It's been autumn in New Haven for a while now. It's been autumn for just about as long as I figure autumn is allowed to be, so I'm prepared for winter. If only it snowed prettily more often here in southern Connecticut.
Autumn in New England is one of my favorite things. There are very few things that I dislike about autumn (namely the unending cacophony of 'pumpkin spice latte' on my facebook wall). I like the cooling off of the weather, the hoodies and jeans and sneakers, the transition into scarf-wearing weather, and leaving coffee shops with a comfortingly warm cup of coffee in my hand.
This year, I traveled the seven hours through Connecticut and Pennsylvania to see Laura at Grove City College as a surprise, for her birthday. The drive was one of the prettiest I've ever taken, winding through rural New England roads and then across rural Pennsylvania. It was earlier in the season, so the leaves were well in the process of changing but not quite falling yet, and the fall color palette dappled with sunshine under the blue sky was just beautiful.
It's now later in the season, time for autumn to whisper about the onset of winter with an icy breeze, and the smell has faded from the earthy tones of autumn to the almost clinical cold of winter, which mostly smells like ice.
Many of the leaves have fallen from the trees. They're not bare yet, but they're getting there, and the leaves left are often browning. My walk in the morning is less colorful than it was several weeks ago, but fall-hued branches still arc out over the sidewalk and the street, and I enjoy the colors and the crisp feel to the air, being able to wear a thick scarf to keep my neck warm, crispy leaves on the sidewalk and the walk itself, which is just long enough.
This morning as I was nearing my destination, I saw a woman walking toward me. She had dark hair pulled back into a low ponytail, and I think she was wearing a grey sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. But in one of her hands, she had several leaves that were crimson and vibrant. I swear they were almost glowing in the morning sun. She left the sidewalk to pick up another red leaf, nestled beneath a sea of brown, dead leaves, and added it to her hand.
And then she walked off. I wonder what she was going to do with those leaves. But they were awfully pretty.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Monday, August 12, 2013
Mondays.
It really grinds my gears when I am looking for data to verify that the compound that I have made, purified, and stuck in a vial and the compound is reported, but the data is somehow just missing from the paper. I can forgive this in the instance where the compound is an observed byproduct (as is sort of the case for me, although I could work with it if it turns out to be this particular byproduct), but in the case where the paper specifically details making compounds of this type and then leaves out the data, well...
I guess in some ways it is a typical Monday. I overslept a bit, which is hard to stress about even when my boss isn't across the globe (or in Hawaii? no one knows.) because the environment is relaxed in the best kind of way. Get in when you get in, leave when you're done, be productive in the in-between.
I have been having trouble with the in-between lately, though. Been a lot of one step forward, three back and - oops, lost again, time to try to check the map, only... oh, someone's spilled coffee on the map and it's torn here and where am I, anyway? I'm not sure what the next step forward is these days, so I feel like I've been making some lateral movement.
The funny thing is that when something works, I'm not going to know what to do then, either. It will be nice to have the boss back in New England whenever that happens. Lately group meetings have even devolved to group lunch and video games. I guess that's what he gets for scheduling them on a Friday afternoon and then not Skyping in.
In a way, it's kind of nice because it's group bonding time. We still make up slides and send them to the boss, but presenting on a four-week rotation is the worst kind of time interval. Not often enough to feel good about running a couple of successful reactions, a la weekly subgroup, and not sparsely enough to have a good chunk of data to present. I understand that in theory it will motivate us to get more done in four weeks, but I do just think that four weeks is a bad time frame for this kind of thing.
There are just little things to look forward to, now. A barbecue at Kate's apartment over BMS weekend, living out the rest of summer, potential beach days... name it what you will. The summer has gone so very quickly, and as usual, leaves most of us scrambling, wondering where the time went and how we can possibly be XX% of the way through a PhD and what we have to show for our time here so far.
I will probably teach next semester, and as much as I hate grading, I kind of like teaching. It's nice to have something to break up the day, and it's actually surprisingly nice to go stand in front of a room of students and know what I'm talking about. A nice break from the everyday perplexity of science.
I have been thinking a lot about reading lately, because I miss powering through a good novel. Maybe I'll go sniffing around after lightly used books on Amazon and see if I can't build up a little paperback library to escape to after hours. I did buy the last Eragon novel a few months ago but am having trouble getting psyched up to read it because I really need to reread the previous three before I read it. The things I do to attain closure. Not exactly a labor of love.
You know, I am not sure I have that many things to say today and this has been very complain-y, so I'm going to sign off. :-)
I guess in some ways it is a typical Monday. I overslept a bit, which is hard to stress about even when my boss isn't across the globe (or in Hawaii? no one knows.) because the environment is relaxed in the best kind of way. Get in when you get in, leave when you're done, be productive in the in-between.
I have been having trouble with the in-between lately, though. Been a lot of one step forward, three back and - oops, lost again, time to try to check the map, only... oh, someone's spilled coffee on the map and it's torn here and where am I, anyway? I'm not sure what the next step forward is these days, so I feel like I've been making some lateral movement.
The funny thing is that when something works, I'm not going to know what to do then, either. It will be nice to have the boss back in New England whenever that happens. Lately group meetings have even devolved to group lunch and video games. I guess that's what he gets for scheduling them on a Friday afternoon and then not Skyping in.
In a way, it's kind of nice because it's group bonding time. We still make up slides and send them to the boss, but presenting on a four-week rotation is the worst kind of time interval. Not often enough to feel good about running a couple of successful reactions, a la weekly subgroup, and not sparsely enough to have a good chunk of data to present. I understand that in theory it will motivate us to get more done in four weeks, but I do just think that four weeks is a bad time frame for this kind of thing.
There are just little things to look forward to, now. A barbecue at Kate's apartment over BMS weekend, living out the rest of summer, potential beach days... name it what you will. The summer has gone so very quickly, and as usual, leaves most of us scrambling, wondering where the time went and how we can possibly be XX% of the way through a PhD and what we have to show for our time here so far.
I will probably teach next semester, and as much as I hate grading, I kind of like teaching. It's nice to have something to break up the day, and it's actually surprisingly nice to go stand in front of a room of students and know what I'm talking about. A nice break from the everyday perplexity of science.
I have been thinking a lot about reading lately, because I miss powering through a good novel. Maybe I'll go sniffing around after lightly used books on Amazon and see if I can't build up a little paperback library to escape to after hours. I did buy the last Eragon novel a few months ago but am having trouble getting psyched up to read it because I really need to reread the previous three before I read it. The things I do to attain closure. Not exactly a labor of love.
You know, I am not sure I have that many things to say today and this has been very complain-y, so I'm going to sign off. :-)
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
when are you going to come down?
when are you gonna land?
My parents have touched down and begun the arduous process of unpacking in Mahomet, IL. I don’t know what it’s like: what it looks like, what it feels like, what it smells like.
You know how you can only smell your house when you come back after having left for a number of hours? I wonder if the smell of our old house was inherent to that house or to the things in the house that have moved to the new house.
True to form, I can’t explain what it smelled like. It smelled good, but I do wonder if that was because it smelled good, empirically, or because it smelled familiar. Familiar is good. It didn’t smell bad, anyway.
I’ve been sorting through my feelings about this for a long time, but particularly during this past week, mirroring the actual, physical efforts of the move. This week, I’ve been fighting with a sense of unease, a small quiet ache in my chest, a truckload of apathy toward my science, and a near-constant twinge of pain in my head that I’ve been combating by munching ibuprofen. At least I can medicate for headaches.
I think the weirdest slice of the whole weird pie, here, was Thursday, when my parents were in the cars that they were taking 12 hours west and I received a text about how they were leaving. The day before, Mom texted me about how gorgeous the house looked even without anything in it.
Both of those texts made me feel powerfully.. something. It wasn’t quite sadness, although I was certainly sad. The best I can do is try to explain the way I felt when I was leaving high school.
As I headed up to graduation - I can probably remember this so well because I’ve recently been marinating in old journals as my interest was spiked by the yearbooks I hauled back to New Haven from Liverpool - I felt uneasy, a little bit frightened (different fear than the ESF to Yale transition, which was sharper, stronger, and completely paralyzing). I walked around the school in those last few days, learning physics to take the physics regents because I wanted to belong just a little bit longer.
I walked around with the knowledge that this school wasn’t going to be mine, and with the knowledge that in a couple of months or years or whatever arbitrary time unit you like best I wasn’t going to miss the building.
And it tugged somewhere in my chest, because this was where I’d belonged.
So the last time I was home. in my last few hours at 8402 Sugar Pine Circle, I walked around the house, looking at things and wondering how I could burn them more permanently into my memory. I just sort of desperately paced, not sure what was worth trying to prioritize for space in my scattered memories, staring at the elementary school artwork in the basement and the pictures on the walls in the dining room.
The sort of funny-sad thing is that I have this fear that I’m going to forget. And I know I’m going to forget, eventually. I have this kind of weird bubble that I’m carrying delicately around in my memory, trying not to pop it but not able to look closely at it. I can still see the rooms in that house in my memory, the way they were before all of our things were packed up, but I’m scared to examine them for fear of realizing that I’ve already lost more than I think.
I’m not even sure why it scares me to think about not being able to remember that house. Or why I don’t like to think about how my family isn’t located in Liverpool anymore. It puts my definition of ‘home’ in flux, so I’ve tentatively attached that to my apartment here in New Haven, but that feels lonely. A home of one.
Lots of those bubbles in my head, actually. More than I realized. It staves off the panic - or at least mutes it - to hold them delicately at arm’s length and know they’re there. I realize this is a weird analogy, but it seems like it works to me.
Distance is frightening.
I wonder if the neighbors on Sugar Pine could hear us when we practiced with the windows open. I feel certain that someone must have heard Cappricio Espagnol as I got it into my fingers and embouchure, because that piccolo could absolutely scream (in the best way - hopefully?). But there were All-State audition pieces, long tones, scales and arpeggios, etudes. There were duets on the piano, loud, crashing Rachmaninoff and Chopin, subtle Debussy, rollicking Gershwin, meticulous Bach, point and counterpoint in Mozart… the scales I somehow never managed to practice and therefore master, much to Mrs. Auser’s dismay. I wonder if the neighbors liked it.
Ultimately, I think it hurts - indistinctly, but there it is - to let go. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about moving on, and it’s the letting go of somewhere that I not only loved but also belonged in a fundamental sense. Reattachment takes some time, but I do always get there.
I don’t know how to end this entry but I don’t have anything else to say right now, so I guess that’s that… ?
My parents have touched down and begun the arduous process of unpacking in Mahomet, IL. I don’t know what it’s like: what it looks like, what it feels like, what it smells like.
You know how you can only smell your house when you come back after having left for a number of hours? I wonder if the smell of our old house was inherent to that house or to the things in the house that have moved to the new house.
True to form, I can’t explain what it smelled like. It smelled good, but I do wonder if that was because it smelled good, empirically, or because it smelled familiar. Familiar is good. It didn’t smell bad, anyway.
I’ve been sorting through my feelings about this for a long time, but particularly during this past week, mirroring the actual, physical efforts of the move. This week, I’ve been fighting with a sense of unease, a small quiet ache in my chest, a truckload of apathy toward my science, and a near-constant twinge of pain in my head that I’ve been combating by munching ibuprofen. At least I can medicate for headaches.
I think the weirdest slice of the whole weird pie, here, was Thursday, when my parents were in the cars that they were taking 12 hours west and I received a text about how they were leaving. The day before, Mom texted me about how gorgeous the house looked even without anything in it.
Both of those texts made me feel powerfully.. something. It wasn’t quite sadness, although I was certainly sad. The best I can do is try to explain the way I felt when I was leaving high school.
As I headed up to graduation - I can probably remember this so well because I’ve recently been marinating in old journals as my interest was spiked by the yearbooks I hauled back to New Haven from Liverpool - I felt uneasy, a little bit frightened (different fear than the ESF to Yale transition, which was sharper, stronger, and completely paralyzing). I walked around the school in those last few days, learning physics to take the physics regents because I wanted to belong just a little bit longer.
I walked around with the knowledge that this school wasn’t going to be mine, and with the knowledge that in a couple of months or years or whatever arbitrary time unit you like best I wasn’t going to miss the building.
And it tugged somewhere in my chest, because this was where I’d belonged.
So the last time I was home. in my last few hours at 8402 Sugar Pine Circle, I walked around the house, looking at things and wondering how I could burn them more permanently into my memory. I just sort of desperately paced, not sure what was worth trying to prioritize for space in my scattered memories, staring at the elementary school artwork in the basement and the pictures on the walls in the dining room.
The sort of funny-sad thing is that I have this fear that I’m going to forget. And I know I’m going to forget, eventually. I have this kind of weird bubble that I’m carrying delicately around in my memory, trying not to pop it but not able to look closely at it. I can still see the rooms in that house in my memory, the way they were before all of our things were packed up, but I’m scared to examine them for fear of realizing that I’ve already lost more than I think.
I’m not even sure why it scares me to think about not being able to remember that house. Or why I don’t like to think about how my family isn’t located in Liverpool anymore. It puts my definition of ‘home’ in flux, so I’ve tentatively attached that to my apartment here in New Haven, but that feels lonely. A home of one.
Lots of those bubbles in my head, actually. More than I realized. It staves off the panic - or at least mutes it - to hold them delicately at arm’s length and know they’re there. I realize this is a weird analogy, but it seems like it works to me.
Distance is frightening.
I wonder if the neighbors on Sugar Pine could hear us when we practiced with the windows open. I feel certain that someone must have heard Cappricio Espagnol as I got it into my fingers and embouchure, because that piccolo could absolutely scream (in the best way - hopefully?). But there were All-State audition pieces, long tones, scales and arpeggios, etudes. There were duets on the piano, loud, crashing Rachmaninoff and Chopin, subtle Debussy, rollicking Gershwin, meticulous Bach, point and counterpoint in Mozart… the scales I somehow never managed to practice and therefore master, much to Mrs. Auser’s dismay. I wonder if the neighbors liked it.
Ultimately, I think it hurts - indistinctly, but there it is - to let go. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about moving on, and it’s the letting go of somewhere that I not only loved but also belonged in a fundamental sense. Reattachment takes some time, but I do always get there.
I don’t know how to end this entry but I don’t have anything else to say right now, so I guess that’s that… ?
Sunday, March 3, 2013
cupcakes
Last Friday I made some cupcakes. I did this because it was one of our post-docs' (is that apostrophe right? I wrote myself into a corner there) birthdays and Jen, who was making cake, gave up chocolate for Lent. Lauren, our new group event coordinator (a role she originated and is beasting at) plead for some chocolate. So I made some cupcakes.
I've been trying cupcakes on and off lately, because they're kind of fun to make. They're also really easy to screw up. Those darn little personal cakes. Anyway!
She asked me for my recipe today so I suppose that's not a wash! I thought I was really funny, so here's the recipe I sent her.
Hmm. Okay. Here's what I did!
I used a straight-up mix for the cake: I think it was Betty Crocker's Devil Food cake, and just followed the directions on the box because I wasn't up to making them from scratch. :)
The filling was a ganache, so I was using 8 oz (about 1 1/3 cups) of semi-sweet choc chips. I chopped them up a little bit beforehand, but ultimately got lazy and figured that chocolate-chip size was small enough. I heated 1 cup heavy cream to a boil - you can tell it's ready when it actually starts to lift up and threaten to spill over in the pan. Then you take the boiling cream and immediately pour it over the chocolate chips in a heat-safe bowl. Let sit for 1 minute and then slowly stir the chocolate into the cream. You'll be able to tell when it's homogeneous - it gets darker and smoother and is no longer gross looking. :)
Then I let that sit while I panicked about not having powdered sugar, tried to make my own powdered sugar, and then ran to the store for (you guessed it) powdered sugar. It was still warm when I used it, but not particularly. I just wanted it to be thick enough to not just flood the spongy cupcake.
I fly pretty fast and loose with frosting, and if I could make
the frosting I put on the cupcakes again, I would have used milk
instead of half and half (I didn't have any milk because I am terrible
at grocery shopping and being an adult in general and the milk in my
fridge was spoiled) and probably would have used more so that the
frosting would stay softer.
My general guideline go-to is as follows:
1. Melt 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, transfer to large mixing bowl and stir in 2/3 c cocoa powder.
2. Add 1 cup powdered sugar and a little bit of milk (1 tbsp?). Beat together with electric mixer. My mom always hated this step because it got sugar everywhere, but I am an adult now, and my kitchen is still covered in sugar. Because I'm an adult who likes television better than mopping. Nobody's perfect.
3. Repeat step 2 (2x)
6. If the frosting is too firm, add a little more milk; if it's too fluid, add more sugar.
I used a cupcake corer and a cupcake gun, both on loan from Oana, to core and frost, respectively. I filled them just using a spoon to drizzle the ganache in.
I've been trying cupcakes on and off lately, because they're kind of fun to make. They're also really easy to screw up. Those darn little personal cakes. Anyway!
She asked me for my recipe today so I suppose that's not a wash! I thought I was really funny, so here's the recipe I sent her.
Hmm. Okay. Here's what I did!
I used a straight-up mix for the cake: I think it was Betty Crocker's Devil Food cake, and just followed the directions on the box because I wasn't up to making them from scratch. :)
The filling was a ganache, so I was using 8 oz (about 1 1/3 cups) of semi-sweet choc chips. I chopped them up a little bit beforehand, but ultimately got lazy and figured that chocolate-chip size was small enough. I heated 1 cup heavy cream to a boil - you can tell it's ready when it actually starts to lift up and threaten to spill over in the pan. Then you take the boiling cream and immediately pour it over the chocolate chips in a heat-safe bowl. Let sit for 1 minute and then slowly stir the chocolate into the cream. You'll be able to tell when it's homogeneous - it gets darker and smoother and is no longer gross looking. :)
Okay here are some steps in case the paragraph was rambly and unclear:
1.
Chop up 1 1/3 cup chocolate chips for a while, then give up because it
doesn't seem to be doing anything. Put into heat resistant bowl.
2. Pour 1 cup heavy cream into small saucepan. Heat to a
boil. You can use medium heat if you want, but high gets it done
faster. When it boils it starts to lift in the pan. You'll see what I
mean.
3. Pour boiling cream over chocolate chips. Tap the bowl on the
counter to make sure all of the chocolate is covered by the cream.
4.
Wait one minute, then slowly stir until the ganache is uniformly
colored and smooth. Maybe 2 minutes? Maybe more. Definitely stir by
hand.
Then I let that sit while I panicked about not having powdered sugar, tried to make my own powdered sugar, and then ran to the store for (you guessed it) powdered sugar. It was still warm when I used it, but not particularly. I just wanted it to be thick enough to not just flood the spongy cupcake.
My general guideline go-to is as follows:
1. Melt 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, transfer to large mixing bowl and stir in 2/3 c cocoa powder.
2. Add 1 cup powdered sugar and a little bit of milk (1 tbsp?). Beat together with electric mixer. My mom always hated this step because it got sugar everywhere, but I am an adult now, and my kitchen is still covered in sugar. Because I'm an adult who likes television better than mopping. Nobody's perfect.
3. Repeat step 2 (2x)
4. Taste, remember that you forgot vanilla, debate adding it and finally...
5.
Add the ~1/2 tsp vanilla (or like 2 tbsp if you like vanilla... I do...
I don't ever measure it) that you forgot to add earlier.6. If the frosting is too firm, add a little more milk; if it's too fluid, add more sugar.
I used a cupcake corer and a cupcake gun, both on loan from Oana, to core and frost, respectively. I filled them just using a spoon to drizzle the ganache in.
Friday, January 4, 2013
some pictures from morning runs in New Haven
I suppose the upside to short daylight is the sunrise, which I used to studiously avoid.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
2013
I keep trying to psych myself out to write something nice here.
The funny thing is that I don't know why I'm writing it here. I have no idea why it seems so important to me to get something down here, right now, immediately.
It's been 2013 for approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes. That's hardly enough time to even gather a first impression about the year.
It feels a little bit empty, numb, hollow... pretty much the same way that all of the rest have felt with their turnover, their blanking of the slate, and so on and so forth. Sometimes, in the wee hours of the early, early morning (if you can call it that in good faith), it feels unfairly like its erasing the past year.
Ah, the inexorable creep of time.
2012 was not a big year for me. That was a blessing after 2010 and 2011, I think, but it somehow leaves me feeling like I didn't accomplish much in 2012. And I suppose that's also okay, because after the tumult of 2011, a year for finding my feet is appreciated.
I forget what I even meant to write. I'm squinting at the screen here, dreading my return to New Haven as it creeps closer, even despite the happy texts from friends in CT. In two days, I'll be back, in the little IKEA bed in the little apartment, and the aloneness will press on me with greater power for the time I spent here, with family.
I feel a lot of trepidation, because things are starting to change really drastically. In some ways, I always knew they would but never knew how complete it would feel. In other ways, I didn't expect it at all. In all ways, they change how I define home, how I define family. I feel a little bit unsettled and I try to push it away with my usual approach to problems (that is, don't deal with them right now -- you can see where this becomes problematic quickly). We'll see.
We'll see.
It's going to be something very, very new.
The funny thing is that I don't know why I'm writing it here. I have no idea why it seems so important to me to get something down here, right now, immediately.
It's been 2013 for approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes. That's hardly enough time to even gather a first impression about the year.
It feels a little bit empty, numb, hollow... pretty much the same way that all of the rest have felt with their turnover, their blanking of the slate, and so on and so forth. Sometimes, in the wee hours of the early, early morning (if you can call it that in good faith), it feels unfairly like its erasing the past year.
Ah, the inexorable creep of time.
2012 was not a big year for me. That was a blessing after 2010 and 2011, I think, but it somehow leaves me feeling like I didn't accomplish much in 2012. And I suppose that's also okay, because after the tumult of 2011, a year for finding my feet is appreciated.
I forget what I even meant to write. I'm squinting at the screen here, dreading my return to New Haven as it creeps closer, even despite the happy texts from friends in CT. In two days, I'll be back, in the little IKEA bed in the little apartment, and the aloneness will press on me with greater power for the time I spent here, with family.
I feel a lot of trepidation, because things are starting to change really drastically. In some ways, I always knew they would but never knew how complete it would feel. In other ways, I didn't expect it at all. In all ways, they change how I define home, how I define family. I feel a little bit unsettled and I try to push it away with my usual approach to problems (that is, don't deal with them right now -- you can see where this becomes problematic quickly). We'll see.
We'll see.
It's going to be something very, very new.
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