardest not to start crying because if I cry, it's all over. But I don't even know where in Chicago I am, although I do have a map, and it's midnight and I'm downtown and I might get stranded and I have no idea what to do.

I tell my traveling companions (which include my BFF) of this development, and we head down to talk to the CTA assistant. My BFF starts yelling at her, and she looks at us like we're idiots and tells us no, it hasn't even been close to an hour since they rerouted the red line (not true) and that two northbound red lines have come through the station (also VERY not true). So she tells us to go back up and catch the brown line and take it to the red line.

Now I'm seriously starting to panic because the brown line isn't coming and I don't know if I should go back to Jackson and try to just catch the red line and besides, I'm not even sure I know how to get back to Jackson and heck if I'm going my myself but I don't want to go with my BFF either so this is awkward. And all the while, I'm texting my mother and I'm texing Dessi, and I'm panicking and my BFF is creepily looking over and going "you textin' your people to let 'em know? you textin' your friends?" and I keep saying "yes, yes" because I want him to know that if ANYTHING happens people will know where I was last.

So we hop on the next brown line that FINALLY comes through, and hop off to transfer to the red line. At this point, I look at this sort of grad student looking kid who was waiting with us before, and he looks at me and then gets up and off the train, saying "You want the red line? Yeah, we can get it here. You from out of town?" but he was safe, unlike my crazy, insane BFF who is dancing around going "come on! over here!" Finally my new acquaintance goes "we can get on HERE too," yelling across the street to him, and we headed down, underground, to wait for the red line.

So it's about 12:15 and it takes 45 minutes to get from the red line to the purple line, and there's no red line and I'm freaking out, like massively freaking out, wringing my hands and everything. The new kid looks at me and goes "don't worry, I think you'll be fine. worst case scenario, if you miss the purple line, just find someone at the CTA and make them pay for a cab. as long as it comes in the next 10 minutes or so, though, you'll be fine." My BFF goes, "I'll show her, I'm riding that way anyway, I'm going to Wilson" and I looked at the new kid and he goes "I'm going to Morse. it's fine. she's going to Howard, that's two stops away.

When the red line finally comes, I have been texting Dessi about where I am, and she's got Paola with her and they're trying to figure out where in Chicago I am. She calls right when it arrives, because she's arranging for Kelsey to come and pick me up if I'm totally lost, and I just get on the red line and turn my phone off, letting her and my mother know that I'm on the red line now so at least I'll know where I am shortly.

Now I'm totally cut off from everyone. My phone has a dying battery; my traveling companions are pretty sketchy, and the train is full of odd characters. I slip into a seat and fall back into the pattern of closing my eyes to try not to cry, biting my lip, praying, the whole nine yards. Finally, the train starts to clear out and we're getting close. Just as we get to Morse, I turn my phone on and it's 1:03am; I'm going to make it. I'm going to be okay.

My buddy gets up, looks at me, informs me that I'm going to make it with time to spare, and I thanked God that I had found someone who was sane and intelligent and nice. I get off at Howard, have to walk under and up onto the other side of the station... and the last purple line of the night pulls in. I hop into a car, hoping it's empty, and it's not - there's one other person - but I just sit where I can be alone and sort of huddle in my hoodie with my backpack and my laptop, my credit cards and driver's license and everything I didn't want to lose around me. I text my parents and I text Dessi to let them know that I'm going to make it back okay.

And that is when I pull my hood over my head and finally, even though I know everything is fine, I let myself cry. And I sobbed basically until I got to my stop. I was quiet about it, but I'm pretty sure that the girl in the car knew I was crying. Whatever, she probably assumed I was nuts which is fine by me. I got off at my stop, wiping my eyes on my sleeve, and headed down to the road.

And now it's dark. It's 1:30am. I have no idea which way to walk, but I can't give up now, so I decide to turn right and I watch the signs. Foster and Sherman... okay, familiar names... Foster and Orrington. Bingo. My dorm is on this intersection. So I walk further, totally drained, totally exhausted, and run into a couple of girls from the other REU (the materials science one). One actually recognizes me, so I talk to her for just long enough to not seem rude begging off (after all, it IS 1:30am) and then run upstairs.

I can't even tell you how relieved I was to stick my key into my lock and open up my dorm room. It was incredible. I grabbed a bottle of water out of my fridge and started to guzzle it down, and then headed over to let Dessi know I was back. I knocked on her door, she opened it and looked really startled for a minute, and then gave me a huge hug. Then, of course, I had to be polite again so I went into her room and sat on her bed, barely conscious, as she gave me her weekend in blow-by-blow detail. Finally, at 2:00am, I told her I was going to go shower and go to bed. Which I did.

And waking up this morning was the hardest thing I've ever done.

The end!



And the second, slightly less epic retelling of my trip to Argonne National Laboratory, with special emphasis on the bus ride. For posterity!

OH MAN. so we had to take this field trip type thing to Argonne National Lab (which is a Very Big Deal, I guess, and having that around for grad school would be pretty sweet). we had to be there at 8am, which ended up being really stupid because we didn't even leave until 8:30 because someone was late. grrr >:(

so we're there, and it's 8:30, and this bus with reclining seats is pulling onto the road and I'm all optimistic like "this won't be so bad and a nice bus like this has got to have air conditioning! it'll cool off!" okay. no, actually, it won't. so the day was like 99 with a heat index of 103, and horrendously sunny and the sun is pouring in through the huge windows and we can only open thin windows at the top, not the huge main windows, and Dessi looks at me and says "hey, is this blowing HOT air at our feet?"

why yes, yes it was. so we attempted to sleep while sweat is dripping down EVERYTHING and we're all miserable and sort of half-comatose because it's the only way to survive and we finally get there and step out into the 99 degree day, and it FEELS COOL. thank goodness cutting edge government funded research labs are air conditioned.

the lab itself is HUGE, like fifty buildings, and we of course walked into the Nanoscale Materials Center or whatever it was because, you know, nano, and had some tour guide who knew nothing at all about science.

tour guide: "and in this room, we have a U-V-V-I-S machine. that stands for ultraviolet ... um ..."

VISIBLE. the Vis is NOT an acronym. BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

although we got to see their particle accelerator which generates x-rays, which is pretty cool and apparently one of three in the world (there's one in Germany or France or something, and one in Japan). well, not really see it so much as see the structures that house it.

and then they fed us. and we got back onto the bus, which still had no air-conditioning, and we wilted and melted all the way back and I played hangman with Vic and this kid stood up at one point and the ENTIRE BACK of his shirt was soaked with sweat, I kid you not. TERRIBLE.

(shorter because of its nature: a facebook post rather than an email. still, not too shabby if I do say so myself, but I have an unfortunate habit on facebook: I don't capitalize anything but proper nouns.)

I don't remember when I wrote this. Sometime last week, possibly. In any case, I want to close the document on my computer, so here we are:

Things I can’t wait to be able to do again:
+ drive
+ sing
+ make cookies
+ eat at home

So I am just sitting around, checking on my oxidation every once in a while. It has now been 90 minutes, which means that I am halfway there IF the purple color remains until the end. Needless to say I’m pretty terrified that I’ll go check on it and it will be brown, and I’ll have to add more permanganate and start the whole three hour incubationary period thing again. At least the temperature’s been controlled.

I have found that I am not a huge fan of peer review. I think part of this is that I do not trust my peers to do an adequate job of reviewing my work. Maybe this is a bad attitude, but I can't help but think that these people have never written scientific papers before. I'll admit, though, that since I did only take about three hours to write my lit review, it is not perfect. It's satisfactory.

The problem is that my research focus is primarily the synthesis of the MOF, but the end game is the MOF is to be used for xenon-krypton separation. So I essentially have two separate but intertwined goals, and it makes the lit review a bit difficult. I outlined it and wrote it in, bring together the aspects of MOFs, narrowing to gas separations and then breaking off for a page and a half or so on noble gas separations, then back to my specific focus.

I’m trying to figure out how to retool the very beginning of the paper to give it a better feel for the entire point without collapsing the structure of my paper, which stands up quite well on its own. It has direction; I just didn’t explicitly state the direction in my first paragraph. I should probably try to do that, but instead I am going to print out my paper and take it to the workshop this afternoon.

Hooray, I figured out how to print! Here in lab! Fo’ free! I love free printing. I love free anything. One becomes hypersensitive about free stuff when one’s money is flowing out from one’s bank account like water. Too bad I am SERIOUSLY craving pizza tonight. Mmmm. Pizza. Hopefully after this seminar I have in 25 minutes I can get an NMR, finish some stuff up and go get some food.

This is the problem with spending money. I only spend it on food, but I love food too much to give it up.

Hahahaha you know what’s bad? When you come back to your computer because you have a couple of minutes to kill while something or other is going on, and your browser consists of two pages of Bejeweled Blitz. It’s an addiction. And the funny thing is that it’s really what I do when I have to kill time, because there’s only so many times I can check my email when I’m not getting any new mail.

Currently I am filtering some of my oxidation product(s). It is actually pretty funny. For some reason, the crystals are sort of gloopy and I can build little towers out of them on the sintered glass, and then I have to wait for some of the water to be sucked out (the tower shrinks) and then I add some more and make the little hill into a mountain. It’s way more fun than yesterday, when I accidentally covered the entire surface of the funnel and had to wait half an hour for two milliliters to drain through the now clogged frit.

My stuff is drying. Ugh, the days are so long when I have nothing to do. I don’t even know what I hope the NMR says. Well, I hope the NMR says COMPLETE OXIDATION but as I know that that won’t be the case, I should prep myself for disappointment and lots more permanganate.

Tonight I really feel like going to Flat Top Grill. We went there the very first night that we went out to eat. It’s build-it-yourself stir fry and I am so excited, but it might rain in which case I am not quite so excited, but I still want stir fry. I am planning on getting the unlimited option, not because I plan to eat five bowls of stir fry but because I will probably be able to eat at least two and if I can eat two, it’s only an additional two or three dollars for the unlimited option. It would be a really good place for David. He could eat a lot, and being able to make it himself would make him one happy camper.

Seriously, I need to stop thinking about food when I’m at work. It’s not a good habit, because then I start to get hungry and then I get miserable. Although let’s face it: I only have three hours left today and I am pretty psyched to… well, to do nothing, I guess.

The good news? My Suzuki coupling, even with deadish (orange rather than yellow) catalyst, was 91.4% yield. I can’t remember the last time I did something with a yield that high. It makes me feel vaguely competent. NMR confirms that I did a good thing.

The bad news? We have no idea which oxidation conditions to use. Do you know how tedious it is to search the literature for methods of oxidizing aromatic methyls to carboxylic acids? Pretty darn tedious. And there are a lot of ridiculous methods out there.

So I have a long oxidation prep to look forward to. Ordinarily I really would be looking forward to the prospect of having something simmering away for hours, affording m the excuse of passive productivity. However, life does not always work that way, and this program insists on pulling me out of my research to go to a number of seminars: writing, communication, field trips to Argonne…

I dunno. I need an attitude check about things in the program that are not straight research.

I have actually finished my literature review. It is not as long or as complete as I might like it to be, but it is eight pages of MOF-y goodness and I am slowly picking my way through the rest of the articles that I downloaded to my “potentials for lit review” folder. I am developing an extensive folder system in the Northwestern sector of my documents.

If only real-life organization was as simple as digital organization. I would be set.

Last night we went out for coffee and dessert. Because we were a party of five and neglected to ask for separate checks, we were assigned a gratuity, which was actually pretty annoying. Serves me right for forgetting. Also, that was some EXPENSIVE coffee and dessert. Forget this, from now on it is ONE or the OTHER. That will teach me to be indulgent.

I have this fear, not that I’m gaining weight, exactly, but that I’m gaining pudge underneath my chin. Bahahaha it’s pretty ridiculous actually because I have always feared that particular portion of my body for no real discernable reason. I think I will skip going out for dinner tonight. I will have almonds and carrots and broccoli and milk and orange juice, and maybe a granola bar, and I will embrace my hunger pains and also the joy of not spending money.

I can’t wait for more catalyst to come in. It’s always very heartening to have a reaction that works as beautifully as this one did. Let’s do it again! AND PUMP IT UP. TWICE THE SCALE, BB. 20 TIMES THE SCALE OF THE ORIGINAL.

I could get used to bucket chemistry. The chemistry itself is less frustrating. The workup is an enormous pain, but you can’t win ‘em all. The REALLY wonderful news is that I can actually watch tv tonight because I finished my lit review. Gotta reward myself, and I’ve had altogether too much dessert lately, so I think I’mma cut back a little.

Anyway we’re having a mini peer review session tonight, coordinated by Vic. I think it’s a good idea. I also think it’s a LITTLE silly because if we have any control over who reviews our papers in the seminar tomorrow, we’re gonna be handing them to each other rather than to people we don’t know.

I’m ready to see some familiar faces this coming weekend. I mean, the faces here are familiar now, but every once in a while I just want to be by myself because this kind of intense enthusiasm for EVERYTHING (often faux, I’m afraid) is getting to me and sometimes I want to be alone but I don’t want to alienate myself. I just have to make it another five and a half weeks. It would be nice to make some MOFs before I leave. That’s all I really want; to complete the synthesis and leave behind a nice pile of that baby.

I need to repaint my toenails. And I need to do that BEFORE leaving because there is no way I’m getting my nail polish stuff home on the plane. I guess they’re not a big fan of acetone. Something about flammable and also bombs, I hear.

I’ll tell you what’s frustrating: what’s frustrating is that the internet connection in the dorm is perfect for everything I need except Skype, and for some reason when I’m on Skype the internet just does not want my Skype connection to be successful. Whateva.

Plans? Plans for what? The rest of my life? Tonight? This weekend?

I know what I’m doing tonight and what I’m doing this weekend, not so much what I’m doing with the rest of my life. And now I’m sitting here, taking careful notes so that my lit review becomes a matter of piecing together facts that I’ve already written down instead of a whole entire project of a paper. I’ve learned to write in steps.

I keep moving my product in and out of the freezer. It’s fascinating me, because I move it in and it crystallizes, out and it melts. The freezing point of toluene is something ridiculous like -97°C, and I know the freezer is not that cold because I can touch the vials that I am pulling out of it with my bare hands, so it’s not toluene. Hexanes don’t freeze either, so it’s not hexanes. My product shows up beautifully by TLC… so why won’t it stay crystallized?

When I see Brad again, I’ll pose the question. $10 says we just go get an NMR and see what’s up.

Earlier, I sneezed quite violently. It felt sort of good when the aftershocks had worn off. Right now I am eating my granola bar. I have learned a trick to eating. If I let myself get as hungry as I can stand while knowing I have food with me, when I finally eat the food it will taste exceptionally delicious. Hence I am eating the BEST GRANOLA BAR OF MY WHOLE ENTIRE LIFE.

I just ate a chunk of MK’s sourdough bread. It was very nice, and appropriately sour. I had sourdough at the Cheesecake Factory on Saturday night (free bread, hooray!) and also rye-with-oats. Both were delicious, but the sourdough was not particularly sour.

I’m thirsty.

Currently I’m rotavapping as much DCM as possible off of my product. Then we’ll put it on a Schlenk line overnight, which means that at some point I will be totally free to sit down and concentrate on my paper. And, of course, when I have that freedom I will certainly not be eager to make use of it. I’m contrary (how does my garden grow?).

Sometimes when I’m writing, I look back at what I wrote and it doesn’t really feel like me who wrote it. I like to say that I write the way I speak but I don’t. I think I write the way I think, so to a lesser extent I write the way I speak. If that makes sense. It feels so weird to think that the summer is halfway over (at least). I feel like I’m in stasis, living here in a dormitory in Evanston, doing my own laundry, spending my own money, occasionally keeping my room clean and getting huge monthly checks (thanks, NSF!).

I have a lot to say, but when I go to say it, it’s just not there. I finally got warm after bundling up in my green ESF hoodie and sitting in my office with my hands resting on my warm laptop. It is freezing in here, and way colder in actual lab. I should go check on my rotavapping material. I have a bit of rotavapping phobia: I’m afraid it’s going to bump or evaporate while I’m gone, even though Omar has informed me that he would be very surprised if the product boiled over about 230°C.

I don’t recall that I was this cautious about boiling points when I worked for FX. I’m beginning to think that I wasn’t, because as an organic chemist I had a fairly good idea of how much I could heat something. I didn’t have this sort of mystical fear of all things organic (they blow away like dust in the wind!).

Oh man oh man oh man! It is 5:17. That means that I can leave now, if I want to. I want to. I should make sure that my product is supposed to stay on the Schlenk line tonight, and then I’m out of here. To write my paper. I’ll probably actually write most of it tonight, unlike the times I said I’d do it over the weekend and didn’t. Deadlines are the best motivation, but they must be looming to be effective.

Out!