2010 feels old and worn in. Comfortable.

I can remember New Years where I have moved around slowly, getting used to the feel and the taste of the new year, because it actually is different. There's something palpable about the new year - the fresh slate, the filed past, and the vast expanse of 365 days between now and the next benchmark.

New Year's Eve is easily my least favorite holiday. I believe I was saying something to that effect this morning. I don't mind hanging out with some people on New Year's Eve. I really don't. It's nice to be with people you love. But at the end of the day (literally), when that giant disco ball comes to rest on the four numbers that will define the next year, I don't want to be with anyone but family.

I like the way my family does New Year's Eve. We never have parties and rarely go to parties and at the parties we do attend, we leave before midnight. We usually make something up - dip for chips, occasionally those mini hot dogs (which, ick?), maybe leftover Christmas cookies.

We sit on the couch around 11:55 and flip between the channels covering Times Square, because Ryan Seacrest is lame and the performers are less than stellar, and we watch, without much excitement, the demise of that ball. We watch the confetti, we watch all of the people wildly kissing, and we look at each other and confirm that we are all thankful that we are not, in fact, at Times Square, and we reaffirm that we do not, in fact, ever want to be at Times Square on New Year's Eve.

Then we have some sparkling grape juice or whatever Wegmans had, we have it in the crystal goblets - is goblet quite the right term? They're not wineglasses, they're not the right shape, but they have stems and everything - and everyone clinks glasses with everyone else and drinks.

Then we go to bed. There is no real celebration, just an acknowledgment that yes, more time has passed, and yes, we're aware of it. It sort of makes me feel for all those other midnights that we don't pay any attention to... Christmas night, for instance, when the holiday is officially over but no one bothers to notice. Or Christmas Eve and its seamless transition into Christmas.

Most of all, though, imminent change, which comes with passing time, is not my favorite and I have never loved the holiday dedicated to passing time. Why wish it away? I'm 21 years old. I'm not in a hurry to be any older.

I have now made hummus twice. It's not really bona fide hummus, but it tastes like summer to me (I know, I know, why make it in the winter then? Well, I'll tell you - hummus always appeals to me), probably because of the copious lemon we use. The first time, I was zesting the lemon and managed to zest my left pinky.

I think of it every time I brush a finger over the divot in my fingernail. I yelped and took a look at it immediately, while Mom said, "don't get any blood in the hummus" quite calmly. There wasn't much blood, and I did make sure that none of my skin was in the hummus either, but I suppose I can't make that promise about my fingernail. A little keratin never hurt anyone, I guess.

Been catching up on television. Sports Night is excellent - it's so good! - but I am tired of Dana's heart being constantly broken. I just don't understand! I thought I might try to finish up Lost before the end of break, just to have those loose ends tied up. Even though I'm not really that invested, for some reason I cannot bring myself to read about the completion of the series (and Wikipedia has tempted. It tempts! It tempts!).

Watched Inception last night - Jon wanted it, and Laura bought it for him for Christmas. Just watched Despicable Me, and it was just as adorable as I'd heard. Plus the giggling of the minions was certainly contagious.

Mmm-mmm. I feel like I had more to say, but it turns out I don't, so I guess I'm out.

Okay okay okay I cannot resist.

Soundtrack of the next couple of days:

+ the song from the last entry (somewhat colloquially known as We Are Young)
+ Start Me Up
+ Be Good to Yourself

I am officially done with the semester!! I am going in on Monday to hand in my take-home exam and probably to start organizing Dave's life for him, or at least to fill out the paperwork so that I can be paid for organizing Dave's life for him. And the rest of the time?

SPORTS NIGHT. I AM SO EXCITED YOU HAVE NO IDEA. I love Felicity Huffman.

The end.

WE ARE FREE

WE COULD RULE THE WORLD
ON A SILVER PLATTER
FROM THE WRONG TO THE RED LIGHT
TO THE OPEN STREAM
WE COULD CRASH AND BURN
WE COULD MAKE IT BETTER
TURN IT UPSIDE DOWN
JUST YOU AND ME
WE ARE THE DREAM
NO OTHER WAY TO BE

I COULD CHANGE THE WORLD
I COULD MAKE IT BETTER
KICK IT UP AND DOWN
TAKE A CHANCE ON ME
WHEN YOU FAKE A SMILE
AND YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER
GONNA PUT IT DOWN
WHIP IT AT YOUR FEET
NO BRIDGE TO BURN
NOWHERE TO TURN FOR ME

WHAT DO THEY KNOW ABOUT US?
ARE THEY THINKING OF SOMEBODY ELSE?
ARE THEY WONDERING WHAT WE MIGHT BE?
ARE THEY THINKING OF YOU OR OF ME?

Yep. That's about all I got today.

Sara's my girl.

there'll be girls across the nation that'll eat this up
babe, I know that it's your soul but could you bottle it up?

I am aiming to be somebody that somebody trusts
with a delicate soul I don't claim to know much
except soon as you start to make room for the parts
that aren't you it gets harder to bloom
in a garden of love

started as a flicker
meant to be a flame
skin has gotten thicker
but it burns the same
still a baby in the cradle
gotta take my first fall
baby's gettin' next to nowhere
with her back against the wall
meant to make me happy
made me sad
wanna make it better
better so bad
save your resolutions
for your never new year
there is only one solution
I could see here

head under water
and you tell me
to breathe easy for a while

made room for me
but it's too soon to see
if I'm happy in your hands
I'm unusually hard to hold onto
blank stares at blank pages
no easy way to say this
you mean well but
you make this hard on me

I like snow.

Progress. It is at a snail's pace, but it is progress nonetheless.

I am really regretting taking that book about the Viscoelasticity of Polymers back to the library. I could really use it right about now for this take-home exam. Maybe if DJ has to go in tomorrow, I could have him pick it up for me.

I need something diverting to do. The problem is that I can't really afford to be diverted right now! I should divert myself with the things that I cannot be diverted from -- that would be killing two birds with one stone.

It's a shame that things don't always conform to the way I think they ought to be.

one foot boy

Miami 2017. I don’t know why I like that song so much. I like the intro. I like the melody. I’m pretty sure it’s basically about the end of the world (or maybe it’s the fall of the United States), or something. But I like it, and right now I’m in the mood.

I feel very burned out. I have a lot of work that I really do need to do, and I just need to take a break. I just need a break. I just need some time off with some mindless tv, or some time to surf facebook aimlessly, or some time to sleep all day and not feel guilty about it.

I am going to finish this week. I am going to finish this week. I AM GOING TO FINISH THIS WEEK.

I’m exhausted.

highway run
until the midnight sun
wheels go 'round and 'round
in my mind

Maybe I should find my handouts to work on some labs. Or maybe I should work on my take-home exam from polymer. I have to do something, but I just want to go to bed.

Maybe I’ll go to bed. I might not be very productive if I stay up anyway, and I heard that you can count any sleep you get before midnight as four times as much as the sleep you get after midnight. That would mean I could get... well, actually, technically I do not have to get up at all tomorrow, so I guess there’s no endpoint. But anyway, I could get plenty of sleep. Maybe I’ll do that.

There is always tomorrow to work on this.

Only there’s not always tomorrow, you know? Sometimes you can’t do it tomorrow. But I can do it tomorrow, as long as I really do it tomorrow, when tomorrow’s here. As long as I don’t keep waiting for tomorrow, batting away the nagging of my to-do list.

Heck, if I don’t get my work done, when will I ever do my Christmas shopping?

circus life
under the big top world
we all need the clowns
to make us smile

My fingernails are painted silver. I would take the polish off, but I feel like it’s insulating my fingers and keeping them warmer, so I guess I’ll leave it until I start chipping at it. Then I have to take it off or risk the destruction (again) of my fingernails.

I’m glad I don’t have to leave the house tomorrow.

I don’t know what I feel like doing. I feel like being done. That means I need to do! I can’t be done without doing, you see. And there’s so much to have after I’m done! Books and television and running around the mall with all of the crazy Christmas shoppers and yelling good-naturedly about the traffic (except when it stretches across the intersection – that’s not so good-natured).

my oh my
think my mind is gone
I’m left here wondering
was I crazy all along?
what do I do?

Bed, I think.

Miscellaneous Lyrics

Listened to these today... sometimes some lyrics stick out, you know?

I don't wanna talk
about the things we've gone through
though it's hurting me
now it's history
I played all my cards
and that's what you've done, too
nothing more to say
no more ace to play --
the winner takes it all
the loser standing small
beside the victory
that's her destiny


the things that scare us today
what if they happen someday?


I tried to need someone
like they needed me
well, I opened up my heart
but all I did was bleed


I never loved nobody fully
always one foot on the ground
and by protecting my heart truly
I got lost in the sounds
I hear in my mind

Occasionally I write a word and I don't like the way it looks, so I erase it and rewrite it. And then it's still not good, so I erase it again and rewrite it again. And I continue writing it out - at this point, it's a given that I am not going to be happy with the way I write the word - until eventually I am forced to give up on it because I don't want to fall behind in my notes for the class.

I have a lot of work to do and I am finally starting to make some progress.

I like the snow, even if it means I kick Emma into neutral when sliding down a hill to help with the braking.

My knees are really achy today, in the backs, almost like they're swollen. But I can't really tell if they are swollen or not, because I don't usually touch the backs of my knees. Anyway, I want them to stop aching.

Lalalalala band gaps and polymers and polymers and time/temperature properties and Silly Putty!

I wish I'd been able to get to bed earlier last night.


Lookit me, all TAing a lab practical. Huzzah.

Oh, Billy Joel.

sometimes I'm tired
sometimes I'm shot
sometimes I don't know how much more I got
maybe I'm headed over the hill
maybe I've set myself up for the kill
tell me, how much do you think you can take
until the heart in you's starting to break?
sometimes it feels like it will.



It's snowing. I am sad that my camera is no good and therefore it cannot be seen that the snow has not stopped, but is still falling slowly and quietly. Snow always seems to mute the world.

I guess it's supposed to last until Thursday. DJ and I will have to leave for school earlier than usual tomorrow.




Dear heart,

Please stop trying to rip your way through my chest (and also my tear ducts).

Yours,
Shannon



Schubaby sans cone. Aw, Schubaby.



The scene in the kitchen. Jman attempting to not be a silhouette, Mom pulling an apple pie from the oven.



Aw. Laura. I just discovered this on my camera.


So in conclusion, I don't think I could care any less about polymer at this point and it's a little bit worrying to me.

I finally had my emotional breakdown today. I've been waiting on it for quite some time. I've had a whole host of negative emotions and haven't been able to cry in about a month, maybe more, and at this point it was going to be fairly cataclysmic no matter when it happened.

So, yes.

I babysat tonight. It was good. The kids were perfectly manageable. I made more money sitting around working on homework while they were in bed than I usually do when I tutor. That reminds me. I need to get on the ball and get all of those TAing timesheets in so that the resultant check is nice and fat. And so that I actually get money for TAing.

Hm. My eyes are all sort of swollen still. It feels funny. I don't know whether I feel better because I cried or because I made some visible progress. I think it's a little of both.

I have three umbrellas and an ice scraper in the back seat of my car. Love Syracuse weather.

I feel more efficient when I am walking on a diagonal, because the shortest distance between two points is a line. I often think of it as walking on the hypotenuse (my life is defined in right angles?)

I keep track of my life on the back of my hand. I think people find this funny because this is something that we often grow out of in about eighth grade when we abruptly stop drawing on our hands. I never grew out of drawing on my hands, but at least I don't color in my fingernails with pencil anymore.

I think I have a bit of an obsessive-compulsive problem.

I can't step on the cracks in sidewalks. This is not necessarily due to me not wanting to break my mother's back. I mean, of course I don't want to break my mother's back, but I never believed that there was one iota of truth to that childhood sing-song "don't step on a crack -- you'll break your mother's back!"

It just kind of always hangs out in the back of my mind, even now that I'm 21 years old, and as I'm walking along, I'm thinking of the rhyme -- not of my mother, of the rhyme -- and trying to adjust my steps to be perfectly placed so that I don't have to think about not stepping on the cracks.

This, of course, never works, because either I would have to take really long steps (yes, even for me and my really long legs) or I would have to take comically short steps. So usually I sort of trip-hop along. Sometimes I count cement slabs as I walk. There are 53 of them going across the quad from Illick to Marshall (and, I expect, vice versa).

Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. You see, I get distracted by these cracks. I am constantly looking at my feet to try to avoid them... so I see the breaks in the neighboring slabs, or in the curb bordering the sidewalk, and if they don't line up, even though I am not walking directly on them, I cannot step where the extrapolation of the line would fall.

So the other day I was doing this, and I started to think about how ridiculous it was. And as I laughed at myself, I raised my chin so that I couldn't see the cracks in the sidewalk and kept walking, only to find that it bothered me so much that I might be stepping on those cracks that I cannot stand it, and had to look back at the ground.

When I'm walking on bricks, I can't avoid stepping on cracks. Obviously. So instead I try to walk with the "grain" of the bricks. I place my feet either perpendicular or parallel to the longest side of the bricks, or, in the case of a sort of crosshatching pattern, I walk with my toes pointed towards the point of the bricks. If the bricks change color, when I place my foot, it cannot touch more than one color.

The takehome message: please please please just use asphalt.

I'm also weird about stepping on parking lot lines.

Today I cleaved the coupling reaction, which looked very pitiful by GC (I only used 0.1 eq extra of the THP ether, after all, so having so much remaining didn't make sense!), and then I quenched it, went to teach my freshmen about the gas law, which they haven't touched in lecture but which is very easy (side note: the lab should probably not be referred to as 'Determination of R' if R is never actually determined), came back, took off the solvent, added new solvent, dried it, took off the solvent, added recrystallization solvent, and BOOM!

I'm telling you, this baby just does not want to be in solution. And that would be okay with me if it didn't mean I had to do all of these gymnastics to separate my lovely crystal babies from the oily brown gunk at the bottom. Oh well... I took a pipette and sucked out the oil while the diol was still dissolved (the whole thing was still in the rotavap at 60*C or so), and then set that aside in a mini Erlenmeyer (note to self: go get that out of Adam's freezer -- you forgot to move it), and put the 'supernatant' (ugh, biochemistry) into the freezer.

Voila! The loveliest crystals I've made yet!

Says Adam: "well, gee, it's almost like you know what you're doing!"

Thank you, Adam.

Sometimes I just want to sleep but there is so much work to be done that I can't even let myself sleep. I'd wish for the weekend, but that would bring me THIS MUCH CLOSER to the end of the semester.

At least Christina helped me get my dress for soiree ;-) I think I shall have to get black tights to wear with it, for it is certainly a short little thing.