And exhale.

Things have been pretty crazy & hectic lately.

The bulk of the craziness was finding out about 2 weeks ago that I was giving a talk to my entire department. That's a big deal on it's own, but making it more difficult/time consuming were the facts that this is the first talk I've given on my grad school research outside of my research group, and the fact that it had to be understandable to a VERY diverse chemical audience. It had never occurred to me how difficult it is to give a (good & complete) talk to a general audience in a very short period of time (only 20 minutes). I almost think the standard 50 minute timeslot would have been easier. While I was in ok shape to give the talk when I first found out about it, I still found myself working 12-16 hours days for a stretch to try to tie everything up for that protein system. The talk was actually one of two fellowship competitions my department has. I didn't win (travel money in this case), but I gave a good talk and didn't make an @$$ of myself in front of my entire department. So I'm happy. :)

One funny story from the past couple of weeks - one of my friends and classmates (finally) passed his oral the week before last, so there was the usual bar outing afterward to celebrate. There were promotional folks from Budweiser there organizing a quarters tournament. Not being a huge drinker, logically I'm also not particularly into drinking games. Several people from our group signed up in pairs to play. One guy, Joel, signed up to play with a friend who hadn't yet arrived from teaching lab, figuring he had time. Well, they got called and she wasn't there yet, so I played for her. We won. Not only that round, but the entire little mini-tournament. Joel's a frat boy, so not a huge surprise, but me? Winning a quarters tournament? Who knew? And before you start assuming Frat Boy carried me, I'll have you know I held my own. Yes, Joel definitely got more "quarters" (actually poker chips) in than I did, but I definitely got my share in too. We got Budweiser t-shirts for winning (which I'm actually wearing today hehe), and supposedly they're going to call us to play the winners from other mini-tournaments at another bar in town. We'll see. :)