Soon the stress will be over. One paper, one final, and one hopefully nice premiere.
Things in St. Louis to do before I die. Other cities, too. Realized that I’ve only done one out of the five. Well, two, but I don’t remember the one, so I don’t think it counts. Where has the time gone?
Slightly freaked out about the orgo paper due tomorrow. Am hoping to leave early so I can catch the tail end of time at the chemistry library, which, in wonderfully ironic fashion, closes at 5 on fridays instead of the 10 pm it closes on every other day of the week. bugger.
Author: etoiline
I hate not knowing if I’m doing this right
StandardWhen you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them; bend them with gentleness and time.
–St. Francis de Sales
Yes, well, my contradictions and difficulties could cost me points on my orgo lab grade. boo. So you’ve heard me gripe about the orgo lab before, how we have to identify some unknowns, a hydrocarbon, an amine, and a carbonyl. So the hydrocarbon we just had to say, yup, this is a hydrocarbon, and that’s it. The other two I have narrowed down to two choices, and supposedly the extra spectral data we got last week was supposed to definitively identify one compound. Well. Sort of. I *think* I know what I’ve got, but I have (heh) contradictory evidence that says, no, really you don’t. Bugger. And I still have to write this paper, whether I have the right answer or not. House of cards, if there ever was one. All balancing on the hope that I choose the right set of data to believe.
At least I have the really cool Making of Kingdom of Heaven to keep me happy. Reading it while the soundtrack is playing is just too good for words. Better than orgo lab, anyway. (and in case you were wondering…the orgo test went…okay. Better than the last test, which was almost an utter bomb, but if I did better then most of the class probably did better. Guess we’ll see.)
It’s almost as good
StandardOur task is to make ourselves architects of the future.
–Jomo Jenyatta
Last night I got the Kingdom of Heaven soundtrack, and listened to it three times. It’s either very popular or didn’t ship enough, because the first place I went to didn’t have it, so I was forced *hah* to go to Borders, and even they only had one copy. Then of course I was forced to get the only (slightly beat-up) copy of Empire magazine that has OB on the cover, and forced to get the Making Of KOH book that is so pretty. Forced, I tell you. But all day yesterday I was anxious to leave work and get to the store so I could have the soundtrack. For those of you who know me, I love my movie soundtracks, I probably have more of them than regular ‘popular’ music. This particular score is very good, reminiscent of ‘Children of Dune’ and, oddly enough, ‘Shakespeare in Love.’ Both of which are quite stellar, so it’s nice to have something going for the movie already. It’s almost as good as seeing the movie. Of course, nothing can top seeing OB’s face on the movie screen, larger than life. Let’s hear it for a 30-second love scene! 😆
I do hope that this goes well. The soundtrack is great, but of course that means nothing for the movie, really. It’s Orli’s first starring role and I do hope that he carries it off well. Good luck, my man 😉
Orgo test tonight. Eep. Wish me luck. Then I get to go home and start writing the orgo lab paper. Sigh. Next week, I keep telling myself. Next week, there will be no more orgo lab and there will be Orlando. Yes. Next week.
Three years and counting…
Standard
yes, it’s true, this site has been around for three years. Amazing. I remember that I had just gotten back from the outdoor conference at Emory (where I won gold! Which I still find amazing.) and finished my last class, and I said, dammit, I will have a website, and it will be etoiline (dot) com, and yea verily it was so. I’m sure you remember how I had totally forgotten that it was my parents’ anniversary. And last year I realized it was Kate’s birthday. So many happy things going on today!
unfortunately I will have to spend most of the day studying. I might try to head over to the track to see the finals of some events on the track (ironic, isn’t it, that this is the weekend of conference, right here at WU?) but then again, I might not.
Spend the evening at Kate’s after spending far too much time at lab (which I’m still worried about) and catching some of the prelim events at the track with Alex. At Kate’s there was good food and friends (some of whom might see KOH with me! Yahoo! And re: KOH, have more pictures. A layout is forthcoming, I hope!) and Mystery, Alaska, a hockey movie that was surprisingly good and had rather sweeping music by Carter Burwell of A Knight’s Tale fame. Will have to put that on my list of soundtracks to get on Tuesday 😉
Wish me luck with studying. I shall need it. And I do hope that I remember to spend time with orgo lab! Dear Lord help me through this week, please.
Earth day and other things
StandardIt’s the 35th Earth Day today. Recycle something. Reuse something. Er, Reduce something. *laughs half-heartedly at the organic chemistry joke she just made* Orgo is driving me mad.
One more Saturday lab, then write the paper for Check-out a week from tomorrow. Orgo test next week, which not quite ready for, and might not be before next week, as friends coming into town. Yay friends. Boo not studying. Thank goodness test is on Wednesday and not Monday.
Orgo final May 11. Thank goodness no orgo lab final, as would have been the day after Kingdom of Heaven premiere. KOH’s soundtrack out Tuesday, shall have to pick that up along with Rob Thomas’ solo effort.
So, it’s the parents’ anniversary, Kate’s birthday, and yours truly’s website’s 3rd birthday on Sunday. Awww. Also, sunday being the full-moon day, BPAL will offer Flower Moon. Will have to see if I remember to check it out. Could be interesting. Will be busy. Hope I can see some of the UAA conference meet this weekend, as it’s held at WU this year. Strange to think that three years ago I was in Atlanta and running the best races of my life, becoming conference champion in both the 100 and 200 m dashes, placing 3rd in the 100 hurdles, and helping the 4×1 team win gold and nearly make it to nationals. Wow. What a difference three years makes. *cough* *lazy bum*
Still worried about orgo lab. I guess I’ve done what I needed to do, but hopefully will get all needed things done tomorrow. These last few weeks I’ve just felt like I didn’t know what I was doing. And I have no idea what to write this paper on. It will be a bitch. And since it’s due three days after the aforementioned orgo test, it will be doubly bitchy. Wish me luck.
I just have to keep telling myself that there are good things coming my way, in the form of friends and new music and Orlando Bloom, but man, it’s hard when there’s the stress of orgo/job/apartment worries. I’d really like to know where I’ll be in a month.
…weird
Standardso I’ve determined that for some odd reason AIM doesn’t want to let me change my buddy icons on my laptop. Boo. I might have to reinstall it, see if that works. Weird.
Another weird thing, on saturday morning as I was leaving for lab, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye under the tire of a car parked near my apartment. I looked back and saw it was a rather big something, but I didn’t have time to take a closer look. The car was still there when I got back from lab, and this time I did take a better look: someone had run into the rear driver’s side bumper, really hard, hard enough to drive some of the bumper over the rear driver’s side wheel and another part of it under the front driver’s side tire. That’s what I’d seen earlier. You could tell it had been done there because there was all sorts of debris around the car, and it looked like it had been hard enough to bump the car up onto the (admittedly low) curb. When I came outside the next day someone else was looking at it and the person who lives in the house next door said that it had been a drunk hit-and-run, but it wasn’t his car. I wonder whose it was, and if they knew about it over the weekend, because it didn’t get towed until yesterday afternoon. It was a nice car, too.
if I had money, I would
StandardScotland’s Lochs and Forests Trail | Adventure Travel & World Travel That link is for a HORSEBACK RIDING trip through SCOTLAND. OMB. *wibble* You have no idea how many levels that appeals to me on. Sigh. If only I had an extra $2000 lying around. Sheesh. I barely have enough to even think about seeing Big River at the Fox (which I really really want to, but no one can go with) much less a trip like that. Even my (very small) tax refund is already earmarked for a (working, non-squirrel-eaten) bike. Sigh.
I would pick up the Apple Symphony Jam Pack so I could lay down some nice tympani beats. Yeah. Also get *some* keyboard that would have MIDI input so I could play directly to the computer. I’ve got this lovely GarageBand software but it’s so gosh-darned hard to “play” piano on a computer keyboard.
Want more?
Things can change
StandardSo today (yesterday, if you want to be technical about it) Luigi got back from his mini vacation (wish I had one of those) and not only did he give me an official form for submitting another paper, but after talking to him about the aforementioned performance ‘U’ he gave me a new evaluation with all “Satisfactory”s. Yay! Hopefully that will help my chances at getting another job at the university. I really want to stay.
I feel slightly proud of myself since I finally got my Easter present in use. My mom had gotten some risers for my bed at that home, so there would be room to store stuff underneath, and I expressed the thought that I would like some for that reason and lo and behold, about a week before Easter my dad packed me off for the apartment with some. He jumped the gun a little bit, but he’s cute that way. So I finally set my bed up on them (having, of course, to fix the bedframe along the way). I didn’t want to take the whole mattress set off the frame so I probably made it harder on myself than it needed to be, but yes, they’re up. Damnit now I need to stay in the apartment since I got them set up and can store stuff more efficiently.
Got a message in reply to my month old post at the newsgroup about the roommate sitch, which was a little odd, and it was a guy, which I’m leery about, but there’s the whole, I don’t know if I’ll be here when it comes time to renew, but yeah. I want this apartment! I like it here. I really don’t want to have to move, even if my room at the ‘rents place looks quite nice now.
Also got a message from a random Jewish boy from Tickle.com which was kinda cute. He started reading Moonstone. I’m almost embarrassed by the stuff that’s up there, since it’s all mostly stuff that was written when I was 13, even if it was revised four years ago. It’s not *bad*, it’s just not on par with what I wrote in a hurry last November for NaNo. One of these days I’ll go back and try to fix it, but I should at least finish one big writing project before I try to overhaul the beginning.
And I’m sure you noticed the lovely KOH banner atop the posts. Clickity-click! You know you want to! I’ll get my butt around to making a new KOH layout soon, in time for the premiere, I hope 🙂 Lots of good choices now that the publicity kits are going out.
I wish…more than anything…more than the moon
StandardI’m quite happy since I finally saw the musical ‘Into the Woods’ performed onstage again. Alas I wasn’t it it, more’s the pity. But the WU Performing Arts Department’s performance of the musical was quite good. The sets were minimal but well-done, most of the singing was just as it should be, and the Princes were great. I was hoping that it would be good, since I remembered Into the Woods fondly from when it was performed at my high school freshman year (I was almost in it, until I realized that I didn’t have enough time to practice the piano music to be in the orchestra, man that was a blow). But happily it lived up to my expectations. Yay.
I’m not happy because today’s experiment in lab just left me drained, and I didn’t finish some of the things I had to do. It’s a three part lab, where we have to identify three unknown organic products. At least I have two weeks to finish it, and I know what class my compounds are in, but jeez. I still have to find melting and boiling points and do a Tollen’s test, which might be pretty since it’s supposed to indicate the presence of an aldehyde by precipitating silver on the sides of the test tube (yes, actual silver, the metal) but I don’t think I have an aldehyde, so it might not be. boo. And my Hinsberg test while not a bust was quite ‘flaky’ to quote my professor. sheesh. I hope it ends up working.
nothing all that interesting…
Standard…just a few bits of goodness.
Free php and perl scripts has a good php guestbook. The cgi one I’ve got has been spammed lately (only a little, compared to the comment/trackback spam I get on the blog, thank goodness for MT-Blacklist) but it would be nice to have a better (php) book.
Find out how fast you type, from Beccary. I think I might put this little module on my site, sometime…
I got things set up on our new account for the family website. So hopefully (before my mom’s show this weekend, anyway) all will be well and I can stop thinking about that and start thinking about orgo test and report, resume, new job, new roommate. Perhaps not always in that order.
I did find out that my job actually lasts until May 30th, so that’s a very good thing…and the first paper to ever feature Jennifer Shew as an author is now out in the Archives of Internal Medicine. If you’ve got access to medical journals, why don’t you check it out? Luigi Fontana is first author. Still makes me feel weird that while my name is on the paper and I did do the substantial job of data acquisition, I didn’t actually write the paper. it’s a little odd. But exciting 🙂 I don’t think I’ll ever get an actual copy of the journal, but I do have the pdf. Yay for the electronic age.