Scotland’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.
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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.
No Good Deed
Standard
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
StandardMy 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.
Remember
StandardIt’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
StandardNow 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
StandardYou know I had to commemorate the holiday where everyone is supposed to wear green.
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…
Quote for the day
StandardEveryone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
–Erica Jong