Travel FAIL.

Ok people, listen up. It's time for you to learn from my mistake. I was meant to fly to Amsterdam from Boston last night. I'm still in Boston.

The lesson for you is this: double and triple check the passport and entry requirements for whatever country/countries your travel plans may include. Especially if they are countries you intend to arrive in/leave by air. I don't care if it's a friendly country that Americans travel to all the time, if it's a European Union country, hell even if it's one you've already been to with no issues.

When I went to Australia last fall (2009), I needed a visa. Now when I think of visa, I think of when I had to go to the French embassy and apply for a visa to study there for the year. As an American tourist going to Australia, visa actually just means silly-income-generating-scam for the Australian government. It was a super easy, $20, apply-online-and-be-instantly-approved deal that existed in the virtual world only. I didn't get anything beyond the standard entry stamp in my passport. But I never would have known about it if my roommates hadn't gone to Australia the spring previously. When I think of countries for which I might need a visa, I think of mostly Asian countries. Not friendly, English-speaking countries that Americans travel to all the time. I went to New Zealand on the same trip and didn't need anything at all. I had another friend who didn't discover she needed a visa for Australia until she tried to check in for her flight. Fortunately she has a spiffy phone and could get herself one on the spot and continue her trip with no problems.

My problem was not with a visa - I don't need a visa to go to the Netherlands. However, the Netherlands requires visitors to have a passport valid for 3 months past the end of their visit. So even though my passport doesn't expire until January 29th, 3 weeks after the date my itinerary showed I intended to leave, I couldn't go to the Netherlands. (Not by air travel anyways...) A passport that is valid beyond the actual trip isn't something I ever would have thought to worry about. Honestly, what meaning does an expiration date have if the thing in question isn't good up until that point??? I could possibly see if I didn't have booked travel indicating intention to leave prior to the expiration date, but seriously people, I had a plane ticket to leave well before my passport expired.

What further baffles me about this particular instance - neighboring EU countries don't have such a stipulation. In theory (if it wouldn't have cost $4000), I could have flown into Belgium, and then walked, driven, or taken the train to Amsterdam. I've walked and driven over EU borders before. 99.9% of the time, a customs station doesn't even exist anymore. The year I studied abroad, I had my passport checked exactly one time while traveling by bus, and exactly one time by train, both times on the Czech/German border.

Now that I'm stuck (Delta was kind enough to give me credit for my flight to use however I like within the next year), I'm hearing that some countries (Mexico being one) require a buffer period as long as 6 months. So your passport that you think is good for 5 or 10 years, really isn't. DOUBLE CHECK. TRIPLE CHECK. The US State Department, travel guide books, travel agents, and other countries' tourist information sites are all resources that should have entry requirement information. Be paranoid. I wasn't and it cost me. Ugh.

Santa & His Reindeer

I know I've been talking about my sister a lot here lately, but seeing as I've got a few more days at home still, I'm going to warn you now that I'm probably not done.

She hung the stockings this year, and below you'll see a photo of the holders we have (yes, one reindeer is missing its antlers, but that's not the point).

Notice anything off? Isn't it kind of odd that santa's leading the way? And that the reindeer aren't set up to pull his sleigh?

This is what my sister insists is the right order of things. That way, the reindeer don't fart in Santa's face.

From me to you

You may have noticed that my sister is hilarious. And ridiculous. So as a Christmas gift to you, all of my imaginary readers, I'm sharing two huge gems from my sister.

This is the voicemail she left me over a year ago now:



And this is the gem she left me on my birthday:



I made her watch these videos for the first time when I got home last night. She was torn between laughing hysterically and denying that she ever said about half of the content.

When my brother laughed at her over the birthday voicemail, she justified it saying, "What? It's not like I could have jumped out of a cake dressed like a stripper! So I had to leave her that voicemail!"

And with that folks, Merry Christmas!

Eclipse

Here's my best shot from the lunar eclipse the other night:


For no telephoto lens or tripod, not too shabby. Even without those it was a good chance to practice - see what I could get with different shutter speeds and ISOs. I tried to get more shots once the eclipse was closer to totality, but the reduced light meant I needed a longer exposure, especially to capture the red hue...and well...since I'm really awful at standing still, this is about the best I could get:


Unfortunately at the darkest point of the eclipse we had pretty heavy cloud cover (for Tucson), and it was late enough that I wasn't going to stand around hoping for a clearing.

Aside from more clouds than I would have liked, the weather was great. It was warmer than usual - even in the middle of the night in my pjs and a hoodie I wasn't cold. Based on the amount of chatter I could hear, I think almost half my neighborhood was out to watch. Shortly after the eclipse started I walked around the corner to Sky Bar (in clothes, not my pjs), thinking maybe they'd be broadcasting a telescope feed. Amusingly, but not really surprisingly, it was packed, so I bailed on that idea since I wasn't really feeling like noise or a crowd by myself at 1 am on a Tuesday morning.

I think the most interesting thing I learned about lunar eclipses, thanks to Wikipedia and miscellaneous other stuff on the internet is why the moon looks like it does during an eclipse. It made perfect sense that you can still see the moon during an eclipse because due to refraction of light by the earth's atmosphere. Apparently if we didn't have an atmosphere no light would reach the moon, but if we didn't have an atmosphere we'd have bigger problems than not seeing the moon during an eclipse. The moon looks reddish during eclipses for the same reason that sunsets appear reddish - the longer red wavelengths are more likely to pass through the atmosphere than the shorter blue wavelengths which are more easily scattered. Apparently, the more particles are in the air - say from a volcanic eruption or weather systems (that are conveniently located around the edge of the day/night border?) the more wavelengths will be absorbed and the redder the moon will appear.

P.S. I love campus when the undergrads are all gone. It's so quiet and peaceful.
P.P.S. Why does my motivation always seem to leave for vacation before I do??
P.P.P.S. If anybody's ever wondering what to get me, say for Christmas, I think these are super: http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/kitchen/e684/

Angel Farts

A friend of mine from college is currently teaching high school chemistry. Yesterday marked the first time he had a student cry. Now he's a super, super nice guy, but I'm honestly surprised he'd never had a student cry before. I think most of my classmates here have had students cry. I'm pretty sure that my 99%-chance-of-failing-but-must-get-an-A-for-med-school freshman cried on me my junior year. But whatever, he's one of the nicest guys and best teachers I know. And certainly by the end of the semester his students should know that. Anyways, he's telling me how he'll make you work for your grade and that students (and people in general) need a dramatically better understanding of basic science. His summary of the situation:

I can't handle anymore "CO2 emissions are clearly not a problem because CO2 is made from angel farts which is why we have double-rainbows after the rainstorm" kind of science logic.

Amen.

Battle of Pocket Sized Geekiness

Little Sister: i gotta go clean my room

Me: thanks :) [When I come home and she has to share her room with me is one of few events for which she'll clean her room.]

Little Sister: you're welcome

but

i really

can't focus on research

until

my room is clean

soo

that is a problem

Me: what research?

Little Sister: we the people [history class project]

Me: oh

Little Sister: we're supposed to be emailing [history teacher] over break

Me: ew

Little Sister: yeah

you know what she got us for christmas

it was so cute

i think its my favorite present so far

Me: um, historical figure bobbleheads? i dunno

Little Sister: a wallet sized constitution/declaration of independence

and a wallet sized bill of rights

and she was like

the greatest gift anyone can give you

is the gift of the constitution

Me: but what about a wallet sized periodic table?!

Little Sister: i have that too [um, I know that, I sent it to you]

but i have to say

i like history

a lot better than chemistry

Me: lame

Little Sister: and now

if i get arrested

i will have an immediate reference to my rights [oh good]

ok well i'm going now

bye

National Cupcake Day!

It's National Cupcake Day! Any and all cupcakes. Believe it or not, there is actually a separate National Chocolate Cupcake Day (Oct 18th) and a National Vanilla Cupcake Day (Nov 10th). Considering I have a separate label just for cupcakes, you've probably noticed I love them. So today you have no excuse - go get yourself a cupcake!

How to Kill Time between Spectra Late at Night

• Pull capillaries
• Watch 4 episodes of Eureka
• Finish assembling your little sister's Christmas gift
• Email French host family
• Send labmate birthday someecard (Happy birthday Ashley!!)
• Twiddle thumbs
• Send various friends pointless someecards
• Print reviewers' mostly positive comments for paper that got rejected anyways. Think about revising paper.
• Get a latte from the student union. Have entertaining chat with undergrad student worker involving numerous misconceptions about graduate school.
• Make ridiculous to-do lists
• Do dishes
• Send little sister facebook message
• Stare off into space

Holy Pyrex!

A while ago I was doing dishes, when I heard a really strange sound. Kind of like dropping a bunch of beads or something on the floor. I didn't see anything unusual, so I looked in the oven, since K8 had something in there. And this is what I saw:


What the heck? I thought pyrex was supposed to be more or less indestructible?? I mean yeah, you go too fast from hot to cold and it'll do that. But it was just sitting there. I want a new dish pyrex!

Wanna see my fish tank?

On the way back from Albuquerque, I noticed this sign (not my photo, unlike the Continental Divide, I didn't know this was coming to be ready to stop for it, and this really wasn't a very stop-able section of I-25):

Speeding by at 80 mph, I'll admit the only words that really caught my eye were VERY LARGE ARRAY. I'm also going to go ahead and admit that I found and still find this incredibly funny. It turns out that this is a very spiffy (and legitimate) radioastronomy site, but in my super mature mind, it just sounds SO dirty. Similar to how I imagine "protonate" sounds to my college roommate. Hey baby, wanna come and see my VERY LARGE ARRAY?

Which brings me to a couple of sort of related stories that really ought to be shared.

Freshman year of college, during welcome week, they had a seminar all about sexual health and safety - date rape and such. That's where they gave every freshman a rape whistle, which I (and many of my friends) still have actually. I went to this with a bunch of the girls from my floor, and a couple of boys from the 3rd floor of my dorm. One of these guys had gone to an all-boys, Catholic school, and was VERY conservative. Quite possibly the funniest part of the entire experience (except from the part I'm getting to, of course) was watching him squirm through the entire presentation, extraordinarily uncomfortable and embarrassed. I'm pretty sure any mention of anything related to sex would have made this guy uncomfortable, forget when sitting with a handful of girls.

Anyways, the woman giving this presentation, is trying to convince us that guys will say just about anything to get you back to their room, and that their intention is to have sex no matter how unrelated whatever they just said. The example she gave? If a guys asks you if you want to come see his fish tank, he really means, come back to my room and have sex with me. This instantly became a standing joke among the entire freshman class. You could walk through any freshman dorm, and find some variation of, "Hey baby, wanna come in and see my fish tank?" or, "Large fish tank inside," written on the dry erase board on any number of doors.

The other story is from one of my college roommates. She works on a college campus. I don't remember the exact setting, or all the details, but they were looking at sexual health videos for one reason or another. One video was to encourage condom use, and it presented a scenario in which you (a female) have gone home with a guy (whom it seems you've just met at the bar, apparently we're ignoring the poor decision you've already made), and you're trying to figure out how to tell him you want him to wear a condom. What does the video suggest you say? "I think you'd look good in ribbed."

Here's where I take a page out of my sister's book, because I don't know what to say about that besides O.M.G. I laughed hysterically over that with my officemate, and again at home with my roommates.

Why is sex so damn funny??

Sandia Mountains

The day after Thanksgiving I went on a light hike with Brittany and her family in the Sandia mountains, on the east side of Albuquerque. If you recall, we woke up to snow Thanksgiving morning. Most of the snow melted that day, but in the mountains there was still a bit to be found, including around some prickly pear cacti!


I'm still hoping to get a shot of snow on a saguaro, but snow on any cacti is pretty entertaining. Tangent - both the pinkish bulbs and the green pads of the prickly pear are edible. I realize that plant doesn't look so great - summer is when they're really "in season." People make all sorts of jellies, candies, and drink mixes out of the pink fruits, and the pads (de-prickled of course) are delicious grilled and put into fajitas, or chopped up with corn, beans, and tomatoes in a salad. We usually get the pads in our CSA share a couple of times in early summer.

We stayed pretty low - hiking with a baby in the cold is only a good idea for so long. There's a trail all along the ridge line of the range that's probably pretty cool. Here are a couple shots of the Sandias, first the sunny side of the mountains:


And the shady side - you can still see a bit of snow:


Apart from the bit of snow, pretty standard looking southwest, but still good to get out and hike - especially the day after a Thanksgiving feast...

Seminar Notes

Yesterday I went to a seminar from a faculty candidate - we're trying to hire a biochemist and a biophysical chemist (I think there might be a third position, but I'm not sure). I'm assuming this was a candidate for the biophysical position, as he is a theoretical chemist. Not gonna lie, I don't have a whole lot of use/patience/interest for/in theoretical "chemistry." If you combine it with experimental data, ok. It has some value as support or motivation for experimental work, but in my mind means just about squat on it's own, especially when you say stuff like this:

"...transition states only a theorist could love."

"...the theory works really nifty swell."

"...which goes to show that in our country money can buy you anything, including an article in Science." [Apparently some company R&D division had an article in Science that I gather contradicted his conclusions.]

"If somebody held a gun to my head and told me to pick out the important vibrations by looking at a structure, I'd make sure my affairs were in order." [Ok, so this isn't completely absurd scientifically, but who says that?? Especially during a job talk. Actually, I'll tell you who. Somebody with a Napoleon complex who thinks he's a lot funnier than he is.]

And my favorite:

"I'm way too shy to show you these [experimental] results, but let me assure you it's working."

Seriously?? Right there you've just lost any credibility. You know it's bad news when I spend the seminar writing down the completely ridiculous stuff you say. It's like I'm back in gen chem writing down Chuck gems like, "now give yourselves a temporary partial lobotomy..."

Continental Divide

On the way to Albuquerque Wednesday afternoon, I passed this, just west of Deming, NM:


I first noticed this when I drove the opposite direction on I-10, when my Dad helped me moved to Tucson in 2007. Now, I don't know about you, but when I think about a continental divide, I picture the ridge line of a mountain range, or at the very least, the crest of a hill. However, in southern New Mexico, it looks like this:


Pretty frickin flat. Does anybody else think that's at least a bit funny? Maybe next time I'll stand by the sign and pour out a bottle of water to see what happens.

P.S. Blogger tells me this is my 100th post! Woohoo!

The Cat's Meow

Actually the cat's lap. In assembling a literature presentation for yesterday's group meeting, I came across pretty much the greatest paper I've ever seen in Science: "How Cats Lap: Water Uptake by Felis catus." I have no idea how this got into Science, but it's brilliant (in a completely hilarious way).

The reference:
Reis, P.M., Jung, S., Aristoff, J.M., Stocker, R.; Science, 330, 1231-1234, 2010.

Did you know that there's a scientific definition for licking and lapping? And that they're not the same thing? And that the frequency of lapping can be predicted based on the mass of the cat?? Fascinating stuff I tell you.

You need to read this. If you don't have access and want to read it, let me know.

I'm a dime.

I haven't talked about my sister here in a while, so you might be wondering what she's been up to. She's mostly been freaking out about school. Here's our latest conversation (via facebook chat, of course):

Me: hi

Little Sister: hey

Me: how're you?

Little Sister: mehh

i suck at french

legit

Me: anything I can help with?

Little Sister: nope

unless you can make me remember

french

in general

Me: nope, sorry

Little Sister: soo many verb tenses

regular future conditional imparfait subjonctif condition plast plus que parfairt or w/e

TOOO MUCH

my brain is exploding

i just embarrassed myself for a solid hour with her [Duf, the same French teacher I had for 4 years] after school

Me: i'm sorry

Little Sister: yeah well

whatever

she still loves me

ish

i was like i feel bad you have to put up with me

and she was like i don't mind you

you actually try

which i'm glad she still thinks [this is key in school...]

Me: hahahahaha

i'm kinda amused that your teachers find you so lovable

Little Sister: whaaat

you don't think i'm lovable?

why wouldn't my teachers love me

Me: sure i do, but i'm your sister

Little Sister: i'm a dime

Me: you're a dime? what's that supposed to mean? [Here's where I realize (again) that I'm old, when my labmate has to explain to me that "dime" is some new slang term from some hip hop song.]

Little Sister: i'm a 10

in every aspect

i'm just awesome [Never lacking in self-esteem, this one...]

Me: oh. i thought maybe you meant to say you're a gem

Little Sister: whatever i said i meant

i do everything with intent

Me: even if it didn't make sense?

Little Sister: umm yes

because it obviously did make sense

you know...innovation...that's why my teachers love me

or they just pity me

like my current f in pre-calc

Brrrr

For Thanksgiving I went to visit my friend (and former labmate) Brittany in Albuquerque, which is about 200 miles north of Tucson, and at a considerably higher elevation (5300 ft vs 2400 ft). It was cold. So cold that we woke up to this Thanksgiving morning:


Not seeing snow very often, and never in Tucson (although you can occasionally see snow on the tops of the nearby mountains!), I was pretty excited. As long as I don't have to shovel it or drive in it, I love snow.

It's been cold all over the southwest lately, not just Albuquerque. Before you make fun of me, let me tell you it's been well below freezing the past few nights, and was 26 degrees when I walked to school this morning. After living in Tucson for 3 1/2 years, that's freaking frigid. We'll usually hit freezing less than a dozen times/year, but usually much later than this and only very late at night. January is usually the coldest time of year here. But this early cold snap is good practice for Christmas break right? Not looking forward to being cold for nearly 3 straight weeks...

Even though it's been super cold overnight, the minimal vegetation, moisture, and cloud cover makes for HUGE temperature swings. Even though it was 26 this morning, the high this afternoon was 60 degrees. And we're likely to get back down to freezing again tonight. The desert is a strange, strange place.

Hm. What next? Part III

So a while ago, I explained why I'm quite sure I don't want to be an academic, and then I wrote a bit (ok, a lot) about what I think I want from a job. While I have only minimally narrowed down my options, I'm feeling somewhat less overwhelmed at the thought of deciding what to do next, and even have a plausible "front runner." As I'm sure that you really love reading my stream-of-consciousness wandering thoughts, here are some thoughts on various still-in-the-running options.

"Industry" seems to be the most obvious alternative to "academia," however that's still an incredibly broad and vague descriptor. The subcategories that I can see in this (at the moment) include:

• large "manufacturing" companies (stuff like Proctor & Gamble or General Mills)
• large pharmaceutical companies (Merck, Pfizer, etc) or "small" pharmaceutical companies
• chemical and/or chemical equipment companies (Sigma-Aldrich or Fisher Scientific for example)
• bio-tech

I'm sure there are pros and cons to all of these types of companies, and I have to admit I don't have many specific thoughts as to whether or not I'd like working for them. Lunch with VeryBC was really quite helpful in getting an idea of what kind of career path and projects I might expect. It didn't leave me super gung-ho to work for that sort of company, but it certainly didn't dissuade me from it. One upside of working for a really huge company could be job stability - if your project gets cut for whatever reason, assuming you don't suck at your job of course, there is much higher likelihood of being able to keep your "job" by transitioning to another team or project. Another bonus in my mind is a large company is more likely to have many locations world-wide...in other words travel opportunities.

Working for a pharmaceutical company (especially a huge one) seems like the epitome of "working for the man" as far as chemistry jobs go, and I'm not really sure why that is. It's not any more profit- or product-driven than almost any other company. One such company sent a recruiter in about a week ago, but unfortunately the "informal Q&A" session he held wasn't very helpful. They only currently have one PhD opening, and he spent most of the time talking about that one specific position (only 2 people out of about 12 were close enough to graduating to apply) and flipping through the corporate slides he had. A pharmaceutical company sounds like a fine option, I have nothing against it. I just don't know much about it and the visiting recruiter didn't give a whole lot of insight into what the pharmaceutical industry is like.

Working for a chemical company frankly sounds rather boring. But to be fair, I have no idea what (if anything) they do besides synthesize/isolate/purify/characterize compounds.

Bio-tech could be very exciting in terms of the most cutting edge developments in Science, but it seems like it could also be quite risky. An awful lot of small bio-tech companies seem to come and go more often than I change the sheets on my bed. At the moment "settling down" somewhere (i.e. moving somewhere with the intention of staying there indefinitely) is really weird and not particularly appealing, I assume that someday that will be a desirable thing, and that I will want/need a stable job to allow that.

Any of those job options could allow me to continue in mass spectrometry, with bio-tech probably being the least likely to specifically want a mass spectrometrist (unless we're talking about a mass spec-based technology). I'd probably have travel opportunities in any of these sorts of companies, least so probably in chemical industry. I think in any of these it would come down to what project(s) I were actually working on, and the people. Big manufacturing or pharma are the most appealing of the "industry" options. The recruiters that have come from VeryBC and the pharmaceutical company have made annual trips here for several years now (a perk of being in a highly-ranked chemistry program, especially in analytical). I'm hoping more people from different companies and different types of companies will come visit to help me get a better idea of what I want...

As a mass spectrometrist, a somewhat related option would be to work for an instrument company. I honestly think anything except the R&D aspect of this would get boring pretty quickly, so let's go ahead and ignore/eliminate the sales and demo lab type positions. Even something like a field engineer position would probably be boring pretty quickly as most of your users will be of the "black box" variety - i.e. use the instrument exactly as intended, never take the covers off, don't actually know how it works... If I could spend my time helping research/instrumentation labs (like mine), now that would be different. Probably much more interesting. Instrument or application development could be fun. My advisor thinks I'd enjoy working for the company that makes the instruments I currently use for a few years and then be bored. Who knows. I've made lots of good contacts in various divisions and geographic locations with that company to keep that option on the table.

A sort of middle-of-the-road option between industry and academia would be to work in a national lab. I don't know a whole lot about this, although I have a bit of a better feel after talking pretty extensively to one of my former labmates (and current national lab employee). Depending on the lab and the division, it seems like this could be almost like academia minus the teaching and university-related B.S. My labmate's particular position doesn't sound like this, but rather closer to industry (less research- and more figure-this-out-for-us-based). So it seems like there's some variety. I don't think I really want to do pure research anymore (not that what I do now is terribly "pure" science), but this would be a good option should I change my mind. It seems like it could be a somewhat more "industry"-like job in a more "academic"-like setting. One thing that surprised me about this option is that the pay seems to actually be pretty good.

A slightly different option is working for a government agency, like the FDA or EPA. This would likely be less research- and more quality control/problem solving-based. The pay generally isn't as good as private industry or national labs, but the job security and benefits are supposedly excellent.

Another government, but totally unrelated job is one I heard of from one of my committee members via one of my classmates. Apparently all (?) congressmen and senators have "science advisors" - PhD-level scientists whose job it is to be up to speed on relevant science/policy issues in order to advise (duh) politicians how to vote. This is something that I think could be really fascinating to do for a couple of years. Politics have become more interesting (and aggravating) as I pay more attention to what's actually going on. It could be a blast to live in DC for a couple of years and learn about all sorts of different Science. I could also see becoming really disenchanted, but that's why I think I'd only do something like this short-term.

During a recent "what do you want to do with yourself" conversation with my advisor, she asked me (with the faintest hint of exasperation), "What do you have against teaching??!" Nothing actually! I really, really enjoyed TAing in undergrad. There's something incredibly awesome about the moment you see a concept click for somebody. I swear, you can see it in the student's face, and it's just so cool to witness that and know that you had some (small) part in making that happen. The thing is, I don't want to teach, and run a research program, and do all the miscellaneous other B.S. that comes with being a professor at a research university. I'd really rather teach or do research. NOT both. There are lecturer (or adjunct, depending on the university's current needs) positions, but the pay and job security are mediocre at best as they are non-tenure track positions. A teaching position at a community college would be more stable, but they seem to pay absolute crap. It would be one thing if I had a family and wanted something fairly "low" time-commitment for that reason, but that's certainly not my situation. With a PhD I'd be "over-qualified" to teach at all but the most elite of high schools. Teaching at a small and/or teaching-focused college would be a possibility. However if that's what I want to do I'd need to realize/decide that soonish, and take appropriate steps to actually be qualified to do that - i.e. ask for a teaching assignment (I haven't TA'd at all in grad school as I've been on fellowship the entire time) and possibly take a teaching "post-doc." A variation on this that could really be quite fun would to be a lab coordinator (preferably for upper division labs that use more instrumentation). Many large universities will have lab coordinators for gen chem, organic, and "upper division" (usually analytical and physical chemistry) labs, who oversee and train TAs, manage/maintain/troubleshoot instrumentation, and do a bit of more "traditional" teaching. (I've also considered the possibility of teaching high school full or part time after a career in industry. One of my favorite teachers in high school retired after 30+ years as an engineer, decided retirement was boring, and came to teach math and science at my small, all-girls, Catholic high school. Needless to say he had NO idea what he was getting himself into, but we had fun with him and he was a good teacher.)

One last job option that I'll only mention briefly because I'm pretty sure I don't want to do it (even if it does sound interesting) is to work for a scientific journal. Not as an editor - all the editors (that I know of anyways) are big name professors in their own right, separate from/prior to being an editor. My advisor was recently visited by a PhD chemist who works for an analytical journal essentially as a scout and blogger. She attends conferences, reads, and travels in search of cool science for the journal to feature in print and/or in her blog (through the journal, not a personal science blog). I really don't think I enjoy writing nearly enough to do something like this, but it's a neat, off-the-beaten-track option, and I'm sure there are others like this that I wish I knew existed.

I've rambled long enough. I'll write another post later about post-doc-ing and what I think my currently most-appealing career/job option is.

Seriously Netflix?

The other day I logged into Netflix to see the following suggestions:


While I wouldn't have thought to verbalize it myself, yes, I do indeed enjoy "dramas featuring a strong female lead." However, their suggestions for such films...ouch. While Anna & The King is the only one of those four that I've actually seen, I think it's safe to say it's also the only one that could be considered to have a "strong female lead." Somehow Sorority Girls, or a teenage melodrama with Hilary Duff, or a film where the cover shot is a face-less girl taking her clothes off, strike me as less than stellar examples of a "strong female lead." I'm really not sure what else to say besides FAIL Netflix. I'm embarrassed for you.

Who does Facebook think I am?

I'd been under the impression that the ads that appeared on your Facebook page were somehow selected from your content. For example, my engaged friends get alllllll sorts of ads for various wedding-related services that stop once their status changes to "married." I've been noticing more and more lately that the ads I get on Facebook are weird.

I'm not sure where Facebook came up with this, but apparently it thinks I have children:

Facebook also seems to be suggesting that a PhD in chemistry isn't enough and I need to further my education:

And my personal favorite:

Facebook must think I either LOVE poptarts, or that I could be convinced to love them. I'll admit there was a time (middle school-ish) when I thought pop-tarts were pretty great, but now I mostly think they're pretty gross. But seriously, I think I see a poptart ad every.single.time. I log into Facebook.


And finally, Facebook also seems to think I'm fat. Maybe it's from all the poptarts...


Thanks, Facebook. Thanks.

Grown Up?

Today is my 26th birthday. There was a time (not really terribly long ago either) when I thought a 26-year-old was an adult. My parents got married at 24, and had me at 27. And considering I've always thought of them as adults with their $h!t mostly together, and now I'm around the same age, so I feel like I somehow should feel like a responsible adult who knows what she's doing. However, I most certainly don't feel like a "grown up." Which begs the question, when exactly, does one feel like a grown up?

It most definitely wasn't upon turning 18, or graduating from high school. It wasn't after the last time I lived with my parents (the summer after freshman year of college). It wasn't even when I graduated from college and started supporting myself.

At this point I feel a little more "grown up." I pay all my own bills (ok, not my cell phone, but we're all on a family plan together since it's cheaper), I decide where I'm living. I travel without always telling my parents or always checking in when I arrive at a destination (or back home). (I still tell them about the big trips overseas, but really because I'm too excited not to!) I change flat tires and set (although not empty!!) mouse traps on my own. Heck I can even rent a car now without paying an arm and a leg (just an arm).

Even though I've been on my own for a few years now, there are still semi-regular phone calls home to ask questions about things I haven't done before. Like when I transferred my car from my grandpa's name to mine. Or bought car insurance for the first time. Or temporary health insurance when I got booted from Dad's company benefits but couldn't enroll in student health insurance until the new semester. Or when I hosted Easter for the first time and had to figure out how much ham to get for 14 people. While it's exciting (and sometimes a bit scary) to be figuring out how to do stuff on my own, those phone calls home don't exactly further the "I feel like an adult now" feeling.

So when do you feel like an adult? When my life stops revolving around semesters? Somehow I don't think finishing my PhD is going to be the mysterious switch that does it. Is it when I get my first "real" job? When I have benefits and retirement savings? Or when I buy a house? Get married? Or have a baby? When my hair turns gray? When I hit menopause? Or when I have to take care of my parent(s)? Do you ever feel like an adult?

Dia de los Muertos

Since Tucson is only about 70 miles from Mexico and has a large Mexican population, Day of the Dead is a huge event in Tucson. The Sunday following the actual day (November 2nd, same as the Catholic Feast of All Souls) there is a procession during which people dress up and walk through the streets.

Tucson has an interesting mixture of people, making Dia de los Muertos an interesting mixture of remembrance of those who have died (the traditional meaning of the holiday) and political statements. There are a number of very traditional, conservative Mexican families and military families (there's an air force base in town), and then a bunch of liberal hippies. There was definitely evidence of all of it.

Submitted!!

That damn paper is finally off my desk! Let's hope the reviewers are kind!

CSA & Cupcakes

As I was going to write up the cupcakes E and I made Friday night, it occurred to me that I hadn't posted a CSA update in a while. Unfortunately this didn't occur to me when we were cooking, so I have no photos.

We're approaching the end of the fall session, and normally we'd be knee deep in greens by now (kale, chard, turnip & beet greens, arugula, mizuna...), and making lots of soups and risottos to try to hide them in. :) Although we're actually making considerable progress embracing the greens and figuring out other (still tasty) things to do with them. Greens season has actually (thankfully) been off to a rather slow start - we had a really nasty hailstorm several weeks ago that really did a lot of damage.

Last week we got spaghetti squash, sweet potatoes, arugula, salad greens, fresh green chilies, green bell pepper, and basil. In the backlog of CSA stuff we had some more sweet potatoes, red potatoes, roasted green chilies, and onions.

Friday night we made this corn chowder, with about 20 times the quantity of green chilies it calls for. We managed to use up an onion, all our potatoes, all the roasted chilies, and a couple of fresh ones. All the sweet potatoes went into this side dish. I'll definitely make it again - it's delicious and super easy. And finally we made a spaghetti squash dish with bell pepper, onion, cherry tomatoes, and basil.

Salad greens went made a couple of salads, along with one of my bell peppers, and the arugula went into a "quesadilla" with onion, swiss cheese, and balsamic vinegar. That leaves me with only onions and green chilies in the backlog! I win, CSA, I win.

Anyways, about the cupcakes I originally intended to share. Raspberry vodka cupcakes. Utterly delicious. The frosting on its own was kind of strange, not bad, but definitely different. It's quite possibly the first frosting that I wouldn't be willing to eat with a spoon. But when paired with the cake and the raspberry mush on top, the whole thing works together brilliantly.


The cupcakes were so pretty that I had to break out the pretty plates. So when E asked if we could have tea, of course the pretty matching tea cups and saucers had to come out too...

Acid on Base, 2-6

We won again tonight! That's 2 wins in a row! Woohoo!

Things to do with my sister when she visits - HINT, HINT

• Hiking. She wants to climb a mountain. She's always jealous when I tell her I've been hiking.
• Eegee. Obviously.
• Real Mexican food. One of very few meals she can make is tacos. When Dad and I went out for Mexican the last time he was here, he had tacos, and her mind was blown.
• Cook all sorts of "weird" food that we never ate/eat at home. Someday I WILL convince her that all the foods Dad swears are "evil" really aren't. Squash. Beans. Sweet potatoes.
• Laugh at all the inappropriately dressed undergrads at U of A. This obviously works better when it's hot out.
  
• Drive over Gates Pass
• Mexico? (Right, only if I want my parents to kill me. Assuming the Mexican mafia doesn't get me first.)
• Pool time. I might be in jeans and a sweater, but no matter what time of year it is, she'll probably think it's warm enough.
• $1 movie theater!
• Bookmans
• Biosphere. She really likes biology. And the bio-dome is fascinating. While we're at it I should make her watch the movie BioDome.
  
• Leave her at my desk and see how many people think she's me for at least a split second
• Send her to the rec center with my catcard
• Meet Me at Maynards run
• Watch Rocky Horror Picture Show - at some point growing up, maybe towards the beginning of college, I was at home watching RHPS, and I made the "mistake" of not kicking her out of the room. Well, she made some comment to Dad about it and I got in trouble (even though she was already familiar with ALL the music because he listens to it in the car!). However, she is plenty old enough to watch it now, and therefore should be fully exposed to its glory.
  

Periodic Table of Awesomeness

In my department there is a huge number of seminars to attend. As students we are generally required to attend the departmental colloquium, which is typically an outside, invited speaker, and the student seminar series of our division. In the analytical division, students usually give two seminars, a mostly literature-based seminar in their 2nd year, and then a research-based final seminar shortly before graduating.

At analytical division seminars it is customary for the speaker (or friends of the speaker) to provide snacks. A few weeks ago my labmate Slim gave his 2nd year seminar, and E and I jumped on the excuse to bake. Because we're dorks and ridiculous, we decided to make a periodic table of cupcakes for Slim's seminar. Here's the finished product laid out on my dining room table the night before:


Before the event, there was some curiosity and discussion as to which elements would be snatched up right away, and which would be left until the end. To satisfy inquisitive minds, I collected a few data points throughout the cupcake selection process. Here are the numbers extracted from the raw data (Periodically taken photographs, and I apologize for the mediocre quality of the images - it seems I can't make tables in blogger. I can't imagine why not.):


First, a few points about how the data and elements have been organized. (By the way, here's the periodic table we used for reference.)

• For the d- and f-blocks, the first number is the number of elemental cupcakes, while the number in parenthesis is total number of cupcakes in that flavor, i.e. including the 2 place-holder asterisk cupcakes indicating where the f-block inserts into the table.
• While La and Ac are more d-block-like in their electronics, they were included in the f-block seeing as the elements in the f-block are collectively named for them (lanthanides and actinides).
• Lu and Lr were included with the d-block because electronically they are more d-block-like.
  
• Including the unnamed, somewhat suspect elements at the bottom of the periodic table, there are currently 118 elements.
• The skinny, blank row in the table indicates when the seminar actually occurred - in other words, the division between cupcakes that were selected before seminar and those taken afterward.

Given that each block was a different flavor cake and frosting, the contributions from elemental preference and flavor preference are convoluted, making it difficult (ok, impossible) to draw any solid conclusions. Also, as one of my committee members pointed out, this experiment would have to be repeated to have any validity (I think that was a hint for more cupcakes...).

Sorted by flavor/block, the earliest cupcakes/elements selected:

Chocolate jumped out to the early lead, with 10 cupcakes, or 23% being taken early. It's not surprising that precious metals (Ag, Au, Pd) were selected early. Tungsten's (W) popularity is also not surprising, as it is an odd, but widely used metal. Toxic metals also seemed to be quite popular for the novelty of eating a "toxic" cupcake (Cd, Hg).

Seaborgium (Sg), and some other elements, might seem like an odd early-round selection, but I believe this to be due to the remarkable popularity of Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg among those in attendance. Seaborg won the 1951 Nobel prize in chemistry, and is the principal or co-discoverer of ten elements, including seaborgium (actually the last element to be named for a still-living person/discoverer), plutonium (Pu), americium (Am), curium (Cm), berkelium (Bk), californium (Cf), einsteinium (Es, also named for a still-living person), fermium (Fm), medelevium (Md), and nobelium (No).

As elemental/cupcake selection was a highly individual process, some observations on various subjects' methods:

• Many seemed to choose which flavor they wanted, and then select an element within that flavor block.
• The male post-doc who selected carbon works with carbon specifically.
• One female, 5th year graduate student, selected lithium, in case the seminar drove her crazy (2nd year seminars are frequently quite boring).
• One male, 2nd year graduate student selected seaborgium due to the previously discussed appreciation for (cough cough obsession with) Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg.
• One female faculty member selected a gingerbread cupcake (element not recorded) due to a recently upset stomach and the wishful thinking that a cupcake containing ginger would be more agreeable to her stomach.
  

Having considered which cupcakes/elements were selected early, now let us consider the cupcakes/elements which were not selected. Again, sorted by flavor/block, the cupcakes/elements left to languish (until the next day anyways):

Ultimately 100% of the red velvet cupcakes were consumed, however no firm conclusions can be made as to the popularity of the cupcake flavor or s-block elements as there are the fewest s-block elements. Ultimately the f-block, or gingerbread cupcakes had the highest percentage leftover (33%).

Some of the unselected p-block elements seem surprising (He, S, Ar, Po in particular), and I suspect a higher percentage of p-block elements would have been selected had they been a more "exotic" flavor rather than vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. The popularity of chocolate cupcakes was expected, however some of the specific elements left behind were surprising (Sc, Ti, Y, Os, and Ir in particular).

Despite the complete lack of justifiable conclusions, we're going to call the periodic table of cupcakes a success. :)