Good Riddance

A few weeks ago Tiff (of dissertation date fame) asked if I missed Tucson at all, and while I do miss somethings about Tucson, I DO NOT AT ALL miss grad school.  She was pretty surprised that I felt that way.  Another friend from grad school has said the traumatic grad school memories faded really quickly, and while I don't completely cringe when I recall grad school at this point (not quite 6 months out), I still don't miss being a grad student.  Not even the tiniest bit.

Friends who finished a few year ahead of me said I'd miss the flexible schedule and the ability to do work of my choosing.  Honestly I haven't had this problem.  This probably depends upon one's actual job, but I have enough flexibility that things like getting to the post office or the doctor's isn't a problem.  As far as being able to do whatever work interests you, I think this may only be an issue if you actually enjoy research in the first place.  By the end of grad school, I HATED research.  So much of it is so obscure that its only significance is in the mind of the researcher, and I absolutely despised the never-ending nature of research.  I hate that a project is never actually done, even after years - there is always something else to do, some other direction in which to take the research.  I am so glad to have work with a much shorter time frame for completion, and the ability to work on something different often!  If I don't actually like that project, it really doesn't matter, because it's short-lived.  I've written plenty about the crappy aspects of grad school, and frankly the perks (flexibility, ability to work on what you like - which is actually not entirely true) don't come close to making up for them.

The biggest thing I miss about Tucson and grad school are the people.  I miss cooking with E, hiking with Dallas, procrastinating/chit chatting with people in the group downstairs.  I was very lucky to already know a couple of people in/near Baltimore when I moved here, so there are a few people to go explore and hang out and celebrate stuff with, but I still miss my friends from Tucson.  There are a few other, relatively trivial things I miss, but the biggest thing is the people I spent the past 5 years with.  My co-workers at my actual employer are great, I like almost all of them a lot, and the people at BFU are mostly nice though totally insane.  (Seriously, getting out of academia = good decision.)  Anyways, I mostly like the people I work with, but they're not friends the way my grad school classmates were/are, and probably won't be even with time.


Aside from missing friends, the short-term nature of my job (both the actual work and the fact that it's only a 2 year position), the normal hours, and significantly improved salary all contribute to my not missing grad school in the slightest.

Making even harder to miss grad school is actually being able to see Boyfriend more than every 6-8 weeks.  I see him almost every weekend now, and it doesn't involve hundreds of dollars or spending all day on a plane!  It's wonderful.  It (and he) makes me incredibly happy.  That alone makes it hard to miss grad school.

Sweets for my Sweetheart(s)

Happy Valentine's Day!  With or without a boyfriend (previously it's always been without) I like Valentine's Day.  I'll always take an excuse to get dressed up and go out for dinner with my girlfriends.  And you can't be surprised to hear I'm a fan of all the ridiculously adorable Valentine's-themed desserts out there.  This year I sent packages of goodies to Boyfriend, my little brother, and one of my college roommates (I would have sent a package to my other college roommate, but she only eats 3 food groups now, none of which are butter or sugar.), and the cookies just turned out so freaking cute that I had to share them.

I made these chocolate cookie sandwiches from Sprinkle Bakes - a lot of her her desserts are more involved than I'm generally looking for, but man are they gorgeous.  But these cookies were just the right amount of involved AND they used up every last sprinkle I had!

I also made these conversation heart cookies from Annie's Eats.  The sugar monster inside of me loves conversation hearts, and the cookies are just so cute.  And it was fun to throw in a couple "specialized" ones.  This was my second attempt at decorating with royal icing, and I've decided it's a lot of fun (though rather time consuming).  Please ignore the icky-looking butter prints on the paper towel and consider how delicious and buttery it means these cookies are.

For my labmate.  My labmates got the extras that didn't get mailed.

I also made these yummy toffee blondies from Lovin' from the Oven.  I didn't take any photos since they taste much, much better than they look.  Also I substituted regular chocolate chips for the white chocolate chips because white chocolate is icky.

Sorry to post this so late, but I wanted to wait until the packages got to their destinations before posting.  Hopefully they all beat this!

Signs of a Good Boyfriend

I had a bit of a rough time in the Grand Canyon.  I mean it was a good trip, and I'm glad I did it (not to mention proud of surviving it!), but between puking the first night and the worst/most blisters I've ever had in my entire life I wasn't always a happy camper.

The night before we hiked in, we were wandering around the South Rim, and I noticed this rather funny warning image:

Now the joke was totally on me, because after a super long day of hiking, with the last few miles/hours of it in full-blown 100+ degree desert sun, I totally puked not even 5 minutes after we got into camp.  In my defense, I found this image funny for the super realistic, waterfall like stream of puke - not so much the fact that the guy is puking.  The NPS's signage could use some updating in general, but whatever, joke's clearly on me.

Anyways, you may be wondering how all this is relevant to the title of the post, but I'm getting to that.  While I was puking up everything I'd eaten the previous approximately 24 hours, Boyfriend very kindly rubbed my back (my hair was already up), and when I was finished, fetched a bucket of water to wash it all away.  As if that wasn't awesome enough, it didn't even occur to him until after I'd finished barfing that a picture would have been funny.  Sweet, no? :)

The other source of major brownie points earned on this trip relates to those awful blisters.  I swear I got more blisters on this trip than I've had in my entire life put together.  Really.  We hiked out Sunday morning and my toes still hurt too much to wear actual shoes.  Every night/morning and occasionally along the trail required a fairly lengthy process of popping blisters and covering various parts of my feet and toes in moleskin, bandaids, and tape.  Unfortunately the blisters on the backs of my heels were hard to both see and reach at the same time.  The last night Boyfriend was kind enough to perform some minor surgery on the parts of my feet that I couldn't reach:

Cute, no?

Almost Like Fall

Flagstaff was lovely and lots of fun. The weather was perfect - just about 80 degrees in the afternoon and mid 40s overnight, a perfect breeze, and a wee bit of rain - and there was lots of time spent cooking or just lazing around.

Even the 3 1/2 hour drive up was fun - E and I were highly entertained by J's "data collection" for efforts to find me the perfect boyfriend. As J put it, "We're trying to match Anne on 22 levels of J's compatibility." This mostly consisted of J asking a series of questions and me answering. Sometimes the questions were accompanied by "scenarios" for clarification. The funniest questions were probably the ones for which J needed me to further explain my answer. At some point E and I were puzzled as to in what sort of order these questions were meant to be, to which J replied, "We're taking a top-down approach to finding a boyfriend." My comment? It's like proteomics! E thought the funniest part was my reaction to the boxer/briefs question, and I'm not going to elaborate other than to say man-thigh is not attractive! I'm not sure what he's going to do with all the information he collected. He claims he's going to find my a boyfriend (what I requested for my birthday), but I'm assuming that if he actually knew anybody suitable to introduce me to that he would have already done so.

Saturday after biscuits and gravy for breakfast we wandered around Coconino National Forest and Sunrise Crater National Monument. It was cool to go from pine forest to volcanic crater to open desert within about a 30 minute drive.


On the way back to E's parents' cabin we saw the most amazing rainbow I've ever seen. A double rainbow, where you could see the entire arc of both rainbows. It was crazy. Unfortunately I wasn't far enough back and my lens isn't a wide enough angle to catch the whole thing.


E's mom made another feast for dinner - ribs, baked beans, and cole slaw. E and I made this caramelized onion focaccia that I've been drooling over ever since I found the recipe months ago. It was delicious, and actually quite healthy - no eggs or butter in it.


Sunday morning I went for a run, and didn't die nearly as badly as I thought I would running at 6800 ft. And I'm glad I ran, because the feasting continued with a delicious pancake breakfast. We pretty much spent the rest of the day lounging around and baking. We made a ton of cookies and apple tarts. I was super excited to discover my favorite apples were in season (honeycrisp!), so I think there may be lots of apple dishes in my near future...

In all it was super nice to get away for a bit and not think about school. It's even cooled off a bit in Tucson. This morning was the first time in probably 9 months that I was chilly walking to school in a tank top. C'mon fall! You can do it! Come to Tucson!

Wedding in the Woods

I went to wedding #3 of the year this past weekend. My old roommate, Lisa, married Joe in a seemingly random little clearing in Sitgreaves National Forest. The wedding was lovely and laid-back, much like Lisa and Joe, and it was super nice to have an excuse to go up to the mountains to escape the heat in Tucson.

My roommate Liz has been living in and working near Alpine, which is only about an hour away from the wedding site, so I drove the 5+ hours up to Alpine on Thursday night so I could hang out with her Friday. All last week it kept feeling like it should rain in Tucson, but tragically we haven't had any monsoons yet in town, so it's still been ridiculously hot (105-ish) plus the humidity normally associated with monsoons. Even though driving windy, hilly roads sucks in the rain, I was definitely glad to hit it. Rain is always welcome relief from the heat out here. The rain wasn't nearly as bad as I've seen past summers, and made for some pretty awesome rainbows.


We camped Friday and Saturday nights (it must be a fun wedding if camping is a totally feasible option right??), and spent some time Saturday wandering around the area. I'd never been to this part of Arizona before, and it turns out it's really pretty.


The wedding was beautiful and simple. It was so exciting to see Lisa and Joe get married. They went on their first date about a month after I moved in with Lisa (and other roommates, including 2 of my 3 current ones), and while I've been happy for all of my friends who've gotten married this year, there's something really neat and awesome about witnessing the relationship from the beginning. I guess it's reassuring to think that that random first date really could be with Mr. Right and lead to marriage.


As I mentioned, the wedding itself was in the middle of the national forest. Nobody would have found this on their own, so everybody met at the reception site and caravan-ed up to the site. It was quite funny to see all the guests traipsing through the woods like some strange renaissance procession.


At dinner those of us from the old house sat with a friend of Lisa's from JVC and one of her friends. They were super nice and fun to talk with, and conversation was definitely not lacking. But at some point we all overheard the funniest off-the-wall remark, and we all instantly looked at each other intrigued. One of Joe's brother's was at the next table, and said that apparently if you drink 40 non-alcoholic beers that you would blow a 0.08, making you legally drunk. Pretty quickly we started to ponder the feasibility of this, our first thought being simply with the time it would take you to consume 40 beverages your body would have certainly started processing any alcohol. Then we wondered if you even could drink 40 beers. The beers we had in front of us were 12 oz...with some rough conversions we realized that 40 12-oz beers would be nearly 4 gallons. Even if 40 non-alcoholic beers contain enough alcohol to make you legally drunk, you'd never actually be able to consume that volume. Amusing idea, but (sadly?) not feasible...

At the reception Lisa's friends from college sang her a song by the Old 97's - a band I guess she introduced them to. This song is super sweet and I may or may not have listened to it on repeat today...

On the drive home, I pulled over in Salt River Canyon a couple of times to snap some photos. The canyon is pretty impressive, and the very slow, very windy drive was much more interesting during my daytime drive home than my nighttime drive up. Crazy that this view is only about an hour and change from the lush green of the forest.

Quote of the Day

Ok, more like conversation of the day. I went to college with Brick - we studied abroad together in France, and now he's getting his PhD in French.

My earlier gchat status: A 0-0 tie is really the most disappointing and ridiculous sports result possible.

Brick: IT'S SO FRENCH

Me: hahahahaha

Brick: And Gignac is a HUNK. Probably not your type though.

Me: He's ok. I just googled him.

Brick: See I still know your type.

Me: He's attractive, but not something I'd do a double take for. So what do you think my type is out of curiosity?

Brick: Cute dork -because you like to talk a lot and you want a man who actually can intelligently say "I agree" or "No I don't." You want him to be slightly helpless to the point where he likes it when you cook but won't die if you go out of town for two days. He will be cute. He will be tall too.

Me: Haha yeah, my tall friends have yelled at me for dating tall guys.

Brick: See.

Me: But I gotta look out for any hypothetical children I may or may not have.

Brick: You are your mother's daughter. See! You are a great mom already.

Me: So do you want to see the current crush? See if he fits the mold of what you think I'm looking for?

Brick: YES.


Ok. BRB. Judging.


OMG SO GEEKY CUTE


No comment as to the accuracy of what Brick thinks I'm looking for in a guy...

TWIMS - The mostly non-business end of things...

Ok, this is going to be much more convoluted than the other conference post. Sorry!

Travel on both ends was smooth and uneventful, so not much to say on that front. Both Albuquerque and Salt Lake City get big thumbs up for having free wi-fi in their airports though! And Southwest gets props for not charging me an arm and a leg to check a bag. I really hate lugging all my stuff through the airport...

Our hotel was pretty flipping sweet. We had a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom suite for 4 of us, so no hassle over who's showering when. And extra perk, breakfast and dinner (even if we usually didn't make it back for dinner) were included as freebies with the room rate. :)

The first sign of ridiculousness was when I woke up Monday morning and look out the window. What did I see?? SNOW. EFFING SNOW. Unless you live in the southern hemisphere, snow during the last week of May, even if it's not accumulating, is completely unacceptable!! Even if it didn't accumulate on the ground, it accumulated on ME! By time we got to the conference center (a 15 minute walk from our hotel), I had a layer of snow all over my jacket. I realize the below picture of the snow from our window isn't all that convincing, but I promise. It was snow. I may live in the desert, but I remember what it looks like still.

After the morning oral session I ran into my friend Martin - he's finishing up his degree in the lab in Scotland that I visited about a year and a half ago. Since he was at the conference alone I insisted he hang out with our group (while giving him the option not too if we were too scary - an option he declined and may have regretted later in the week!). It took him a second to recognize me at first - probably a combination of having a different haircut, wearing glasses, and being dressed up - all things he definitely never saw while I was working in the lab in Scotland. But as soon as he did he told me I looked "right sharp", which was not only super cute because of it's British-ness, but very nice because I'm pretty sure I really just looked like death on toast at that point in the week. (The use of phrases such as "right sharp" is going on my "pro" list as far as post-doc-ing in England is concerned!)

Monday night we had a group reunion dinner - everybody at the conference who's ever worked for VW or in her lab comes. It was cool to meet people who pre-date my time here - people I've heard about and whose papers I've read. As usual there were shenanigans to be had. :) One of my Chinese labmates doesn't hang out with us socially very much, and he's pretty quiet in general - although way funny when he does converse with us. My other labmate Ashley had told him before the conference that he HAD to drink with us during the conference, and he agreed that he would drink one night. Well before this occasion it seems he'd only had beer, because he received an education in the great tradition of taking shots. He had his first, and second, shot that night. VW was not only present for this "education," but condoned it. We've been seeing a whole new side of the queen lately...and I have to say we like it!

The hospitality suites were an experience unto themselves. All the big instrument companies have suites - free food, free booze (!), lots of random freebies and ridiculousness. Perkin Elmer had a stroke of genius and had a photo booth, with lots of hats and glasses and other silly accessories to use.


Bruker had the best freebies of the conference hands down. The first night we were there we noticed these awesome champagne flutes with blinking LEDs in the base. The awesomeness can not appropriately be put into words. Traditionally in the VW lab, we have champagne to celebrate defenses and successful oral exams, so logically we needed a full set of these glasses for the lab. They only had a set number of them for each night, and they ran out before we actually got there the first night. Egged on by VW herself, we found ourselves scrounging around, swiping abandoned glasses off tables. After three nights of hitting up the hospitality suites, we collected a set of 20 glasses. They're now clean and lined up on the shelf in my office, waiting for the next oral or defense.


Here's two of my labmates and me enjoying the Waters hospitality suite. Waters also had blinking glasses, but pint glasses rather than champagne flutes. (I know my hair's pulled back, but that's my new haircut btw...bangs...Not entirely sold on keeping them yet...)


Martin hung out with us in the hospitality suites a bunch, and introduced us to his friend Ross. Let's just say he's super nice and cute, and that it's really quite tragic that Manchester, England is so freaking far from Tucson, Arizona. (I may have sent one or two less than 100% sober texts the night we all went out without him - hence the alternate definition of TWIMS...)

Tuesday afternoon my former labmate and mentor, Chris, and I escaped the conference for a bit to go check out Temple Square. It's nearly impossible to get out of the square without somebody (likely a pair of girls in ankle length skirts) accosting you asking if they can tell you about the Church of Latter Day Saints. I could never be Mormon, and nothing against them, but man do they have some weird history. We saw the Lion House, where Brigham Young kept most of his wives and children. It looks like a dormitory. They had a free tour of the house he actually lived in with I guess a select wife or two and a few children. The finishings in the house were very nice, but it was just creepy and weird feeling. You could totally tell everybody on the tour really wanted to ask questions along the lines of how many wives?? and how many children??! But nobody dared ask anything at all due to the extremely scary, angry looking woman bringing up the rear of the tour. She seriously looked like she would stab you in your sleep if you so much as made a peep. At the end they have you fill out a little comment card with your contact info, and you can request that a missionary come talk to you about LDS, Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon... Did I put my contact info? Absolutely not. I put E's boyfriend J's contact info. I'm very hopeful he'll be getting a gift from Utah in the mail...

The social highlight of the week was the outing to a dueling piano bar around the corner from the conference center. (Very similar to the Big Bang...) When we got there around 9 we were nearly the only people there, but it was still fun because we were a big enough group to be rowdy and make it fun. Things got plain ridiculous when the hospitality suites closed and a ton of people from the conference came to the bar. A bar completely packed with (mostly drunk) mass spectrometrists is one of the funnier things to experience. :) There were several Bruker top hats floating around the bar (the other excellent freebie they had), and the inventor of DART may or may not have bought some of us several drinks and then been disappointed that we couldn't go play beer pong in his hotel room after closing time because there was no way to get beer at that hour! Martin came out with us, and I think may have been a bit scarred by the experience...dueling piano bars are not known to be the most um, polite, settings! He said it was definitely an "experience" but that he enjoyed himself.

One final little anecdote - my labmate Erin was walking back to the hotel one night, past the bum park across the street (see the snow picture), carrying a carryout box with leftovers from dinner. A woman asks Erin for the food, and she willingly hands it over. She's about to take a step away, when she realized she had left her gum stuck to the inside lid.

Erin: Um, I just remembered I left my gum stuck to the lid.
Bag lady, with look of utter disgust: EW.

The lady held the box open at arm's length while Erin removed her gum from the lid. Apparently beggars can be choosers after all.

Rant

So my roommate, and not that it should matter, but my kind, beautiful, fun, funny, smart, interesting, overall-awesome roommate, just sent me the following text message:

Ok I just had a coworker say, "I can't believe you're not married, what's wrong with you?"

Now before you tell me that you're sure this person meant well, let me tell you that comments like this NEVER, EVER leave you feeling good. Worst case scenario, they leave you wanting to jump off a cliff. Best case scenario, they leave you thinking, "What's wrong with me?! What the hell is wrong with YOU???"

I was at a wedding a couple of months ago when my friend's mom asked me if I had a boyfriend back in Arizona. When I said no, she asked why not. And not even as a rhetorical question, she actually looked at me waiting for an answer. I've never been on the ball enough to actually give a response beyond mumbling "I don't know" and sitting there awkwardly. While I'm fuming afterwards I mull over various inappropriate responses along lines such as, "Well my girlfriend and I..." or "I prefer to sleep with as many men as possible..." Maybe someday I'll come up with a polite response that still effectively puts people in their place.

I really, really wish people would think before saying crap like this. It's just so thoughtless and rude. There's no reason why she (or me, or any of the other 20-something single women who have heard this) should be married! Maybe she just hasn't met the right guy yet, or maybe she doesn't want to get married. There's nothing wrong with being single! Or maybe she was married, and widowed young - wouldn't you feel like schmuck then?? Yes, I would personally like to be in a relationship, and if/when I find the right guy, get married and have a family. But not every woman wants that or should want that. I know I'm not perfect, but just because it hasn't happened yet for me, or maybe won't happen, doesn't mean something is wrong with me.

Ugh. I really wish people would get over the idea that women should be in a relationship, should want to be in a relationship, and must be seriously flawed if they aren't. And if what they're really thinking is, "This girl is really cool, some guy would be really lucky to be with her," then they need to find a better, non-offensive way to say it!! I know I'm really defensive about this, and I probably shouldn't let this bother me so much. But it really irritates me when people say crap like that.

Alternate post titles:

WTF?!
Think Before You Speak!!
What is wrong with people?!
People Suck
Ugh

My brain might explode.

One of my officemates is sick. Like there's an open bottle of Robitussin sitting on his desk. If you're that sick, GO HOME! I do not want you here. Nor do any of the other dozen or so people who work in our lab. The Queen (aka VW, our advisor) will be the first person to tell you to get the hell out of here (in much more polite, motherly words and tone of course). I don't want whatever you've got, nor do I have time to get whatever you've got. LEAVE.

I went to a graduate student speed dating tonight. I wasn't really expecting to legitimately meet anybody interesting, but I was absolutely expecting a good story or two. I was sorely disappointed. There were a couple of undergrads who had the balls to show up. If you're 22, and nowhere near done with your bachelors, and you don't have a particularly good reason for that, I'm not interested. Call me a snob, but I'm not. Especially when I see that your pants are belted around your @$$ and I can see 6" of your underwear. The only other guy of note was from the same department as one of my former roommates. He was very nice, but had I met him on the street, I would have SWORN he was gay. That's totally fine if you're gay, but as a heterosexual woman, if I'm wondering whether or not you might be gay, I don't want to date you either. Sorry.

The talk I'm giving to my entire department is just over a week away now. I'm starting to be rather stressed about it. Hopefully that won't be a lasting feeling of stress and just a passing, come-and-go feeling of stress. This will be the first talk I've given in graduate school on my research (other than group meetings, which are a totally different ballgame). It's good and bad that it's to a VERY broad chemistry audience. So one major challenge is making what I do comprehensible to people who have no idea what I do without dumbing it down (too much). So as I dig through my data to put this presentation together, I'm discovering that my results are even more interesting that I initially realized (yay!), but I'm also discovering a lot more work to be done (what else is new?) and some questions/results that we can't fully explain. On one hand, it's not really a problem because there's always more to be done. Good research leads to more research. And my biggest irksome question doesn't detract from the big picture of what I'm trying to do (thankfully). If it's an issue next week, it'll be because there are people in the department that are hugely skeptical of how valid gas phase protein measurements are. That at least is an argument I encounter regularly (after all, life happens in solution). What scares me more is the more nit-picky (although possibly valid) argument I KNOW I'm going to face at the national conference at the end of May. I know I have some time before the end of May, but I'm pretty sure this particular question isn't going to be resolved by then. I could be wrong. If I get a poster for that conference, odds are I'll go unnoticed. But because I work on something that nobody else in the world works on, and because people have been waiting for results to follow up my group's initial results in this area, odds are also quite good that my abstract will be selected for a talk. I know I should be excited about that prospect - after all, it's good if people are excited about what I work on, and a talk is a lot more prominent and puts me on people's radar for when I start looking for post-docs/jobs. It's just a heck of a lot more stressful. End rambling.

I'll leave you with this. I'm paranoid about a lot of random things. One of them is locking myself out of my office/lab when I'm here alone late at night. Let's hope that paranoia keeps me from actually doing it. :P