No Good Deed

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Wicked by Schwartz, Chenoweth, Menzel

Wicked the Musical will be staying in Chicago for a while, which is nice, since that means that it will be potentially easier for me to get up to Chicago rather than Broadway. Though I still want to *go* to Broadway, and see many shows. But alas, it’s much harder to drive to New York than Chicago. Who wants to go with?

They’re here

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My cousin and aunt got in ok yesterday. Good deal. I wish I could have spent more time with them, like take-the-day off time, but alas that’s the way things go. I spent most of the time in front of a computer trying to get into the FTP for the family websites, so we can get away from the hosting provider we had to this new one. But for some reason it doesn’t like the password we supply, and I don’t know why since we picked the darn password ourselves. Sigh. Hopefully it can be fixed and we can move on out. Sigh. Aunt Carol did bring some of her original art for me to put up in the apartment, which is nice. Though I almost don’t want to put anything up now since I’m not all that positive I’ll be able to afford the apartment in two months. Boo. But yay for original art.
In case you’re curious. here’s a load of info on Daylight Saving Time (no ‘s’ on the end of Saving, btw, that’s proper) Educational exhibits about time, clocks, daylight saving, and calendars Since I was looking up the time in the Pacific time zone, that’s what I found. Yay. Who knew there was a whole government website devoted to time?
Wouldn’t it be nice to have this? Keeping warm, and all that.

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Remember

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It’s fitting that even though this is the first week of spring, today has been dark and rainy and will continue to be, since he loved the rain. A year ago today my uncle Johnnie died. I still can’t believe it’s true. It doesn’t seem possible. But it is, and it’s so sad to think about. So mostly, I try not to. But there’s always that little niggling thought in there. Every time I pass by the hospital where he died, I remember, every time I visit my cousin or my aunt at what I still think of as ‘his’ house, I remember. I know that he’s so much better now, where there is no pain and much love, but I miss him. I pass by the cemetery that he’s buried in every time I visit my parents, but I’ve only been there once. I’m not even sure where his grave is. God. It’s hard.
Family is coming in today. I hope we can get things taken care of, like the website, which has, unbelievably, taken this entire year to work through. Hopefully we’ll get it all worked out. Also hoping to get off a little early from work so I can see them earlier. There’s nothing I’d like so much right now than a hug from my family.
On the upside, Luigi asked if I could stay on at work until May, which is a good thing, though I still need to find another job. Haven’t heard anything from the person I talked to last week, but I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Here’s hoping that I find something soon.

maybe this week will be better

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Now there’s a Lotr Trival Pursuit-DVD Edition, which could be fun. Alas it’s $50 which is more than I want to spend on anything right now.
Corey and Aunt Carol are coming into town tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll get to spend lots of time with them. Thank goodness I don’t have to do a TGF-Β this week…that would make it near impossible to have free time. Ah well. It’s funny how yes, I’m supposed to work eight hours, but take a 7 hour assay and add to it the dilution, acidification, neutralization and just plain thawing time and there is a great chance that I would be late to class that night. I guess the only thing for it is to go in early. Boo. But that’s in the future.
This past weekend was good, though I once again waited until the last minute to write my conclusion for orgo lab. I’ve really got to stop that. It’s not cool to try and function on four hours sleep. And my knees would probably hurt less if they were straight for a few more hours 😉 But after lab (and a nap, of course) I went to Blueberry Hill for dinner with Kate and Molly and Cat and Tony, which was nice, and then we headed over to Tony’s place for a game of Trivial Pursuit (yay for tying the entry together, right?) and basketball. Not that I had any interest in the game, but the WVU/Wake game was pretty good. The one coach had a very blazing blue tie on. I miss basketball sometimes. Not that I was ever any good, but it sure was fun to shoot and make a basket, when it just swished in there perfectly…
yesterday I fixed my parents’ internet…don’t know what happened, but somehow the Modem control panel just went poof! Yeah for working again. That poor computer. It still works just fine, but it connects SOOOO slow to the internet. But yes, working is good. I feel bad, though, that I can’t donate my old laptop to my parents’ cause, as the monitor just doesn’t work. Boo. I guess if that was your only computer, the extreme amount it would take to repair the monitor wouldn’t be that bad, but I don’t think it’s worth it. Perhaps I should try to convince them to get a Mac Mini, since we do have an old monitor sitting in the basement from the old desktop that never got fixed. Ah well. I guess we’ll see.
Tomorrow is a very sad anniversary, so I will talk about it then. Not now. Now I shall return to reading my very good book (total escapism here) while waiting for the ELISA to incubate. Yay.

not just Irish eyes’ll be smiling

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You know I had to commemorate the holiday where everyone is supposed to wear green.
Happy St. Patty's Day!
Hope you all have a pint of green beer. Or dye your hair green like my cousin did.
So this morning on the news I saw a guy I knew in college…he was in BME like me, but he was always the odd duck. Did I never tell you about the guy in my freshman physics class who, after a certain incident, decided that skirts were more comfortable and going shoeless was a norm? Once in said physics class, during the spring semester, he was warm and decided to take off his jacket. Then a few shirts. He apparently had a bag full of clothing because he was going to a theater class later. Then more clothes came off. Finally he ended up sitting in the chair, hopefully not with his bare bits right on the seat, but wearing only a coat. Someone thought it would be funny to toss his clothes around the lecture hall, which it was, and the entire class was watching this little drama aside from the teacher. Who was totally oblivious, I might add. Every time the laughter would get too loud, he would finally turn around, but no one would move. Clueless.
Someone else thought it would be hilarious to leave early with all of this guy’s clothes. So when class got out, we all walked outside to see his clothing up in a tree outside the hall. Luckily he had a skirt for that theater class, and he wore that. Like I said, an interesting duck.
Anyway, his father was on the Today Show this morning, and he’s apparently a famous cancer researcher. But you can see where he got it from; his father’s apparently the very model of an absent-minded professor, who occasionally forgets whether a red light means stop or go. It was kinda cool to see where he went after Wash U…Johns Hopkins. Wow. He’s got a brother, and they introduced the two of them by saying one is a budding biomedical engineer and the other is studying neuroscience or somesuch. But they showed the brother as the BME son, which I laughed at.
Nice to know that someone from WU in BME is doing well. Wish things were going so for me…

now is not the time to want things

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FYI: this is a long ramble about the state of Jen…feel free to mosey right past it.
I really, truly want this. It’s a 61-key MIDI controller that can be used for input into GarageBand, part of iLife, which comes standard on new iBooks. I like the program already, but I really want a method of recording music onto the computer (aspirations of songwriting, don’t you know), and this keyboard looks like the way to do it. It’s only got 61 keys, yes, but it’s got an octave shifter so theoretically you could get the whole enchilada on a smaller keyboard. Of course, the one song that I will have memorized for the rest of my life (thanks mom) does in fact take up the entire keyboard, so I wonder if you could program a shift while you’re playing? Hmm. Of course, from reading the previous entry you know that I won’t have a job in a month, so ’tis bad to covet things now. I do have a tax refund coming soon, once I do my taxes, but a) who knows how big it will be and b) I really ought to save that for whatever else life sends down the road, since it seems I’ve had quite a bit of unexpected ‘episodes’ occur recently. And I want to get a new bike as well, especially since they’re forcasting an entire summer of $2/gallon gas. Ugh.

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Irony sucks. (Was: ready for the weekend)

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ATTENTION! If you’re in the St. Louis area this weekend, stop by the Affton Arts & Crafts fair. My mother will have a booth, and you’ll really like what she does. Pick up an Easter gift for someone.
After that nice public service announcement…how much things can change in such little time. The end of the entry was written before I found this out…

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to everyone’s favorite DADA teacher

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JK Rowling says that today is Remus J Lupin’s birthday. And he may not be *your* favorite Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, but he is mine, so there.
Did I mention how orgo is just not fun at all? I really must do homework. Boo.
And here’s a gripe…for HIPAA regulations (privacy rules) the med school can’t allow POP mail anymore, since it’s not secure. So all access has to be from the web. The whole reason I like my Outlook Express is because all my accounts are in one place and I don’t *have* to get on the web, I can just open up the one program and save the hassle of clicking through. Ah well. I understand the need for privacy, but *sniff* I like my convenience. Just another instance of me being spoiled, I suppose.
I should go home and study. I will, I think. Shortly.

the mice stole my ramen

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And here’s another chronicle in the ‘Jen’s life is weird’ saga.
But first, the happy news that the cover of HP 6 is out. *love* So only a month till the next LKH book, two months to KOH, and four months to HBP. And most of the year before the GOF movie, but that’s ok 😉 And if you know what all those mean, you’ve read this blog too much, hah.
Sooo, on with the wackiness:
Sunday afternoon I got up late because I could (though I should have gotten up early and started studying orgo, as usual) and headed into the kitchen to make some lunch. In the course of doing that, I realized that a canister of stuffing that was on the bottom level of the shelf next to the fridge had lost its lid. So I went to search for it, and realized that said lid was actually in pieces beneath the shelf. It took me a moment to figure out what that meant, because I noticed that the bulk pack of ramen noodles that has been sitting under the table in the kitchen for over a year (remember the grocery strike here in town, anyone? honestly, it’s ok, they have so many preservatives they’d probably last years more) periodically replenished, and minding its own business, was EMPTY! I mean, ten or so packages were just gone. At first I thought, well, maybe my roommate was exceedingly hungry and she ate all of them, which I of course immediately knew was silly. So I looked around the kitchen, just to see if they’d somehow migrated somewhere else, and lo and behold, I see a package sticking out of the crevice between the wall and the dishwasher. I go to investigate, and sure enough, the package has been chewed, and there are several more wedged back there!
Unfortunately the crevice is terribly situated so that it’s nearly impossible to put anything in there to clean it out, but I’ll try. So yes, some animal had managed to pull every single one of the crinkly plastic packages out of the box (where they were squished and partly under plastic, I want to add), across the wooden floor, shred some of them up, and stuff them in their little hideyhole, all without waking me up. Jeez. Greedy little buggers.

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