Butter & Flour

So do you guys remember a while ago when I bought a holy ton of flour?  And then not too long after that I bought crap ton of butter?  Well.  Butter's on sale again.  And not like 30 cents off either.  Like a whole $1 off each box.  With the amount of baking E and I do that really adds up.  This actually comes at a convenient time as I was down to a half pound of unsalted butter and two and a half pounds of salted butter (at least a pound of which was obtained separately from the last time I stocked up).

E and I both stocked up on butter.  I got 20 lbs.  I'm not kidding.  The holidays are coming, and butter freezes just fine, and this should last me many months, maybe even til graduation?  We'll see.

Here's E's freezer full of butter. :)

For the record, I'm down to about 5 lbs of flour...seems it's getting to be time to stock up on flour again, too. :)

Seven Falls

I've been to Seven Falls several times, and posted about it once, but I thought it'd be worth sharing photos from a hike there last Saturday.  It was beautiful and sunny and not too hot.  We had such a dry monsoon season that this is actually the driest I'd ever seen this hike - certainly a contrast from this time.  I suppose at least all the creek crossings are easier when it's nearly dry.  Actually, I was amazed how easy hiking is when you're not carrying 35 lbs up or down a very steep trail. :)

So grad school sucks you say? Part II

What?  The "advice" I was given didn't really help?  Grad school still sucks?  Sorry.  Most of Chris' advice was rather tongue-in-cheek, but grad school will probably continue to suck no matter how good the advice is.  It's kind of the nature of the beast.  Some days are fine and a few are fun, but there will always be days that suck.  Whenever I complain about grad school my non-grad-school friends tell me there are crappy days in whatever they're doing, too.  Bummer.

While there are definitely days when I think I made the wrong decision to go to grad school, and I wonder how anybody ever finishes, there are definitely things you can do to make these +/-5 years less terrible.  Here are my suggestions.  A lot of them are rather interrelated.  Depending on your personality, some of them may not apply to you.

• DO STUFF OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL.  Go to the gym, go to church, go to the miscellaneous local fairs and festivals.  Anything. Something.  I don't care how much you love whatever field you're in, you can't possibly do only that and come out of graduate school with your mental health and social skills intact.  Find a hobby.  It doesn't matter what, anything will do.  Read the entire Master and Commander series.  Take a pottery class.  I don't care.  This is probably the biggest, best piece of advice I can give you.
• Some people might disagree with me, like all the Chinese students in my lab who alternate between Burger King and Chick-Fil-A, but I think eating fairly healthy (most of the time - I promise I understand the value of a bowl of ice cream) and working out regularly go a long way.  One of the reasons I live within walking distance of campus is so that when I'm too busy/stressed/tired to get up early to work out I still get at least a bit of exercise walking 15 minutes each way to school.
• Along with doing stuff outside of school, make friends outside of your program/department.  Get involved in activities.  For me this wound up happened by living with random people I met via Craigslist and working with the high school youth group at my parish (bonus, community service is good for fellowship applications).  I'll admit I got really lucky on the roommate front - many of the girls I've lived with in Tucson have become great friends that I've gone on crazy backpacking trips and on road trips in foreign countries with, and now it seems we're taking turns going to each others weddings.  When you exclusively hang out with people from your program, you wind up "talking shop" more often than not, which doesn't give you that much needed break.
• At the same time though, friends in your program/department/grad school are a good thing.  They're the people you'll grab coffee or lunch with, or celebrate with when you have a good data day or pass your oral.  They're also the people who can totally understand when you just have to vent about whatever sucks.
• Speaking of which, I'm all for some amount of venting/bitching about whatever it is that sucks.  You've seen me do plenty of it here.  Watch it with this one though, because too much and you're just a Negative Nancy who's never happy with anything.  After all, there's always somebody who's got it worse.  But there really is something to be said for a good bitch and/or cry fest.  When it's really that bad you really do feel better afterwards.
• On the other hand, celebrate everything.  My first year a lot of us would head to the bar after a cume.  Even if you think you blew it, hell, you took it.  Finished a class?  Had a good day in lab?  Finally got an experiment to work after trying it 14 times?  Gave a talk without making a fool of yourself?  Finally got revisions back from your advisor?  Won the battle with the 3rd reviewer?  Passed your oral?  Got an abstract accepted?  Opened a word document and wrote exactly 17 words of your dissertation?  All these things are worthy of a beer, or a celebration of some sort.  (Passing your oral is worthy of several beers.  Or 2 long islands and a half dozen shots.  Including a Harry Potter shot.  As is your defense.)  My research group has a tradition of popping a bottle of champagne after successful orals and defenses.  Even if it's 10 am we're pouring bubbly into incredibly silly Bruker champagne flutes.
• Make lists.  I love them.  Short term and long term lists.  They help me focus and get more done (which makes me happy), and crossing stuff off them feels so good.
• Be proactive about your own happiness.   Can you change something about whatever it is that sucks?  Yeah, you have to take and pass classes, and cumes, and your oral, and jump through a million hoops.  Is that class that sucks required?  Can you drop it?  (I really should have dropped one of my classes my first semester.  It was an awful, miserable experience with a terrible teacher and I learned absolutely nothing.)  Do you hate your teaching assignment?  Before the next semester go ask the lab coordinator about teaching the course you are interested in.  Hate your research project?  Talk to your advisor.  Maybe you can work on what does interest you on a part time basis.  Or maybe you're willing to teach in order to work on a project you do like.  Doesn't always work out, but sometimes it does.  Is your advisor a crazy slave-driver?  Or verbally abusive and unethical?  Switch groups.  In chemistry at least it happens.  The earlier in your grad school career the better, but people switch groups, and as long as you're polite and professional about it (yes, even if your advisor is a horrible person) it generally works out just fine.  Maybe it takes you a semester or a year longer to graduate, but better that than utterly miserable and maybe not getting a degree at all.  Not everything can be changed or is in your power to change, but at least nothing is permanent.
• This goes hand and hand with the last point, but learn to say no.  Seriously.  No, you can't go to that oral practice.  No, you can't drive around recruits on both Friday and Saturday night.  No, you don't have time to proofread your labmate's entire dissertation.  No, you won't do this set of experiments for your lazy labmate who should have graduated already.  No, you won't take on a new project in your fifth year.  I'm not that good at this point, but I've gotten better the older I've gotten.  Or maybe I'm just getting crotchety in my old age.
• Go to students' final seminars/defenses. Throughout grad school, I have found these the most encouraging and interesting seminars.  A research seminar is always more interesting coming from somebody you know.  And a final seminar, a nice, tidy presentation of a dissertation project is the most encouraging, obvious sign I can think of that yes, people do graduate.  It's also good to get an idea of how a project can come together when you're stuck in the unending, seemingly hopeless middle part.  Bonus: free caffeine and snacks to accompany your hour out of lab.
• Step away from the lab bench.  Sometimes you need to take half an hour and go for a walk.  Get some fresh air.  Maybe a coffee.  Heck, you're a grad student.  This isn't a real job.  Get lunch beers. The time you spend clearing your head will be at least partly made up for by less time banging your head against the wall and less time wasted when you mess something up in your frustration.  Sometimes you just have to call it a day and GO HOME.  Better than hurting yourself because you were a little too aggressive cleaning glassware or breaking something really expensive because you were a little too rough with that $10,000 printed circuit board.
• Take advantage of the flexibility of being a graduate student.  Unless your advisor is brand new and/or crazy, there's rarely a reason why you have to work specific hours.  Outside of some set meetings or designated instrument time, there's no reason I have to be here between certain hours.  You will most likely work more than 40 hrs/week, but there's no reason that the first 40 of those hours have to be between 9 am and 5 pm.  You were in lab really late?  Sleep in the next morning.  Have a couple errands to run to businesses that are only open 9-5?  Run them.  Not a morning person?  Work out in the middle of the day and work a bit later.  Heck, maybe you can time it so an experiment is running while you head to the gym.  It's nice to be around for some part of "business hours" so you can find people you need and people who need you can find you, but it's nice to sleep in every now and then or stay home to wait for the repairman without it being a problem.  You may be more productive working "off hours" - I know for me at least it's a heck of a lot easier to get stuff done without people around to pester me.

Some days (and sometimes a LOT of days in a row) will still suck, and not everything is something you can change/influence.  But a lot of stuff is, and there are a lot of little things you can do to make things bearable and sometimes even fun.

That's all I've got.  Anybody else have suggestions?

Wedding at the Base of a Mountain

Apparently all my Tucson roommates have at least a little hippy in them.  Last year Lisa got married in a completely random clearing in a national park, and a few weeks ago, Liz got married at the base of a mountain in Lost Dutchman State Park.

K8 flew back to Tucson for the occasion, and we all drove up and camped for the wedding.  The readings were um, odd to say the least, in my traditional-religious-wedding-experience, but the ceremony was short and pretty and the reception was a blast.  The funniest part may have been seeing Liz in a full blown wedding dress.  Especially considering the only other time I've seen her in a dress was at Lisa's wedding!

So grad school sucks you say? Part I

After noticing that blogger tracks how people find your site, I went and looked again.  And what do you know, I've got two more visits as a result of googling "graduate school worst decision" and "going to grad school worst decision."  So I think maybe it's time I take a few posts to address directly grad school's suckage factor and how (or if) to survive it.

Academia is kind of like a family.  A really twisted, not-so-loving, really effed up, and emotionally scarring family.  My advisor is like my academic "mom," making her PhD advisor my academic "grandfather."  Along these lines, Chris, the grad student who primarily trained me when I joined the lab, and whose project I "inherited" is my academic "big brother."  I'm going to start this series of surviving grad school posts with an email I got from Chris my first semester.

I got lucky by the mere fact of having this sort of mentor.  Students who join new/newish labs, or pick up a temporarily shelved project don't have that advantage.  I got really lucky having the senior student mentor that I did.  He was super patient and helpful when it came to showing me the ropes in lab (I'd never done mass spec or worked with proteins), in grad school, and now that he's a real grown up with a real job, after grad school.

Below is the email I received from him during a super stressful and distressing period in 528 - this hellish lab course that analytical students have to take their 2nd semester here.  I learned a ton in the course, but it was an enormously time-consuming (in a take-over-your-life kind of way) and stressful semester.  He sent this mostly smart ass message shortly after listening to a "get-me-the-hell-out-of-here-anything-has-to-be-better-than-this" freak out.

Dear Abby:

Why does grad school suck so hard it could pull a taxi-cab driver through
immigration?  Is it really worth going through this?  If I quit now is there
still hope for me?  Will I ever discover my purpose in life?  And will I need
anodic stripping voltammetry to discover it?

Sincerely,
Bunsen Burnout


Dear Bunsen:

I found a few articles that I thought might address your concerns.  Skim through
the ones that seem interesting and see if it doesn't help some sunlight break
through those chemistry rain clouds.  And by the way, that's "Dear DR. Abby" to
you - I finished MY Ph.D.


I did a Ph.D. and did not go mad - The truth about the next five years of your
life (you don't have to read the others, but this one's kind of funny):

http://public.randomnotes.org/richard/PhDtalk.html


Dr. Dropout - so that you know your not alone in wanting to quit (these next two
are kind of boring): [need journal access for these next two, let me know if you want them in full]

http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i19/19a01001.htm


Feeling no regrets - an article that (falsely) leads you to believe it's ok to
quit (it's not by the way):

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i19/19a01101.htm


How to become a trophy wife - just in case you find none of the above
particularly inspirational

http://www.ehow.com/how_2063647_be-trophy-wife.html 

And finally, if none of these convince you to stay, know that when you finally
finish you'll have this pretty little bundle of joy - 300 pages neatly bound in
a hardback black cover that you've birthed, raised, and watched grow.  You'll be
so proud of what your little dissertation has accomplished, and best of all when
it comes time to pass that tike on to a young graduate student and they threaten
to destroy everything you've worked so hard for by saying they want to quit you
will have every right to make them suck it up or personally come kick their
A**!  So you see Anne, you might as well give up on giving up because you have
no choice.  I will make you stay whether you want to or not - SO SUCK IT UP!
And have a wonderful evening. :)

Who are you people??

Not my half dozen regulars.  I know who you are.  The rest of you - who are you??

So I just discovered that blogger has this little feature buried in its inner workings that tells you what search terms led people to your blog.  The complete list to date is below (as you can tell by this oh-so-extensive list, my blog is clearly one of the most-read features on the interwebs).

coors field clubhouse
craziest cake ever
romero pools
tucson bucket list
9th birthday snow
arizona bucket list
cochise eastern stronghold
colloquium "job talk"
dia de los muertos parade tucson az
fancy vertical desserts
graduate school worst decision
lab coat tucson
town tfgyh

It's kinda funny to me that "coors field clubhouse" was the most common search term leading to my blog, all for this one single post about touring Coors Field during the users' meeting I attended during a conference in Denver.  It certainly explains how that post wound up in the "popular posts" list on the side of my blog.  Actually, it explains a lot of the "popular posts."  "Fancy vertical desserts" is a funny thing to search for, but that and "craziest cake ever" can only have led somebody to this cake. "town tfgyh" is pretty weird, and puzzling.  no idea at all where that one led - or what the person actually meant to look for.  "9th birthday snow" is also quite amusing.  No snow in Tucson, sorry, folks.

Far and away the funniest search term, and now the highlight of my day, is "graduate school worst decision."  YES.  I am so proud right now.  My best guess is it led them to this post, back in that hell-ish stretch when my advisor had the crazy idea that I should get a totally new thing to work for a presentation I was giving to the entire department a week later.  But there are probably plenty of other posts under the "gradual school" label to discourage one from going to grad school.  The fact that it's after 10 pm and I'm writing this post at school could also count as an argument.

There's also some info about where from and how people are reading my blog.  Apparently I've had 105 pageviews from Malaysia.  Malaysia?  What?  105 pageviews is hardly an accident.  Somebody from Malaysia read at least some of my blog on purpose.  The 13 pageviews from Brazil I get.  Boyfriend spends quite a bit of time in Brazil for work.  I can't imagine anybody else from Brazil is reading my blog.  Malaysia?  Really?

Apparently exactly half of my pageviews were using Firefox (me too!), and 85% were with a Windows operating system.  Just about every iDevice has been used to read my blog, and it looks like there's one person reading with Linux.

I'm entertained by this little peek into who's accidentally stumbled into my corner of the internet.  I'll have to keep checking back to see what other amusing search terms lead some poor fool here.

And to the poor schmuck searching for "graduate school worst decision," I'm sorry.  I'm sorry things suck.  Grad school sucks.  But some days don't suck.  Good luck!

Jury Duty

The day after getting back from the Grand Canyon I had to go to jury duty.  Like I mentioned before, this is the fifth time I've been summoned for jury duty.  Random my ass.

Anyways, I get in there, and what do you know?  I actually get pulled for jury selection.  The last time I went I just sat there in the room until they dismissed us all at noon.  They took twenty of us over to Tucson City Court for selection for a DUI case.

A couple funny notes about jury selection:

• One of the prospective jurors worked for the city - she knew just about every cop, clerk, bailiff, judge, and prosecutor in the county. She wasn't put on the jury.
• At one point they asked us (the prospective jurors) if we knew anybody in the room - defendant, either attorney, other jurors etc.  One prospective juror said that she knew defense council professionally - he had represented her on another matter.  Another DUI case.  Where she was found guilty.  Hilarious, and needless to say she wasn't placed on the jury.
• They have a set list of questions that they ask each juror, the last of which is what tv shows do you watch and what magazines do you read.  This seems like a silly question, and most people answered with types of shows or types of magazines.  One guy actually said that he reads Playboy and Maxim.  Dude, I'm pretty sure nobody needed to know that...
• Now you would think that in a DUI case defense council would see an analytical chemist as an undesirable juror, especially when the main defense is that the breathalyzer can not accurately represent the defendant's BAC.  Given that this girl was so obviously guilty (so obvious to me as soon as opening statements were done - I'm sure the attorneys knew this going into it), I'm sure the prosecutor thought yes please! put the analytical chemist on the jury!  However the defense attorney was a fool to agree to let me sit on that jury...although...he was a fool in all sorts of other ways too.

The defendant took the stand and after half an hour of listening to her life story (irrelevant), education (irrelevant), and plans to marry in November (again, irrelevant), she sat there and swore that she was completely sober and not at all impaired after 3 beers within an hour on an empty stomach while weighing only 120 lbs.  Sure.  I significantly outweigh this girl, and I couldn't drink that much in an hour even with a meal and be ok to drive.

Her lawyer was awful.  Absolutely awful.  I don't know if all DUI attorneys are sleezebags, or if he's worse than the average, but wow.  The entire thing was like a stage show.  I think approximately 5% of what he told us was actually relevant to the case.  When he wasn't waxing poetic about nothing he was waving 4 fingers around while telling us she only had 3 drinks and calling is client by the wrong name.  I felt really bad that she wasted her money on this scumbag.

The whole thing took a day and a half.  The first day wasn't so bad, and some parts were pretty interesting.  The second day was brutally painful.  The paid expert witness brought in by the defense in an attempt to convince us that the breathalyzer is going to give a falsely high result depending on how long after drinking the test is performed was incredibly garbled and confusing.  It didn't help that the defense attorney is an idiot and had him talking in circles.  So painful and aggravating to listen to all morning.

The most baffling thing about this whole trail/experience, was that the incident took place over 4 years ago.  FOUR YEARS for a DUI to come to trail.  That just seems beyond absurd.  Unfortunately we never had an opportunity to as if that's normal, or what the hell made this case take so long.  Seriously, if she had pled out when this happened it would be over and no longer a part of her life.  Yeah, it's gonna be on her record, and I'm sure affects her insurance, but the tangible consequences would have been ancient history by now.

Once we were released to deliberate it thankfully only took us about 30 seconds to realize we all already agreed that the girl was guilty.  She seems like a nice girl, but nice people show poor judgment too.

A couple days later I got a cute little form letter from the judge thanking me for my service.  Let's see how long it is til I get summoned again...

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes

When I saw these cupcakes on Annie's Eats I knew I HAD to try them.  I adore chocolate chip cookie dough.  Whenever I make chocolate chip cookies an embarrassing portion of the dough never makes it into the oven.

Between the cake, the filling, the frosting, and the little decorative chocolate chip cookies I have never used so much butter on "one" recipe but oh man is it good.  So, so good.

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?