Nica’s Market is a hub of graduate student activity, conveniently located in the heart of East Rock (colloquially: “the grad student ghetto”). I live just above East Rock. I think of my location as above East Rock mainly because you have to go up a hill to get to it.
We all know about Nica’s, probably because of its location. We all visit Nica’s about once a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. We find ourselves gravitating toward certain items on the extensive menu, certain things in the display case, goodies that we know we can find in the claustrophobic little shelves.
It was toward the beginning of my tenure in the Phillips group that I headed to Nica’s with a collection of my coworkers, tentatively becoming friends, filtering through the aisles. Kate mentioned that she liked the breakfast sandwich, which was something that I had discovered with my mother when we were apartment-hunting. A steal, because for $2.50 you could have a buttery egg on a hard roll or whole wheat bread with a slab of cheese melting on it and several thick slices of bacon.
But Kate swore by the croissant, and I had to give that a try. Because for an extra $1.50, you get your egg concoction in between layers of buttery, flaky croissant. And it is grand.
Other items of note include the lovely mozzarella salad (with halved grape tomatoes and basil), the chicken parmesan sub with breaded chicken breast drowning in melted mozzarella, and tomato sauce on an oven-crisped sub, any of the paninis, and the cheesecakes (but only on special occasion).
Nica’s also has fantastic gelato in the summertime, and you can buy a little cup of it for about a dollar – better deal than the $6 pints of Ben & Jerry’s in the side freezers. And coffee, all the time. They have a hazelnut blend that I love, and sometimes if Kate finds herself in Nica’s in the morning, she’ll pick me up a hazelnut coffee that has a generous helping of half and half in it.
Segue!
On this month’s edition of “songs that are not about God so please stop pretending they are” we have our most two common offenders.
Hallelujah, by Leonard Cohen. This song is about a broken relationship. Don’t let the lyrics about David fool you, because the fourth verse is about sex, the fifth verse is about how love hurts, and the sixth verse is about not knowing the name you’re taking in vain. Don’t sing this in church.
It’s a well-written song, it’s clever and beautiful, and the play on the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift will never get old. It is not a song to glorify God. Knock it off with that.
Bridge over Troubled Waters, by Simon and Garfunkel. There’s some argument about whether or not this is about heroin. I think it is about heroin. Of course they aren’t going to tell their listeners that it’s about drugs. Sail on silver girl seems far more likely to refer to a hypodermic needle than to a girlfriend concerned about finding some grey hairs.
It is a beautiful song, though. It also has a very gospel-type feel to it. So. There’s that.
This entry was written in two pieces, and it reads like it was written in two pieces.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Thursday, February 27, 2014
I forgot the best line of all
Recent, from the pop-culture genius that is Lady Gaga.
one minute I'm the Koons, then suddenly the Koons is me
pop culture was in art, now art's in pop culture in me
hahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahaha
ahhahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahaha
So pretentious. I love it. Own it.
It's sort of even funnier if you imagine she's saying Koontz, like the bad writer.
I only ever read one Koontz though so maybe that's not a fair assessment. It was a suspense novel about a heart transplant patient. It was stupid. But hey, if it pays the bills.
one minute I'm the Koons, then suddenly the Koons is me
pop culture was in art, now art's in pop culture in me
hahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahaha
hahahahaha
ahhahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahaha
So pretentious. I love it. Own it.
It's sort of even funnier if you imagine she's saying Koontz, like the bad writer.
I only ever read one Koontz though so maybe that's not a fair assessment. It was a suspense novel about a heart transplant patient. It was stupid. But hey, if it pays the bills.
sha la la...
Winter just feels desperate now, here in the end of February, as the dry sidewalks are lined with mounds of mottled gray and white that are more ice than snow. It’s hanging on until the next snowfall, when it will look a little less clingy.
I’m over both it and the next snowfall. Bring me some spring. I can do without the rain, though.
That song brown-eyed girl is playing on lab Pandora right now.
Do you remember when? We used to sing? SHA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LALA TI DA SHA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA TI DA LA TI DA BROWN EYED GIRL. YOUUUU MY brown-eyed girl.
Something about it. That is really how I imagine the punctuation in the lyrics. And the capitalization.
You might say I’m punchy and you might be right. You may be right, I may be crazy. But it just may be a lunatic you’re looking for.
I really like lyrics. I don’t like super repetitive lyrics, but I like most lyrics, I suppose.
That’s a gross simplification and not particularly true.
Sometimes I like a line even if it doesn’t mean anything, like Rihanna’s “yellow diamonds in the light.”
Who even wants a yellow diamond? Not me. White or bust. Or pink. But just not yellow. Maybe I just like the melody. Maybe I’m not great at distinguishing the two. Touts les deux. (That doesn’t make sense, it’s just the French for “both”.)
Today I felt as though I needed a donut. Here is a life pro-tip, free of charge. You never need a donut. You literally never need a donut. Donuts never bring anything except short-lived happiness followed by hours of regret. I picked up a donut and a dunkaccino on a run to Dunkin Donuts, and I drank that syrupy goodness down and ate the donut.
Then I spent the next hour wishing I had not done that because the syrup at the bottom of a dunkaccino is super gross and donuts are never a good idea.
Now I know. Maybe I can make myself a little resolution and stick to it about not getting donuts anymore because of the regret. That’s why I swore off Buffalo Wild Wings. BWW was a little bit different because not only does it always deliver sweaty, middle-of-the-night-style regret, but it also begins less than auspiciously.
The waiter gets your order wrong, sometimes multiple times. The chicken is usually gross or dry or mostly absent. And then, after being ignored for over an hour, you (if you’re anything like me) stick it to the man with your tip. You know. By tipping 17% instead of 20%.
Goodness. Swearing off BWW is the best thing I ever did.
Do you remember when? We used to sing?
I’m over both it and the next snowfall. Bring me some spring. I can do without the rain, though.
That song brown-eyed girl is playing on lab Pandora right now.
Do you remember when? We used to sing? SHA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LALA TI DA SHA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA TI DA LA TI DA BROWN EYED GIRL. YOUUUU MY brown-eyed girl.
Something about it. That is really how I imagine the punctuation in the lyrics. And the capitalization.
You might say I’m punchy and you might be right. You may be right, I may be crazy. But it just may be a lunatic you’re looking for.
I really like lyrics. I don’t like super repetitive lyrics, but I like most lyrics, I suppose.
That’s a gross simplification and not particularly true.
Sometimes I like a line even if it doesn’t mean anything, like Rihanna’s “yellow diamonds in the light.”
Who even wants a yellow diamond? Not me. White or bust. Or pink. But just not yellow. Maybe I just like the melody. Maybe I’m not great at distinguishing the two. Touts les deux. (That doesn’t make sense, it’s just the French for “both”.)
Today I felt as though I needed a donut. Here is a life pro-tip, free of charge. You never need a donut. You literally never need a donut. Donuts never bring anything except short-lived happiness followed by hours of regret. I picked up a donut and a dunkaccino on a run to Dunkin Donuts, and I drank that syrupy goodness down and ate the donut.
Then I spent the next hour wishing I had not done that because the syrup at the bottom of a dunkaccino is super gross and donuts are never a good idea.
Now I know. Maybe I can make myself a little resolution and stick to it about not getting donuts anymore because of the regret. That’s why I swore off Buffalo Wild Wings. BWW was a little bit different because not only does it always deliver sweaty, middle-of-the-night-style regret, but it also begins less than auspiciously.
The waiter gets your order wrong, sometimes multiple times. The chicken is usually gross or dry or mostly absent. And then, after being ignored for over an hour, you (if you’re anything like me) stick it to the man with your tip. You know. By tipping 17% instead of 20%.
Goodness. Swearing off BWW is the best thing I ever did.
Do you remember when? We used to sing?
Monday, February 24, 2014
smoothies
It was very warm and sunny yesterday. If it hadn’t been for the snowbanks lining the paths and parking lots, I would have been able to believe that spring had come upon us. I went grocery shopping in a hoodie and no coat, and even turned the air on cold in my air.
I tell you this because New Haven is something else.
I realize that we are due for more snow later this week. Wednesday, I think. Despite the inevitability of the snow, it has been (comparatively) warm and sunny since the last time it snowed, which was last Tuesday.
So the fact that you can’t find a road in New Haven with more than a lane-and-a-half plowed (that is 1.5 lanes on a two-lane, two-directional road) is kind of frustrating. I realize that the on-street parking doesn’t help with the snow removal problem, but it also exasperates the problem because now cars are parking next to mountains of grit and ice that already occupy half of the lane. So, effectively, we have less than one lane on a bunch of roads.
I know they do the parking ban thing here. I just… it makes me feel cranky. But the roads otherwise and outside of New Haven were clear and dry and I enjoyed my jaunt down to get a new shower curtain liner, a 2014 calendar (finally), and a few bags of fresh vegetables.
I made a smoothie yesterday. I’m thinking seriously about pinning Mom’s smoothie recipe – or at least about printing it out and putting it into my recipe binder. It was a nice smoothie, because I’d remembered to pick up plain yogurt and I had frozen fruit and orange juice in the freezer.
I think I’ve discovered that frozen bananas, when blended up, have a lovely ice-cream-y texture. They also don’t taste half-bad. I used to get so mad at Mom when she would make us a chocolate milkshake and blend a banana into it.
I’ve realized that it wasn’t the taste that I objected to (although there IS something about creamy chocolate milkshakes that sometimes deserves to be left unadulterated), but the texture.
I’m told that when I was little, I was given orange juice with pulp and as I tried to drink it out of a sippy cup, I cried. There were worms in my orange juice. I have the oddest memory of the texture, and I suspect I might have been slightly less upset if the “worms” hadn’t become pinched in the spout of the sippy cup, to wave around against my tongue.
Anyway, banana isn’t quite like that, but it is still a texture issue that is entirely solved simply by freezing the banana first. And since I’m utterly incapable of eating anything in a timely manner, this is two birds with one stone.
My smoothie came out like ice cream or frozen yogurt, and I ate it with a spoon. I have a tendency to be heavy-handed with the frozen fruit. I ate it, and I was happy.
I think I will have another when I go home tonight. After all, I’ll need something to do besides bite my nails when Syracuse plays tonight.
…in five minutes. I’m out.
I tell you this because New Haven is something else.
I realize that we are due for more snow later this week. Wednesday, I think. Despite the inevitability of the snow, it has been (comparatively) warm and sunny since the last time it snowed, which was last Tuesday.
So the fact that you can’t find a road in New Haven with more than a lane-and-a-half plowed (that is 1.5 lanes on a two-lane, two-directional road) is kind of frustrating. I realize that the on-street parking doesn’t help with the snow removal problem, but it also exasperates the problem because now cars are parking next to mountains of grit and ice that already occupy half of the lane. So, effectively, we have less than one lane on a bunch of roads.
I know they do the parking ban thing here. I just… it makes me feel cranky. But the roads otherwise and outside of New Haven were clear and dry and I enjoyed my jaunt down to get a new shower curtain liner, a 2014 calendar (finally), and a few bags of fresh vegetables.
I made a smoothie yesterday. I’m thinking seriously about pinning Mom’s smoothie recipe – or at least about printing it out and putting it into my recipe binder. It was a nice smoothie, because I’d remembered to pick up plain yogurt and I had frozen fruit and orange juice in the freezer.
I think I’ve discovered that frozen bananas, when blended up, have a lovely ice-cream-y texture. They also don’t taste half-bad. I used to get so mad at Mom when she would make us a chocolate milkshake and blend a banana into it.
I’ve realized that it wasn’t the taste that I objected to (although there IS something about creamy chocolate milkshakes that sometimes deserves to be left unadulterated), but the texture.
I’m told that when I was little, I was given orange juice with pulp and as I tried to drink it out of a sippy cup, I cried. There were worms in my orange juice. I have the oddest memory of the texture, and I suspect I might have been slightly less upset if the “worms” hadn’t become pinched in the spout of the sippy cup, to wave around against my tongue.
Anyway, banana isn’t quite like that, but it is still a texture issue that is entirely solved simply by freezing the banana first. And since I’m utterly incapable of eating anything in a timely manner, this is two birds with one stone.
My smoothie came out like ice cream or frozen yogurt, and I ate it with a spoon. I have a tendency to be heavy-handed with the frozen fruit. I ate it, and I was happy.
I think I will have another when I go home tonight. After all, I’ll need something to do besides bite my nails when Syracuse plays tonight.
…in five minutes. I’m out.
Friday, February 21, 2014
nailbiters
The weather outside is grey and gloomy, and my attitude lately has been following suit. In short, it stinks.
Every team that I have been even half-heartedly rooting for this week has lost. The first and worst was, naturally, Syracuse’s tragically epic upset to Boston College. Following suit, we have USA women’s hockey falling to Canada in the gold medal match. Not super sad because I don’t follow hockey, but I do have some Team USA spirit.
Well, you know, except for that time last winter Olympics when I was pulling for Plushenko. Dude owns his ego and it’s sort of inspiring.
Then, last night, I made pasta sauce and had decided to root for Duke in the rivalry matchup of Duke vs. UNC last night. And Duke tossed it away in the second half. I did feel slightly conflicted. I still want to win on Saturday. My temporary allegiance doomed the Blue Devils.
And today, the USA men’s hockey team lost the semifinals to Canada. Twice to Canada. I suppose it’s unsurprising.
To be honest I’m even a little bit scared to cheer for Syracuse tomorrow. Maybe I should have a change of heart, you know, for my team and root for Duke, thereby dooming them to failure at home and assuring a win for my soon-to-be-team-again.
You know what the Duke game made me think of? Another silver lining to our loss to BC at home. You see, when you lose at home, no one storms the court. I thought of this as I watched the students at UNC storm the court, swamping their own exuberant team and Duke’s utterly defeated team, and I was glad that whatever else had happened on Wednesday, at least we hadn’t had the court stormed by screaming students clad in red.
Not a big fan of court-storming.
I think that maybe I will go out and purchase myself some Chipotle before the game tomorrow night. At least then if we lose, I will have a delicious Tex-Mex style salad in which to drown my sorrows. I suppose as it stands, my tentative plan will be to head to work in the late morning, get some reading and hopefully a little brainstorming done for a few hours, and then leave around 5:00 or so to ready myself for another nailbiter of a game.
Let me tell you about my nails.
I have been so good about not biting them until sports showed up in my life, and suddenly I have only two of the ten left. I exercised enough self-control to not bite them down to the quick, so their length is actually fairly optimal for daily operations (they were pretty long). It helps that I bought a little box of disposable nail files and have stashed them in convenient locations. I’m finally getting better at this now.
I like to paint them sometimes, but nail polish is almost preternaturally transient in my work environment, and I’m so bad about picking at it that my life is simpler when I leave them bare. On the other hand, I’m better at leaving my fingernails alone in general when they’re painted UNTIL they start to chip so I have maybe 36 hours of relief before the cycle begins anew.
So maybe I’ll paint them before the game tomorrow night. Then, on Monday, I’ll soak a little cotton in acetone and strip it all right back off. Protecting groups for your fingernails.
Goodness. I think I’m done for today.
Every team that I have been even half-heartedly rooting for this week has lost. The first and worst was, naturally, Syracuse’s tragically epic upset to Boston College. Following suit, we have USA women’s hockey falling to Canada in the gold medal match. Not super sad because I don’t follow hockey, but I do have some Team USA spirit.
Well, you know, except for that time last winter Olympics when I was pulling for Plushenko. Dude owns his ego and it’s sort of inspiring.
Then, last night, I made pasta sauce and had decided to root for Duke in the rivalry matchup of Duke vs. UNC last night. And Duke tossed it away in the second half. I did feel slightly conflicted. I still want to win on Saturday. My temporary allegiance doomed the Blue Devils.
And today, the USA men’s hockey team lost the semifinals to Canada. Twice to Canada. I suppose it’s unsurprising.
To be honest I’m even a little bit scared to cheer for Syracuse tomorrow. Maybe I should have a change of heart, you know, for my team and root for Duke, thereby dooming them to failure at home and assuring a win for my soon-to-be-team-again.
You know what the Duke game made me think of? Another silver lining to our loss to BC at home. You see, when you lose at home, no one storms the court. I thought of this as I watched the students at UNC storm the court, swamping their own exuberant team and Duke’s utterly defeated team, and I was glad that whatever else had happened on Wednesday, at least we hadn’t had the court stormed by screaming students clad in red.
Not a big fan of court-storming.
I think that maybe I will go out and purchase myself some Chipotle before the game tomorrow night. At least then if we lose, I will have a delicious Tex-Mex style salad in which to drown my sorrows. I suppose as it stands, my tentative plan will be to head to work in the late morning, get some reading and hopefully a little brainstorming done for a few hours, and then leave around 5:00 or so to ready myself for another nailbiter of a game.
Let me tell you about my nails.
I have been so good about not biting them until sports showed up in my life, and suddenly I have only two of the ten left. I exercised enough self-control to not bite them down to the quick, so their length is actually fairly optimal for daily operations (they were pretty long). It helps that I bought a little box of disposable nail files and have stashed them in convenient locations. I’m finally getting better at this now.
I like to paint them sometimes, but nail polish is almost preternaturally transient in my work environment, and I’m so bad about picking at it that my life is simpler when I leave them bare. On the other hand, I’m better at leaving my fingernails alone in general when they’re painted UNTIL they start to chip so I have maybe 36 hours of relief before the cycle begins anew.
So maybe I’ll paint them before the game tomorrow night. Then, on Monday, I’ll soak a little cotton in acetone and strip it all right back off. Protecting groups for your fingernails.
Goodness. I think I’m done for today.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
things that are cold, part deux: ice and Syracuse basketball
This morning when I walked to school, the sidewalk was a continuous sheet of ice.
Back in the beginning of January, I allowed some of my anger about ice to spill out after I took my own spill down a set of twelve or thirteen very icy steps outside of my apartment.
This morning was nothing like that. I remained upright, feet spinning out only once in a while, and I didn’t have more than a few feet to fall, if indeed a fall was imminent. I still felt frustrated with the current state of affairs. These thaw-freeze cycles are really murdering the pedestrian conditions (and, probably, the motorist conditions as well, but I haven’t felt inclined to take my car out in the past couple of days).
Apparently Connecticut is in the throes of a “salt shortage”. I realize that the preferred salt for roads and sidewalks is calcium chloride because you get an extra ion to further plummet the freezing temperature, but you’d think that in a pinch, good ol’ sodium chloride would do.
I just personally do not understand how we can be in a salt shortage when the ocean is LITERALLY RIGHT THERE. Note my correct usage of ‘literally’. Go get the salt water and pour THAT on the streets. Honestly.
Been bumming because Syracuse earned itself the dubious distinction of having the greatest discrepancy in ranking for an upset loss basically ever (or maybe just for an undefeated team, but that can only help the difference) last night to Boston College. Embarrassing and frustrating. I should have made cookies instead, or something.
And here I was, all prepared to suffer our first loss at Cameron this Saturday, with a few benefits. We won’t be undefeated anymore, which is actually the worst. It’s the best, but it’s the worst. Everyone stresses. Stupid games like Boston College at home get in our heads. A loss to Duke at home is a respectable loss. DJ, who will allegedly be wearing orange to the game and perching himself in the student section with his pro-Duke peers, is likely to escape the game with nothing worse than a “BEAT DUKE” shirt that smells like beer.
But now I want to win pretty badly.
I know. It’s a hard life. But if we’re being honest, I would have wanted to win this one anyway.
I think that one of my goals in life is to pull together a pretty impressive collection of hoodies. Pullovers are warmer, zip-ups are more convenient, and I actually really like to wear the hood while I sit at my desk or while I watch the Syracuse game. Sniff. It’s nice. Probably makes me have to wash my hair more often, but honestly, I’ve managed to spread out hair washing to once a week, more frequently if I do something that makes it gross earlier. And that’s pretty great.
Back in the beginning of January, I allowed some of my anger about ice to spill out after I took my own spill down a set of twelve or thirteen very icy steps outside of my apartment.
This morning was nothing like that. I remained upright, feet spinning out only once in a while, and I didn’t have more than a few feet to fall, if indeed a fall was imminent. I still felt frustrated with the current state of affairs. These thaw-freeze cycles are really murdering the pedestrian conditions (and, probably, the motorist conditions as well, but I haven’t felt inclined to take my car out in the past couple of days).
Apparently Connecticut is in the throes of a “salt shortage”. I realize that the preferred salt for roads and sidewalks is calcium chloride because you get an extra ion to further plummet the freezing temperature, but you’d think that in a pinch, good ol’ sodium chloride would do.
I just personally do not understand how we can be in a salt shortage when the ocean is LITERALLY RIGHT THERE. Note my correct usage of ‘literally’. Go get the salt water and pour THAT on the streets. Honestly.
Been bumming because Syracuse earned itself the dubious distinction of having the greatest discrepancy in ranking for an upset loss basically ever (or maybe just for an undefeated team, but that can only help the difference) last night to Boston College. Embarrassing and frustrating. I should have made cookies instead, or something.
And here I was, all prepared to suffer our first loss at Cameron this Saturday, with a few benefits. We won’t be undefeated anymore, which is actually the worst. It’s the best, but it’s the worst. Everyone stresses. Stupid games like Boston College at home get in our heads. A loss to Duke at home is a respectable loss. DJ, who will allegedly be wearing orange to the game and perching himself in the student section with his pro-Duke peers, is likely to escape the game with nothing worse than a “BEAT DUKE” shirt that smells like beer.
But now I want to win pretty badly.
I know. It’s a hard life. But if we’re being honest, I would have wanted to win this one anyway.
I think that one of my goals in life is to pull together a pretty impressive collection of hoodies. Pullovers are warmer, zip-ups are more convenient, and I actually really like to wear the hood while I sit at my desk or while I watch the Syracuse game. Sniff. It’s nice. Probably makes me have to wash my hair more often, but honestly, I’ve managed to spread out hair washing to once a week, more frequently if I do something that makes it gross earlier. And that’s pretty great.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
1 reason why list articles are the worst!
Actually, I have many reasons why list-articles are awful, but they all stem from the same one reason, and I don’t want to write a list-article critiquing list-articles because I’m not really ready for that kind of meta, palate-offending irony.
Is it irony?
Let’s not get into that. Especially because definitions are more fluid than ever in this day and age. Literally is literally being given a definition that means the exact opposite of literally. (See what I did there? I caaaaan’t stop.) And it makes me sad that the definition of literally is beginning to mean not-literally, beginning to mean practically or virtually instead.
Apparently this is totes cool because “it’s hyperbole.”
NO.
You don’t get to use a word in the exact WRONG way and call it hyperbole. That is not hyperbole. Hyperbole is saying “the spotlight was brighter than the sun,” not “the spotlight was literally as bright as the sun.”
Plus it takes all of the fun out of reading statements by people who don’t know how to use the word correctly. For example, I have a facebook friend (distinct from friend-on-facebook, because I haven’t talked to said facebook friend since early 2007) who was once very excited. She was so excited about something – I think it was concert tickets for her favorite artist. And she managed to nab some tickets, and she posted about it and then said “I LITERALLY pooped my pants.”
Editor’s note: she didn’t say pooped, but we try to keep it G-rated here.
Anyway the idea of this facebook friend literally defecating in her pants due to her excitement sent me into a fit of giggles for a few minutes instead of making me angry and disenchanted with the general human populace. So that is why changing the definition of literally is going to be no fun.
Now, the one (umbrella) reason why list-articles are the worst is because they are so incredibly lazy.
No, seriously. It’s like the authors are all teenagers, surfing tumblr for really funny and contextually appropriate (if you’re lucky) pictures to slap under a list item that more often than not is not even a complete sentence.
In fact, buzzfeed list articles probably rarely crack 200 words. No kidding dude. I’ve already written way more than a buzzfeed list article. (I got tired of hyphens because they require some extra exertion in my typing fingers.)
And even when the lists have complete sentences in them, they lack any cohesiveness. There’s no segue to the writing. Point. Point. Point.
And the agendas that are being pushed in them are really ridiculous. There’s this trend lately that I’ve mentioned where the single-and-apparently-loving-it Millenials are pushing back against their contemporaries who are getting married and having children.
“23 things to do when you’re 23 that are not getting engaged.”
You really couldn’t just title that “23 things that are great about being single”? Same idea, slightly (SLIGHTLY) less offensive. In the aggressive way. “23 things I like to do by myself.” And they’re always stupid things that have nothing to do with being single. They’re just bitter.
I have abruptly lost interest in this discussion. Maybe I just had less to say than I thought I had to say.
In other news, I am freaking out about being an adult and needing to do my taxes. I think I just freeze up and I’m being a big baby about it. I won’t even look at anything which probably does not bode well for me. I just don’t handle stress well, which is unfortunate, because I am a graduate student. Life is hard.
Is it irony?
Let’s not get into that. Especially because definitions are more fluid than ever in this day and age. Literally is literally being given a definition that means the exact opposite of literally. (See what I did there? I caaaaan’t stop.) And it makes me sad that the definition of literally is beginning to mean not-literally, beginning to mean practically or virtually instead.
Apparently this is totes cool because “it’s hyperbole.”
NO.
You don’t get to use a word in the exact WRONG way and call it hyperbole. That is not hyperbole. Hyperbole is saying “the spotlight was brighter than the sun,” not “the spotlight was literally as bright as the sun.”
Plus it takes all of the fun out of reading statements by people who don’t know how to use the word correctly. For example, I have a facebook friend (distinct from friend-on-facebook, because I haven’t talked to said facebook friend since early 2007) who was once very excited. She was so excited about something – I think it was concert tickets for her favorite artist. And she managed to nab some tickets, and she posted about it and then said “I LITERALLY pooped my pants.”
Editor’s note: she didn’t say pooped, but we try to keep it G-rated here.
Anyway the idea of this facebook friend literally defecating in her pants due to her excitement sent me into a fit of giggles for a few minutes instead of making me angry and disenchanted with the general human populace. So that is why changing the definition of literally is going to be no fun.
Now, the one (umbrella) reason why list-articles are the worst is because they are so incredibly lazy.
No, seriously. It’s like the authors are all teenagers, surfing tumblr for really funny and contextually appropriate (if you’re lucky) pictures to slap under a list item that more often than not is not even a complete sentence.
In fact, buzzfeed list articles probably rarely crack 200 words. No kidding dude. I’ve already written way more than a buzzfeed list article. (I got tired of hyphens because they require some extra exertion in my typing fingers.)
And even when the lists have complete sentences in them, they lack any cohesiveness. There’s no segue to the writing. Point. Point. Point.
And the agendas that are being pushed in them are really ridiculous. There’s this trend lately that I’ve mentioned where the single-and-apparently-loving-it Millenials are pushing back against their contemporaries who are getting married and having children.
“23 things to do when you’re 23 that are not getting engaged.”
You really couldn’t just title that “23 things that are great about being single”? Same idea, slightly (SLIGHTLY) less offensive. In the aggressive way. “23 things I like to do by myself.” And they’re always stupid things that have nothing to do with being single. They’re just bitter.
I have abruptly lost interest in this discussion. Maybe I just had less to say than I thought I had to say.
In other news, I am freaking out about being an adult and needing to do my taxes. I think I just freeze up and I’m being a big baby about it. I won’t even look at anything which probably does not bode well for me. I just don’t handle stress well, which is unfortunate, because I am a graduate student. Life is hard.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
social media blues
I hate facebook.
No, I really do. I am just not even kidding a little bit.
I check it incessantly, continuously, always navigating to see if anything new has been posted. Hoping for a diversion, I suppose.
It is such a wasteful time sink.
Facebook makes me despise human beings. It makes me judgey. Some of my actual thoughts about facebook even just today have been along these lines.
“Ugh. She is so annoying. Why do I even keep her on my friends list? She abuses exclamation points. She literally punctuates everything with an exclamation point. Is her life really exciting?”
“Wow, has she even worked a real day in her life? I mean, other than a quirky part-time job that bolsters her hobbies but doesn’t do a thing to advance her career. How does she afford all of this useless stuff? I understand being an enthusiast but seriously, where does she get the money for this? Concentrate on your career path so you can afford this stuff and stop mooching off of mom and dad. [beat] My mom and dad would never let me spend their money this way, because it is ridiculous.”
And eventually I catch myself in these angry thought spirals and I wonder why it bothers me so much that other people broadcast themselves as happy and enthusiastic about parts of their days. Facebook ruins everything. Especially my disposition. I am apparently a mean person.
I think I would like to take mine down, especially because I really don’t use it much to communicate with people from the past. There are other, less rage-inducing methods of contacting people. I keep in touch with Justine through facebook messages, and I feel a wonderful, warm sense of camaraderie after Syracuse basketball games as I scroll through my newsfeed.
Sports bring us together, man.
I’ve just been thinking about this now, because facebook made me feel grumpy when I was checking it. Maybe I could leave it up and just try not to check it compulsively. (ha. haha. ha.)
I like to believe that stupid internet quizzes are the harbingers of social media doom. It is probably not true, but I like to believe that it is.
I think stupid internet quizzes are that thing that everyone does, but only some people are proud to admit it. I have taken a few stupid internet quizzes, myself, and I have never, ever, ever posted the results to facebook. I just don’t want anyone to know that I have moseyed on over to Buzzfeed and clicked on some picture-squares to answer some questions, feeling ultimately unsatisfied and sort of dirty because I couldn’t answer the questions honestly because the multiple choices were all terrible and unrelated in any way to my life or perspective or even my favorite color.
They’ve been making the rounds on facebook lately. Maybe this can be a two birds with one stone kind of thing and take down facebook and buzzfeed at the same time. It’s funny, right, because facebook used to be this sort of exclusive club that you could only join with a specific (and then non-specific) .edu email address, and now anyone can join, and it’s not that I’m all for exclusivity but the demographics on facebook just don’t appeal to me anymore.
Buzzfeed, on the other hand, was mildly entertaining at the beginning, capitalizing on both people’s love for moving pictures (.gifs) and apparently people’s love for list-articles (see also: thoughtcatalog [or, you know, don’t]). Now it’s stupid and repetitive, which, when you think of it, is actually the only possible endgame for something like buzzfeed, and apparently now filled with 10000% more quizzes! (yay) I guess at least quizzes aren’t list-articles. Maybe I’ll write more about list articles later. I have feelings, you see. I don’t know if you could tell.
Back in the day, quizzes were really big on blogs. You know. Blogs. Greatestjournal (now defunct), xanga, livejournal, myspace blogs, you name it. Blogs have become less an expression of teenage angst and (apparently) more a career move.
Hey man. I don’t judge.
I LOVE cooking blogs. I follow a bunch in my RSS feed. It’s the best. They’re the best. These people with their beautiful clean, spacious kitchens and gorgeous photography. They make me hungry. They make me feel inspired.
But blogs aren’t social media anymore, anyway, no longer a hotbed of badly punctuated teenaged angst, and no one likes myspace. So I’m hoping that buzzfeed quizzes might take down facebook and do the dirty work of disengaging for me.
Well, quizzes and the bizarre new design choice where facebook automatically starts playing videos in your newsfeed for you. But WITHOUT SOUND.
I have some feelings on this. Would it be annoying if the videos autoplayed with sound? Yes. Yes it would. It would be highly annoying, which is why I assume that idea was nixed. But autoplaying videos on mute? Where if you decide you want to watch it, not only do you have to click unmute, but you also have to manually restart the video from the beginning? What is the POINT?
I think the question I am trying to ask is WHY WOULD YOU AUTOPLAY AT ALL?
I assume this all has to do with facebook finding itself incapable of making money. Well. That is okay.
Do you know what I like? I like email. I like email, I like texting, I even like google chat (google hangouts for google+ which is never going to happen, but the hangouts app is pretty slick). I like streamlined, simple services that do one job and do them well. I do not like facebook chat. I don’t like that facebook not only rolled chat and messages into one and the same, but that it has also made it well-nigh impossible to access your messages inbox.
WHY?!
I think I am going to go home. This has been a social media rant from a grumpy 20-something.
In other news: SU beat NC State by the skin of their teeth (I hate last-minute plays... you know, unless the game is good, which this wasn't) to remain undefeated. This is good. It snowed AGAIN today. This is... neutral. The snow is pretty.
No, I really do. I am just not even kidding a little bit.
I check it incessantly, continuously, always navigating to see if anything new has been posted. Hoping for a diversion, I suppose.
It is such a wasteful time sink.
Facebook makes me despise human beings. It makes me judgey. Some of my actual thoughts about facebook even just today have been along these lines.
“Ugh. She is so annoying. Why do I even keep her on my friends list? She abuses exclamation points. She literally punctuates everything with an exclamation point. Is her life really exciting?”
“Wow, has she even worked a real day in her life? I mean, other than a quirky part-time job that bolsters her hobbies but doesn’t do a thing to advance her career. How does she afford all of this useless stuff? I understand being an enthusiast but seriously, where does she get the money for this? Concentrate on your career path so you can afford this stuff and stop mooching off of mom and dad. [beat] My mom and dad would never let me spend their money this way, because it is ridiculous.”
And eventually I catch myself in these angry thought spirals and I wonder why it bothers me so much that other people broadcast themselves as happy and enthusiastic about parts of their days. Facebook ruins everything. Especially my disposition. I am apparently a mean person.
I think I would like to take mine down, especially because I really don’t use it much to communicate with people from the past. There are other, less rage-inducing methods of contacting people. I keep in touch with Justine through facebook messages, and I feel a wonderful, warm sense of camaraderie after Syracuse basketball games as I scroll through my newsfeed.
Sports bring us together, man.
I’ve just been thinking about this now, because facebook made me feel grumpy when I was checking it. Maybe I could leave it up and just try not to check it compulsively. (ha. haha. ha.)
I like to believe that stupid internet quizzes are the harbingers of social media doom. It is probably not true, but I like to believe that it is.
I think stupid internet quizzes are that thing that everyone does, but only some people are proud to admit it. I have taken a few stupid internet quizzes, myself, and I have never, ever, ever posted the results to facebook. I just don’t want anyone to know that I have moseyed on over to Buzzfeed and clicked on some picture-squares to answer some questions, feeling ultimately unsatisfied and sort of dirty because I couldn’t answer the questions honestly because the multiple choices were all terrible and unrelated in any way to my life or perspective or even my favorite color.
They’ve been making the rounds on facebook lately. Maybe this can be a two birds with one stone kind of thing and take down facebook and buzzfeed at the same time. It’s funny, right, because facebook used to be this sort of exclusive club that you could only join with a specific (and then non-specific) .edu email address, and now anyone can join, and it’s not that I’m all for exclusivity but the demographics on facebook just don’t appeal to me anymore.
Buzzfeed, on the other hand, was mildly entertaining at the beginning, capitalizing on both people’s love for moving pictures (.gifs) and apparently people’s love for list-articles (see also: thoughtcatalog [or, you know, don’t]). Now it’s stupid and repetitive, which, when you think of it, is actually the only possible endgame for something like buzzfeed, and apparently now filled with 10000% more quizzes! (yay) I guess at least quizzes aren’t list-articles. Maybe I’ll write more about list articles later. I have feelings, you see. I don’t know if you could tell.
Back in the day, quizzes were really big on blogs. You know. Blogs. Greatestjournal (now defunct), xanga, livejournal, myspace blogs, you name it. Blogs have become less an expression of teenage angst and (apparently) more a career move.
Hey man. I don’t judge.
I LOVE cooking blogs. I follow a bunch in my RSS feed. It’s the best. They’re the best. These people with their beautiful clean, spacious kitchens and gorgeous photography. They make me hungry. They make me feel inspired.
But blogs aren’t social media anymore, anyway, no longer a hotbed of badly punctuated teenaged angst, and no one likes myspace. So I’m hoping that buzzfeed quizzes might take down facebook and do the dirty work of disengaging for me.
Well, quizzes and the bizarre new design choice where facebook automatically starts playing videos in your newsfeed for you. But WITHOUT SOUND.
I have some feelings on this. Would it be annoying if the videos autoplayed with sound? Yes. Yes it would. It would be highly annoying, which is why I assume that idea was nixed. But autoplaying videos on mute? Where if you decide you want to watch it, not only do you have to click unmute, but you also have to manually restart the video from the beginning? What is the POINT?
I think the question I am trying to ask is WHY WOULD YOU AUTOPLAY AT ALL?
I assume this all has to do with facebook finding itself incapable of making money. Well. That is okay.
Do you know what I like? I like email. I like email, I like texting, I even like google chat (google hangouts for google+ which is never going to happen, but the hangouts app is pretty slick). I like streamlined, simple services that do one job and do them well. I do not like facebook chat. I don’t like that facebook not only rolled chat and messages into one and the same, but that it has also made it well-nigh impossible to access your messages inbox.
WHY?!
I think I am going to go home. This has been a social media rant from a grumpy 20-something.
In other news: SU beat NC State by the skin of their teeth (I hate last-minute plays... you know, unless the game is good, which this wasn't) to remain undefeated. This is good. It snowed AGAIN today. This is... neutral. The snow is pretty.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
metaphor
I want to
say something noteworthy or at least interesting, but some days I dredge right
down to the bottom of the barrel and end up with nothing but sludge.
Today at
lunch we were discussing Boston and Andy’s decision-making process, because he
has been sending cautious emails to group members to try and test the
waters. He wants to figure out the
temperature of our mood-o-meter re: his possible move.
He is always
very careful to emphasize that he has not made his final decision yet. Trying not to read into that. Hard to know what it means, if anything.
“He’s
playing his cards close to his vest,” said someone, and I was struck with the
kind of silly laughter that you can’t rationalize. It was the kind that bubbles up and makes you
feel like a crazy person while you laugh helplessly.
“If he was
playing them any closer,” I said, “they’d be sewn INSIDE of his vest.” Kate and Ben joined me in laughter. “And – and – do you know how we know he’s
playing cards? If he didn’t have cards
in his hand, this whole metaphor would just completely fall apart.”
I don’t know
why we all thought this was so funny, in retrospect. Examining things has a way of robbing all of
the humor from them, but in the moment, we cackled until I finished washing out
my dishes in the sink.
The sink was
unclogged today. That was pretty exciting,
and it is admittedly a little bit sad that it was so exciting that the sink was
not full of water. It made dish-washing
a much more pleasurable task. It’s not
so bad in the first place because the building is always quite chilly and the
warm water is nice.
Those brown
paper towels don’t have much absorbent value, though. They are almost no good at all.
I should do
my laundry. Now that I’m all recovered
from my sickness, I am realizing that I would like to reset the dirty socks and
underwear counter. Not in trouble yet,
just starting to pile the clothes up in the hamper.
On the plus
side, I’ve been sleeping really well lately and since our last winter storm
(Tuesday? Wednesday morning?), the
weather has been cold, crisp, and clear.
Blue skies and dry sidewalks; can’t ask for too awfully much more than
that.
400 words is
what you get today; I’m uninspired.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Monday class
I’m feeling much better. I just have a bothersome tickle in my throat now, made worse because my cough is so dry. It’s not even satisfying. But it’s better than the pain of a rattling, hacking cough, so I’ll count my blessings.
I also have the sense that I am going to have a hard time figuring out what to write about today, and I know I’m not obligated to write, but sometimes you like to have that little item on your mental to-do list checked off.
Andy’s class seems to me to be leaving the realms of usefulness, at least for me personally, as it coalesces into the class that I took two years ago.
[obligatory panic break for TWO YEARS AGO?! where’s the time gone?!]
We spent some useful time talking about protecting group strategies – although he was out of town and one of the new professors taught for him, pinch-hitting by reading through the notes at the front of the room and annotating as we went along. It was (surprisingly) a really effective way to learn the material, and there was a level of focus there that is ordinarily absent.
Plus we were treated to quotes like “and now we leave the comfort and joy of the silyl ethers for the pain of the MOM ethers,” and he giggled a lot when he struck himself as funny. Giggling fits will probably never not be contagious.
Since then, we've talked about aldol reactions and their close relatives, crotylations and allylations. Andy was convinced that Diane had done a crotylation, staring her down from the front of them room. “No,” said Diane, laughing nervously, “I never ran one.”
“I ran a crotylation,” I finally said, letting Diane off of the hot seat, and ultimately no conversation even came of the topic, so I confess to being a little bit confused about the need to establish who had run one before.
But now we’re sliding into discussions of total syntheses and these I’ve had before – same slides, even – and I’m not sure the utility of the course is there for me anymore. I think Andy might be sad if I stopped attending class, though, so I suppose it is what it is.
And it is what you make of it, so it could be all right.
Lunch was a long-ish and mostly boring affair, punctuated by some discussion of Ben’s difficulty making it to the end of Ender’s Game (the book, not the film adaptation) for his second time. The sink in the kitchen is hopelessly clogged, and even when I mustered up the fortitude to put my hands into the clammy water and to try to dislodge whatever lumpy, water-logged object was blocking the flow, I couldn’t find anything.
So I guess it needs some Drano. But I’m not going to deal with it. So I washed my bowl and spoon over a tepid sink of half-hearted soap bubbles, and then headed back to my desk.
Lab seems slightly dimmer and more subdued without Jen around.
Happy Monday.
I also have the sense that I am going to have a hard time figuring out what to write about today, and I know I’m not obligated to write, but sometimes you like to have that little item on your mental to-do list checked off.
Andy’s class seems to me to be leaving the realms of usefulness, at least for me personally, as it coalesces into the class that I took two years ago.
[obligatory panic break for TWO YEARS AGO?! where’s the time gone?!]
We spent some useful time talking about protecting group strategies – although he was out of town and one of the new professors taught for him, pinch-hitting by reading through the notes at the front of the room and annotating as we went along. It was (surprisingly) a really effective way to learn the material, and there was a level of focus there that is ordinarily absent.
Plus we were treated to quotes like “and now we leave the comfort and joy of the silyl ethers for the pain of the MOM ethers,” and he giggled a lot when he struck himself as funny. Giggling fits will probably never not be contagious.
Since then, we've talked about aldol reactions and their close relatives, crotylations and allylations. Andy was convinced that Diane had done a crotylation, staring her down from the front of them room. “No,” said Diane, laughing nervously, “I never ran one.”
“I ran a crotylation,” I finally said, letting Diane off of the hot seat, and ultimately no conversation even came of the topic, so I confess to being a little bit confused about the need to establish who had run one before.
But now we’re sliding into discussions of total syntheses and these I’ve had before – same slides, even – and I’m not sure the utility of the course is there for me anymore. I think Andy might be sad if I stopped attending class, though, so I suppose it is what it is.
And it is what you make of it, so it could be all right.
Lunch was a long-ish and mostly boring affair, punctuated by some discussion of Ben’s difficulty making it to the end of Ender’s Game (the book, not the film adaptation) for his second time. The sink in the kitchen is hopelessly clogged, and even when I mustered up the fortitude to put my hands into the clammy water and to try to dislodge whatever lumpy, water-logged object was blocking the flow, I couldn’t find anything.
So I guess it needs some Drano. But I’m not going to deal with it. So I washed my bowl and spoon over a tepid sink of half-hearted soap bubbles, and then headed back to my desk.
Lab seems slightly dimmer and more subdued without Jen around.
Happy Monday.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Jen's dinner
I slept in today. I slept in and woke up, too hot and sleep-satiated under all of my blankets, woke up without the tinkle of my alarm going off near my ear, woke up mostly content. I also woke up a little bit congested for the first time since being sick, so I guess this is sort of like the aftershock.
My cough doesn’t hurt anymore, but rattles some congestion deep in my esophagus and sounds like it has some depth. I’m not tired yet today, because I had my fill of sleep.
I drove in to the office today. I drove because I didn’t feel like walking and because it is Saturday and the parking lots are open. The weather is cool and dry – cool being a relative term, as plenty of people would rightly call 28F cold and plenty more would call it warm – but relatively-speaking, as one always must be when talking about the weather, it’s a sort of pleasant cool compared to the more aggressive cold of last night.
Can I just say that for some reason I love when I’m the only person in the office? I just do. It feels liberating.
Last night we celebrated Jen, and today she is on her way to Pittsburgh and her new job. We ate at the Cask Republic. As the name suggests, it is a bar, and as the name suggests, it deals primarily in beer. The beer menu was quite expansive.
The Olympics opening ceremony was playing on a big screen at the end of our mostly private room, and the 24 of us were sitting in two lines down the long expanse of cobbled-together two-person tables. While we were ordering our food, Steve called down several of the tables to me. “Shannon!” he called, “I think you should order the fish and chips!” Michal, who was sitting between him and her beau Santiago, nodded conspiratorially.
“Are you ordering the fish and chips?”
“Yeah, it’s Friday!”
This apparent non-sequitur is a Catholic no-meat-on-Fridays thing, which Steve and the rest of the current or ex-Catholics in the room kindly explained to me in my confusion.
Steve and I have apparently developed a rapport over fish and chips, and I am delighted by this. Steve came out with us when we went to an Irish pub on my birthday for fish and chips and trivia. Unfortunately, we did very poorly at trivia (who knew there were so many muppets? who even knew muppets could be obscure?), and Steve was unimpressed with the fish and chips, which he had also ordered.
“The breading’s too much,” he had complained, “And it gets soggy on the inside instead of staying crisp.” I couldn’t defend the meal (and didn’t need to – I didn’t make it); he was right. Usually his beef is with the chips, which are apparently somewhere between French fries and steak fries. Or possibly bigger than steak fries. He says if I ever come to England, he’ll show me proper fish and chips. Anyway, I didn’t order the fish and chips.
I drank water with my dinner, but Kate and I split two appetizers, one of chicken wings (I think they were supposed to be soy-ginger glazed) and one of pesto macaroni and cheese. When they came out, the plate of chicken wings was piled high – I think we had 12 for $10, which while not exactly a bang for your buck is a far, far better deal than you would otherwise find on chicken wings, which are inexplicably expensive across the board. They didn’t taste much like soy or ginger, but they were crispy and hot and came out with jalapeno slices and a wedge of lime, which I squeezed over mine after verifying that Kate didn’t want it. And they ended up being very tasty. The pesto mac was green and mild and delicious.
We also ordered duck confit salads, mostly because we were both drawn to the apple slices contained therein, and also because I have a thing for goat cheese. The salads came out with everyone else’s entrees, and were warm and piled high with arugula. They also had small grape and probably too much pungent red onion.
I looked down the table at Steve and his fish and chips, which looked oddly dark, and called, “hey Steve, how’s your fish and chips?”
Without missing a beat, he called back, “It’s the worst fish and chips I’ve ever had in my entire life.” Now, to my knowledge, Steve says this every time he has fish and chips in New Haven, so apparently Connecticut keeps besting itself, but this time I was convinced, because he continued by holding up a breaded piece of fish that, well… “look at it! It looks like a poo!”
And it did. I think Ben took a picture of it so there’s a good chance that the picture will never see the light of facebook, but a picture exists to commemorate the moment when I laughed myself into a coughing fit secondary only to the moment when Kate dropped a chicken wing, made a strangled noise deep in her throat, and it bounced off my fortuitously napkin-covered leg to be found moments later having made a home for itself in her purse.
Eventually we even managed to serve the chocolate cake, having badgered Lauren into asking the waitress for plates and forks because they’d diligently cleared all of our dishes. I cut the cake into 24 pieces and sent them down the table on plates with forks. All in all, it was a nice affair, and nicer still when we didn’t have any trouble settling the bill. (I was still glad to have brought cash).
Jen gave everyone hugs as we were leaving, and she informed me that I am now going to have to bear the mantle of the sole lab member in charge of baking duties. I suppose that’s all right. It was a good dinner.
Then I waited in the cold for 20 minutes for a shuttle to take me to the other side of New Haven.
It was a good day, and that is partly why I did not write yesterday. But look: you have 500 extra words to dull the pain. That’s an entire extra entry. That’s 3000 words this week! Hooray!
PS: the cupcakes also went over well. I do feel like Denise might have gotten shafted a bit on her birthday, but Jen did get a job and you can't count on that happening every year like clockwork...
My cough doesn’t hurt anymore, but rattles some congestion deep in my esophagus and sounds like it has some depth. I’m not tired yet today, because I had my fill of sleep.
I drove in to the office today. I drove because I didn’t feel like walking and because it is Saturday and the parking lots are open. The weather is cool and dry – cool being a relative term, as plenty of people would rightly call 28F cold and plenty more would call it warm – but relatively-speaking, as one always must be when talking about the weather, it’s a sort of pleasant cool compared to the more aggressive cold of last night.
Can I just say that for some reason I love when I’m the only person in the office? I just do. It feels liberating.
Last night we celebrated Jen, and today she is on her way to Pittsburgh and her new job. We ate at the Cask Republic. As the name suggests, it is a bar, and as the name suggests, it deals primarily in beer. The beer menu was quite expansive.
The Olympics opening ceremony was playing on a big screen at the end of our mostly private room, and the 24 of us were sitting in two lines down the long expanse of cobbled-together two-person tables. While we were ordering our food, Steve called down several of the tables to me. “Shannon!” he called, “I think you should order the fish and chips!” Michal, who was sitting between him and her beau Santiago, nodded conspiratorially.
“Are you ordering the fish and chips?”
“Yeah, it’s Friday!”
This apparent non-sequitur is a Catholic no-meat-on-Fridays thing, which Steve and the rest of the current or ex-Catholics in the room kindly explained to me in my confusion.
Steve and I have apparently developed a rapport over fish and chips, and I am delighted by this. Steve came out with us when we went to an Irish pub on my birthday for fish and chips and trivia. Unfortunately, we did very poorly at trivia (who knew there were so many muppets? who even knew muppets could be obscure?), and Steve was unimpressed with the fish and chips, which he had also ordered.
“The breading’s too much,” he had complained, “And it gets soggy on the inside instead of staying crisp.” I couldn’t defend the meal (and didn’t need to – I didn’t make it); he was right. Usually his beef is with the chips, which are apparently somewhere between French fries and steak fries. Or possibly bigger than steak fries. He says if I ever come to England, he’ll show me proper fish and chips. Anyway, I didn’t order the fish and chips.
I drank water with my dinner, but Kate and I split two appetizers, one of chicken wings (I think they were supposed to be soy-ginger glazed) and one of pesto macaroni and cheese. When they came out, the plate of chicken wings was piled high – I think we had 12 for $10, which while not exactly a bang for your buck is a far, far better deal than you would otherwise find on chicken wings, which are inexplicably expensive across the board. They didn’t taste much like soy or ginger, but they were crispy and hot and came out with jalapeno slices and a wedge of lime, which I squeezed over mine after verifying that Kate didn’t want it. And they ended up being very tasty. The pesto mac was green and mild and delicious.
We also ordered duck confit salads, mostly because we were both drawn to the apple slices contained therein, and also because I have a thing for goat cheese. The salads came out with everyone else’s entrees, and were warm and piled high with arugula. They also had small grape and probably too much pungent red onion.
I looked down the table at Steve and his fish and chips, which looked oddly dark, and called, “hey Steve, how’s your fish and chips?”
Without missing a beat, he called back, “It’s the worst fish and chips I’ve ever had in my entire life.” Now, to my knowledge, Steve says this every time he has fish and chips in New Haven, so apparently Connecticut keeps besting itself, but this time I was convinced, because he continued by holding up a breaded piece of fish that, well… “look at it! It looks like a poo!”
And it did. I think Ben took a picture of it so there’s a good chance that the picture will never see the light of facebook, but a picture exists to commemorate the moment when I laughed myself into a coughing fit secondary only to the moment when Kate dropped a chicken wing, made a strangled noise deep in her throat, and it bounced off my fortuitously napkin-covered leg to be found moments later having made a home for itself in her purse.
Eventually we even managed to serve the chocolate cake, having badgered Lauren into asking the waitress for plates and forks because they’d diligently cleared all of our dishes. I cut the cake into 24 pieces and sent them down the table on plates with forks. All in all, it was a nice affair, and nicer still when we didn’t have any trouble settling the bill. (I was still glad to have brought cash).
Jen gave everyone hugs as we were leaving, and she informed me that I am now going to have to bear the mantle of the sole lab member in charge of baking duties. I suppose that’s all right. It was a good dinner.
Then I waited in the cold for 20 minutes for a shuttle to take me to the other side of New Haven.
It was a good day, and that is partly why I did not write yesterday. But look: you have 500 extra words to dull the pain. That’s an entire extra entry. That’s 3000 words this week! Hooray!
PS: the cupcakes also went over well. I do feel like Denise might have gotten shafted a bit on her birthday, but Jen did get a job and you can't count on that happening every year like clockwork...
Thursday, February 6, 2014
bake therapy
I missed yesterday, but yesterday I was sick as a dog, so I think I should be excused.
I’m neck deep in baking projects, because Jen’s last day is either tomorrow or Monday (you’d think I would know, but alas, I do not) and I was recruited to bake things for the occasion of Jen leaving or having a job, depending which spin you want to put on it. Two sides of the same coin.
The first ticket on the menu is split with Denise, on the occasion of her birthday, which is also tomorrow: a fortuitous occurrence. Denise specifically requested creamsicle cupcakes, which I made sometime over the summer because I wanted to try the recipe.
The recipe is fantastic, in case you’re wondering, and Denise’s request was echoed merrily and emphatically by the boys. Ben, in particular, was a big fan of the cupcakes. They are really very nice. You put a package of orange gelatin in with a white cake mix, as well as orange zest and substitute some of the water for orange juice. I use real orange juice that I squeezed from an orange, because I already zested it.
I zested the orange with a steak knife. It is primarily because I don’t have a zester, but hang with me here for a minute: it’s actually a great way to zest because you don’t get any of the stringy orange peel bits that the picky eater might pooh-pooh at.
Then the frosting is made with more orange zest, cream cheese, and orange extract (along with the other common frosting ingredients). Altogether, the cupcakes seriously live up to their name and I think that’s cool!
I should really pin this recipe because I always think I have, and then when I go looking for it, I have to search ‘creamsicle cupcakes’ on pinterest. I know, I know, not really a problem. If you look for them, they’re the ones with the adorable little flags stuck in them. Disclaimer: I do not do the flags. No one really cares about the inedible bits.
I used one of the fine mesh strainers that Jonathan got me for Christmas, and it filtered out the pulp and seeds beautifully! In the end, I probably had closer to 1/3 cup of orange juice than ¼ cup as the recipe called for, but I’m okay with that. I adjusted the water accordingly.
Then, when the batter was smooth and pale orange, I put it into the darling little batter dispenser that Laura got me for Christmas, and I have never in my life made neater cupcakes. I probably won’t even have to wash the cupcake pans. Game. Changer.
So now I’m in the process of baking the little boogers, and the first set of 12 has exited the oven. I invite you to imagine what kind of heaven my apartment currently smells like. It is a wonderful smell. I really can’t say enough good about this recipe. I can’t bake more than 12 at a time, though, and that’s an oven limitation because the bottoms of the cupcakes on the bottom rack always get burnt and I can’t be bothered to check on it early, so I just bake them in sets.
Then, tomorrow night, we are having a dinner out in Jen’s honor. It turns out there aren’t that many places in New Haven who can accommodate around 30 people (this count includes significant others), but Lauren found one! So we have a reservation for 7:30 and she asked me if I could make cake.
“Well, yes,” I said, “I’d like to make a cake, but are they okay with that? Since they make food for a living…?”
“Oh,” she said dismissively, “I’m sure they’ll be fine with it. Why wouldn’t they?” (This is quintessential Lauren.)
“Because they make food for a living…?” I repeated, laughing.
Later that day she stopped by and said, “They’re totally okay with it!” She asked for something chocolate, so I’m going chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. In no small part because it is easy and I could probably do it in my sleep.
Just watch. I’m going to botch it terribly now.
I have basically decided that even though layer cakes are more attractive and perhaps impressive, a cake baked in a 9x13 pan has (at the time of counting) two not inconsiderable advantages.
1. If there are 30 people in attendance, it is literally impossible to cut a layer cake into 30 pieces.
2. It is so much easier to travel with a layer cake. Or maybe I should get myself a cake carrier. But the point still stands: I do not currently own a cake carrier.
So in more science-related news, I had my first day on the mass spectrometer today. It was not nearly as exciting as it sounds. I ran about six hours of experiments on it, and found more or less what I expected to find, which means I don’t fail at chemical biology!
Not yet, anyway.
I will not be able to replicate what we did in terms of using the instrument again yet, though, so in order to familiarize myself with the instrument I will need to keep using it. Still, an auspicious beginning.
I saw Candice for the first time in a while (well, outside of group meeting, anyway… she doesn’t really talk that much at group meeting). I had a really nice conversation with her, actually. She’s frustrated with science (aren’t we all?) and also with Andy’s continual absence (aren’t we all?) and talked a little bit about her plans to leave in May 2015 no matter what, to perhaps join the Marines in some capacity, and to have three children.
Candice is much easier to get along with when you’re not sharing space with her, which is kind of sad because she is so very aware of the face that she’s hard to get along with when you’re sharing space with her. But today I remembered why my first impression of her had been so positive: she’s just a very open, friendly person. I was glad to have talked to her.
And then I wrapped up my 96-well plate, stowed it in the refrigerator, and headed back up to CRB to my office, to collect my things and head home to baking therapy!
At the time of posting, I'll have you know, the chocolate cake is in the oven and the cupcakes are out of the oven. Perhaps I'll post pictures and since a picture is worth 1000 words, that will be two blog entries per picture of which I will have absolved myself. That was a badly written sentence. I probably won't do that anyway. But I might still post pictures if the end result is pretty enough.
I’m neck deep in baking projects, because Jen’s last day is either tomorrow or Monday (you’d think I would know, but alas, I do not) and I was recruited to bake things for the occasion of Jen leaving or having a job, depending which spin you want to put on it. Two sides of the same coin.
The first ticket on the menu is split with Denise, on the occasion of her birthday, which is also tomorrow: a fortuitous occurrence. Denise specifically requested creamsicle cupcakes, which I made sometime over the summer because I wanted to try the recipe.
The recipe is fantastic, in case you’re wondering, and Denise’s request was echoed merrily and emphatically by the boys. Ben, in particular, was a big fan of the cupcakes. They are really very nice. You put a package of orange gelatin in with a white cake mix, as well as orange zest and substitute some of the water for orange juice. I use real orange juice that I squeezed from an orange, because I already zested it.
I zested the orange with a steak knife. It is primarily because I don’t have a zester, but hang with me here for a minute: it’s actually a great way to zest because you don’t get any of the stringy orange peel bits that the picky eater might pooh-pooh at.
Then the frosting is made with more orange zest, cream cheese, and orange extract (along with the other common frosting ingredients). Altogether, the cupcakes seriously live up to their name and I think that’s cool!
I should really pin this recipe because I always think I have, and then when I go looking for it, I have to search ‘creamsicle cupcakes’ on pinterest. I know, I know, not really a problem. If you look for them, they’re the ones with the adorable little flags stuck in them. Disclaimer: I do not do the flags. No one really cares about the inedible bits.
I used one of the fine mesh strainers that Jonathan got me for Christmas, and it filtered out the pulp and seeds beautifully! In the end, I probably had closer to 1/3 cup of orange juice than ¼ cup as the recipe called for, but I’m okay with that. I adjusted the water accordingly.
Then, when the batter was smooth and pale orange, I put it into the darling little batter dispenser that Laura got me for Christmas, and I have never in my life made neater cupcakes. I probably won’t even have to wash the cupcake pans. Game. Changer.
So now I’m in the process of baking the little boogers, and the first set of 12 has exited the oven. I invite you to imagine what kind of heaven my apartment currently smells like. It is a wonderful smell. I really can’t say enough good about this recipe. I can’t bake more than 12 at a time, though, and that’s an oven limitation because the bottoms of the cupcakes on the bottom rack always get burnt and I can’t be bothered to check on it early, so I just bake them in sets.
Then, tomorrow night, we are having a dinner out in Jen’s honor. It turns out there aren’t that many places in New Haven who can accommodate around 30 people (this count includes significant others), but Lauren found one! So we have a reservation for 7:30 and she asked me if I could make cake.
“Well, yes,” I said, “I’d like to make a cake, but are they okay with that? Since they make food for a living…?”
“Oh,” she said dismissively, “I’m sure they’ll be fine with it. Why wouldn’t they?” (This is quintessential Lauren.)
“Because they make food for a living…?” I repeated, laughing.
Later that day she stopped by and said, “They’re totally okay with it!” She asked for something chocolate, so I’m going chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. In no small part because it is easy and I could probably do it in my sleep.
Just watch. I’m going to botch it terribly now.
I have basically decided that even though layer cakes are more attractive and perhaps impressive, a cake baked in a 9x13 pan has (at the time of counting) two not inconsiderable advantages.
1. If there are 30 people in attendance, it is literally impossible to cut a layer cake into 30 pieces.
2. It is so much easier to travel with a layer cake. Or maybe I should get myself a cake carrier. But the point still stands: I do not currently own a cake carrier.
So in more science-related news, I had my first day on the mass spectrometer today. It was not nearly as exciting as it sounds. I ran about six hours of experiments on it, and found more or less what I expected to find, which means I don’t fail at chemical biology!
Not yet, anyway.
I will not be able to replicate what we did in terms of using the instrument again yet, though, so in order to familiarize myself with the instrument I will need to keep using it. Still, an auspicious beginning.
I saw Candice for the first time in a while (well, outside of group meeting, anyway… she doesn’t really talk that much at group meeting). I had a really nice conversation with her, actually. She’s frustrated with science (aren’t we all?) and also with Andy’s continual absence (aren’t we all?) and talked a little bit about her plans to leave in May 2015 no matter what, to perhaps join the Marines in some capacity, and to have three children.
Candice is much easier to get along with when you’re not sharing space with her, which is kind of sad because she is so very aware of the face that she’s hard to get along with when you’re sharing space with her. But today I remembered why my first impression of her had been so positive: she’s just a very open, friendly person. I was glad to have talked to her.
And then I wrapped up my 96-well plate, stowed it in the refrigerator, and headed back up to CRB to my office, to collect my things and head home to baking therapy!
At the time of posting, I'll have you know, the chocolate cake is in the oven and the cupcakes are out of the oven. Perhaps I'll post pictures and since a picture is worth 1000 words, that will be two blog entries per picture of which I will have absolved myself. That was a badly written sentence. I probably won't do that anyway. But I might still post pictures if the end result is pretty enough.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
biology
After a long stretch of doing basically nothing, today I set up my first “bio experiment”.
I call it a bio experiment because it involves protein and water and plastic things instead of organic solvents and glass things. It really is more of a biochemical experiment, or, if we’re doing the in vogue things here, chemical biology.
So don’t get too excited. I am just trying to reproduce some (awesome) results that Jake had a number of months ago. I am taking his fragments and some of the protein that was stored at -80*C upstairs and incubating them together to see if the protein will make itself a sticky little ligand.
It was really easy to set up. I guess I didn’t realize, but nothing was particularly difficult. I used pipetters to get exact volumes and sat around doing serial dilutions so that I was only working with a tiny, tiny portion of what we had.
I spent a lot of time with those pipetters, and in a way it’s sort of nice, a repetitive task that’s fairly satisfying at its core, but the arm does tire after a while. After what seemed like an endless series of tasks – check the fragments to be sure they haven’t decomposed, dilute all solutions, let the protein thaw on ice, dilute the protein, plus a little bit of math and establishing a key so that I know what I put in which wells on the 96 well plate.
Eventually I had the plate – I was only using 24 of the 96 wells – all finished, and I capped it off with the very satisfying task of sealing it with an adhesive foil, pressing it down so that I could see each little well as an imprint in the silvery seal. Then Jake and I took the plate upstairs and put it in an incubator at 37*C – or roughly body temperature. It will stay there until Thursday, when we have time on one of the mass spectrometers, and Jake is going to show me how to use it.
It is kind of exciting, and it is definitely nice to feel legitimately productive, even if I’m just currently working on reproducing results.
Then I set up those same reactions in my hood without any protein, dissolving them up in toluene and putting them into little glass vials (the organic chemist in me sings!), rigging up a clamp to hold four little vials stirring merrily away, and I lowered them into an oil bath set to 110*C (the boiling point of toluene). I wrapped the tops with Teflon tape, because the solvent will want to boil but the container is closed.
Usually we don’t do that, heating a sealed container, but these reactions are so tiny that we don’t have a reflux condenser small enough to attach (and I have four reactions, so the logistics would be difficult). I am hoping that they do not explode. It would be especially nice if they didn’t explode and also worked, but you can’t have it all. So I guess we’ll see.
I am almost certainly getting sick and it is manifesting itself in a weird sore throat (much lower than usual, almost feels like a catch in my chest) and fairly severe muscle aches. I have done a decent amount of work today, so I think I might head home and crawl into bed with a cup of tea. Sometimes, life is hard.
It was really easy to set up. I guess I didn’t realize, but nothing was particularly difficult. I used pipetters to get exact volumes and sat around doing serial dilutions so that I was only working with a tiny, tiny portion of what we had.
I spent a lot of time with those pipetters, and in a way it’s sort of nice, a repetitive task that’s fairly satisfying at its core, but the arm does tire after a while. After what seemed like an endless series of tasks – check the fragments to be sure they haven’t decomposed, dilute all solutions, let the protein thaw on ice, dilute the protein, plus a little bit of math and establishing a key so that I know what I put in which wells on the 96 well plate.
Eventually I had the plate – I was only using 24 of the 96 wells – all finished, and I capped it off with the very satisfying task of sealing it with an adhesive foil, pressing it down so that I could see each little well as an imprint in the silvery seal. Then Jake and I took the plate upstairs and put it in an incubator at 37*C – or roughly body temperature. It will stay there until Thursday, when we have time on one of the mass spectrometers, and Jake is going to show me how to use it.
It is kind of exciting, and it is definitely nice to feel legitimately productive, even if I’m just currently working on reproducing results.
Then I set up those same reactions in my hood without any protein, dissolving them up in toluene and putting them into little glass vials (the organic chemist in me sings!), rigging up a clamp to hold four little vials stirring merrily away, and I lowered them into an oil bath set to 110*C (the boiling point of toluene). I wrapped the tops with Teflon tape, because the solvent will want to boil but the container is closed.
Usually we don’t do that, heating a sealed container, but these reactions are so tiny that we don’t have a reflux condenser small enough to attach (and I have four reactions, so the logistics would be difficult). I am hoping that they do not explode. It would be especially nice if they didn’t explode and also worked, but you can’t have it all. So I guess we’ll see.
I am almost certainly getting sick and it is manifesting itself in a weird sore throat (much lower than usual, almost feels like a catch in my chest) and fairly severe muscle aches. I have done a decent amount of work today, so I think I might head home and crawl into bed with a cup of tea. Sometimes, life is hard.
Monday, February 3, 2014
resolution: success
It is
February 3.
That means
that I have completed the one-month blogging challenge. The 500 words 5 times a week challenge. If my math holds up, that’s roughly 11,500
words. And that’s not too shabby.
Some
observations (as a good scientist does…):
It is really,
really hard sometimes to write 500 words.
Sometimes I am in a slump and feel like literally nothing has happened
and maybe rehashing things from my past that I’ve rehashed about 8 million
times doesn’t really do it for me anymore.
Sometimes I have a bad day and don’t want to stew in it. Sometimes I’m hurting for material, man!
When I do
have something to write, it’s hard to exercise brevity. I think that the bite-sized stories are
probably more palatable to the casual reader, but I have sometimes found myself
nickel-and-diming to try to stay below 750 words or so. Well, I think that only happened once, and it
was good for the entry in the end.
It has been
a really nice exercise in general to have an attainable goal and to accomplish
it. I think there were only one or two
days where I found myself slipping my blog entry in just before the clock
struck twelve.
I have
written more in the first month of 2014 than in the previous three years
combined, and only in 2010, when I was experiencing a lot of undergraduate
angst, did I write more in the entire year than I did in this first month.
Some of the
entries that I wrote are real stinkers.
They are boring and uninspired.
But I think that the rote nature of writing every day, whether or not I
felt like I had material, made me better equipped to write about the material
that I did have. And that is kind of
nice.
I expect
that I will not keep this up as a five-times-a-week thing, but we’ll see how
often I can make it happen. Writing has
always been a good outlet. I’m doing it
now, even if only as a sort of reflection on the past month. Kind of cool to have “achieved” a new year’s
resolution. Maybe if more resolutions
were achievable, we’d stick to them better.
After the
monstrous, momentous Syracuse-Duke game, the Super Bowl was a total
letdown. I did feel kind of bad about
it, as we sat around the television at Kate’s apartment. We stayed cheerful, and there were chicken
wings and chili, guacamole and buffalo wing dip, salsa and celery and cupcakes
in blue and orange that said ‘GO BRONCOS!”
I wore a
tank top under a blue sweater, a tank top I bought at Walmart on a whim for
$3.49 with bold, thick horizontal stripes alternating orange and a sort of
off-white. I figured the Syracuse colors
were repurposable.
Then the
game started, and the safety off of the botched snap basically set the tone for
the whole game. By the time the evening
ended and the Vince Lombardi trophy was awarded, I was playing a little
half-hearted solitaire on my phone while the Broncos fans around me yelled in
agony.
But hey – at
least my team won. Hoping not to jinx us
for our Notre Dame game tonight…
And it’s
always fun to get together for the Super Bowl, anyway.
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