Update

Some of you may recall a certain sloshball incident... Well it's been just over three years since that fateful day, and here's what my leg looks like now:

Significantly improved, but still significantly scarred.

Thursday means it's almost Friday

Nothing big, just some random thoughts while I wait for 20 minute LC runs...

Samosas make me really happy.  I'd say the most redeeming thing about BFU are the delicious samosas at the cafe on the same floor as my lab.  Considering that more days than not I desperately want a glass (or three) of wine when I get home from BFU, I'm very grateful for the samosas.  And the delightful Indian man who staffs the cafe, who's always excited when anybody gets the samosas.  Today when he saw my samosas and coke zero he told me how as a kid growing up they always had samosas and coke at the movie theater instead of popcorn and coke!

I ran 5 miles this morning!  Not gonna lie, pretty proud of myself.  There's a 5 mile road race in about a month that Boyfriend has done before that I plan to join him for this year.  It's still irritatingly cold out more often than not, so I haven't run outside much in several months.  Tuesday it was nice and still light out when I got home from work, so I ran a 3.9 mile route from home and survived, so this morning I tried 5 at the gym.  One weird/annoying thing is the treadmills at the Y cut you off after 30 minutes.  So I either have to restart the treadmill or start running 6 minute miles.  Which is pretty much never going to happen.

I talked Boyfriend into doing this 6-pack March workout plan, and it is so. much. harder. when you do it after running 5 miles.  It's not easy fully rested either, but definitely way easier.  Even though the workout keeps increasing, I can tell that I'm getting better.  I had never in my life even considered doing the quantities of sit-ups or push-ups, or that long of a plank.  I'm pretty sure the last day will kill me, but it does seem to be accomplishing something...

In other workout related news, I'm only 1 lb above the lowest weight I hit last year!  Which means I'm only about 3 lbs away from my ultimate goal weight, but already at a point I'd be ok with long term.  Which is the hard part.  Making it long term.  Bonus, and maybe Boyfriend would disagree, but I think I've really been pretty good at the not-complaining about my weight in the meantime goal.

My alma mater is in the NCAA tournament!  Both of them actually.  My undergrad played (and won!) this afternoon and the gradual school alma mater plays tonight.  I generally like March Madness - though I'm not nearly as obsessed as some people - but it does irritate me that Big Bang Theory won't be on for a while! >:/

Last weekend I bought a bottle of wine because the previous week, more nights that not I'd really wanted a glass (or three) of wine after working at BFU.  Go figure, Monday and Tuesday this week were fine, but yesterday, holy cow.  I was ready for the whole bottle.  But then I got an email from Old Navy informing me that dresses were on sale...so I went shopping instead... And now I have quite the collection of casual summer dresses.  If only it would be warm!

Speaking of warm, I am so, so tired of winter.  It hasn't been a particularly bad winter, but after 5 years in the desert, 4 months of perpetual cold, rain, and bitter winds is more than enough!  I'm wearing a heavy sweater today (acquired on clearance last night :P ), and wore my winter coat, scarf, and gloves to come down to BFU today.  Daffodils have started to appear, but it's still way too cold to consider it spring...

Ok, my initial runs are done, a worklist is queued up for the night, so I'm out.  Gotta get home in time for Glee even if there's no Big Bang to watch beforehand... Goodnight!

Sleepless Ramblings

I can't sleep. It's quarter past 3 and I've been wide awake for the past hour and a half.

Aside from the predicted high of only 80 on Thursday, summer has hit in Tucson. We had a record high of 101 on Sunday. Overnight lows are in the 60s, so I suppose at least we're not to the worst of it when it stops cooling off overnight (lows in the 80s, which is still insane to think about after 5 years). But it's mid April, so the swamp cooler isn't on for the summer yet, I'm cold without my sheet, but hot with it, and not yet reacclimated to sleeping with a fan on me.

I've been dieting for the past 2 1/2 months with the help of an app on my iPad. It's actually been going quite well, except Saturday I got fit for my bridesmaid's dress for E's wedding in June, so I can't lose anymore weight before then of the dress won't stay up (the tailor is already taking it in 2+ inches on both sides...whoops...). So I switched the app settings to maintain my current weight, and after working out this morning and playing softball tonight I finished today 775 calories under "goal." After really not eating particularly healthy or skimpy today. I don't want to not work out between now and the wedding because that isn't healthy either and I don't want to lose all my muscle! This is going to take some getting used to... 

The anxiety in the office surrounding the move seems to have at least temporarily calmed as people are over the shock and looking into their various options, but my anxiety just seems to be getting worse. I'm getting more and more worried about my last experiments not working and not having enough (good) data to put on my poster for ASMS or the last chapter of my dissertation. ASMS is going to be a huge time suck between now and May 25th. I kind of wish I weren't going, but I argued my way into going because I was worried I wouldn't have a job by then and then I worked hard to gather more than enough outside travel funding, and got a poster abstract accepted and then had to convince the organizers to reschedule it for another day when it conflicted with Little Sister's high school graduation. So I have to go, and yes this means I'm taking the 5 am flight from Boston to Vancouver the day after graduation.

The whole not having a job yet thing is also a major source of anxiety. There's a potential post doc in northern NJ that looks promising - they've submitted an internal proposal for the project and if they get funded (they think their odds are good) I will have an offer. But the project would be a collaboration with The Queen, and the more the move situation unfolds the more I want to just cut ties and move on completely, and the outskirts of NYC/Newark is really pretty high on my list of places I've never wanted to live. I found a post doc opening actually in Lancaster last week that I am unbelievably perfectly qualified for and obviously applied right away, but I'm nervous I won't hear anything at all back from them (like most of the other jobs I've applied for) or that the salary will be garbage or that it will be another case of a company trying to save themselves $30k by listing a "real" PhD-level job as a post doc (yet another thing I've discovered I have to be wary of when looking at job postings). But speaking of "real job" vs post doc, I'd much rather have a real job than a post doc, but very few people seem to be hiring new grads and most want proteomics expereience, which I don't have and really hate anyways.

Then there's this weird pain in the lower right corner of my mouth. If it's actually something real I'm sure it would be super expensive to fix, and surprise surprise, the student health plan doesn't include dental coverage, and the thought of thousand(s) of dollars of dental expenses when I'm trying to save for a cross-country move and potential unemployment makes me nauseous. Not to mention I HATE the dental practice I've been going to and don't remotely trust 95% of what they tell me. And dental work = through the roof anxiety. Just listening to somebody in the next room getting a filling sets me on edge. I leave every dentist visit drenched in sweat and with achy back and shoulders from clenching my muscles so hard. God I hope my wisdom teeth haven't finally decided to make their presence known.

I'm terrified that between ASMS, mine and Little Sister's graduation schenanigans, and E's wedding (crap, have to figure out bachelorette stuff still) that I'll never finish my dissertation in time. Our group admin is trying to schedule my final seminar and defense for some time in July, because The Queen leaves in early August and I'm not sure I can be done any sooner, but The Queen is going to be out of town for like half of July (and who knows about the rest of my committee members...). On top of worrying that I won't finish in time, my best guess at the moment is that my dissertation will be about 200 pages, which looking at past dissertations out of my group seems inadequate. A friend commented today that she's at 236 pages and not even close to done. I keep telling myself that nobody wants to read even 200 pages of dissertation, never mind 300+ pages, but 200 pages just doesn't seem like it could possibly be representative of 5 years of grad school misery. And I'm quite sure I'd cry on the spot if they told me at my defense that it wasn't going to cut it (never mind that I'm not at all convinced that anybody - including The Queen - will read it and I've never heard of anybody failing their defense here, and my committee seemed satisfied at my 6 month meeting in December).

Great. Now it's 4. You can probably why see I'm having a hard time sleeping. Tomorrow/today is going to be a mess.

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?

One Year Later

**Warning! Not for the squeemish!**




July 5th marks one whole year since I did this sliding into 3rd base playing sloshball:
For the record, I was sober. Also for the record, it wasn't worth sliding, but I can't help it.

The day after:

After the first trip to Student Health:
This is after they decided it was infected, but before I realized I'm allergic to sulfa antibiotics. It's a shame I didn't keep the photo I took of my leg after the reaction. That was gross.

My awesome roommates kept me stocked with whatever color Koban I wanted:
That $&!# is expensive! This is after the swelling from the injury and the allergic reaction went down. My right leg was like twice the size of my left...

One year later:
Yep, pretty sure that scar is here to stay. Despite the Tucson heat, I've worn knee high socks and pants every time I've played softball since then. Even so I've scraped my knees a few more times sliding. As my sister puts it, I apparently like the burn victim look.

Being Eaten Alive

Why, oh why can't the uterus monster just play nice??? Am I really asking too much???

XKCD sums it up about right:

I can't make the hover thing work, but it's 413 nanohertz for the record.

One Day Experiment

So I've mentioned considering switching my schedule to night shift, just for the next few weeks until the conference at the beginning of June. I'd been thinking arrive at work early-mid afternoon, and work til maybe 2 or 3 am, so I'd still have some face-time with people, and be in bed well before sunrise. There would be a lot of benefits and disadvantages, and since I like (ok, love) lists, we'll consider these in list form. :)

Pros to working some form of night shift:

• Pretty much as much instrument time as I want (more than I could actually use due to time necessary for data analysis)
• More uninterrupted work time (i.e. fewer people asking me to fix their problems)

Cons to working night shift:

• I am most definitely not a late-night person.
• I'd pretty much never eat fresh-made dinner.
• Miscellaneous daytime stuff that requires me to be at school early-ish. Starting with group meeting at noon on Wednesdays. Then add in all the random one-time things.
• Half the fun of grad school is the socializing
• Harder to interact with other people that I actually need/want to interact with, especially my collaborator who is now on the east coast.

I decided to give this a try this week and see how it went. So yesterday I slept in a little (til 8), figuring I'd take my time, go for a run, and be at school around noon. Well, Day 1, and I already knew this isn't going to work, at least for the summer.

I didn't think about the fact that by mid-morning, it's already too hot out to run outside. I HATE running indoors/on a treadmill, and I just don't get as good a workout with other (indoor) forms of cardio. By this time of year in Tucson, you really have to run before about 8 or a bit after dark. But if I'm working nights, I'd still be at work at 9 or 10 pm when it's cool enough to run outside again. And I'm not ok with running at 2 am.

Also, when I get up early to run (6 or 7...or sometimes earlier at the absolute hottest part of the year), I'm not hungry yet and can run without eating breakfast no problem. However...by 8 or 9 I'm hungry. And as I found out this morning, I do not have the energy to work out on that empty of a stomach. And eating shortly before running leaves usually makes me feel sick. Especially anything with milk. Ick.

Working out is not something I'm willing to give up, or relegate to once/week. I don't have a body type that allows me to maintain my weight without a fair amount of effort, I love good food too much to "diet," and I aside from appearances/weight, I feel better when I work out fairly regularly. So, since giving up working out is not an option, I'm gonna go head and consider this experiment a FAIL.

Hm. What next? Part II

So in thinking more about what I want to do "when I grow up," and in seeking advice/information on various options, I've decided it could be helpful to think about what I want in a job.

Based on my last post on this subject, it's fairly clear that I want a job where:

• I generally like my co-workers. I realize there's always going to be the one (or more) person I absolutely can't stand, or drives me up the wall, but it's important to me that for the most part, I like my co-workers and enjoy working with them. It would be the pits to loathe the people with whom I spend 40+ hours a week.
• It is feasible to have balance between work and family/private/home life. As I said before, my career is important to me, but so is family - the family I already have and the family I someday hope to have. Both my parents have advanced degrees and have/had high-level, demanding jobs. Granted Dad's job has always been considerably more flexible and "9-5" than Mom's (night and weekend call is certainly an obstacle to flexibility), but I never felt neglected, or like I didn't see my parents enough, or like they weren't there for important things. So I guess my point is I know it's possible to have a successful career in science and still have a family, therefore I won't take (or stay in) a job that doesn't leave room for other priorities.
• I never become completely removed from the lab that my expectations are ridiculous. A lot of PhDs get sort of pushed into a management track, where it seems all too easy to lose understanding of what it takes to make something actually happen in lab. On one hand I like to be in charge because I like to be sure things are going to get done right (um yes, I can be somewhat bossy at times). Although the older I get the less I care because less and less often do I think the stress and pressure are worth it. Maybe someday management will be more appealing than it is now. I guess it's a good recent grads wouldn't start out in a position like that anyways. I also discovered during grad school that I really like to tinker. I enjoy disassembling, trouble-shooting, replacing parts, and reassembling the instrument. For now at least I want to be able to continue getting my hands dirty.
  

I think those factors will go a long way towards me being happy in my job. There are some other things to think about too.

• Travel. If you know me or have been reading this blog for a while, you've probably figured out that I'm a wee bit addicted. I love going to and experiencing new places. Most business trips likely wouldn't really allow time for sightseeing, but you still get the chance to meet and interact with people from somewhere different - something I almost always find interesting and valuable. And maybe I'm weird, but I always get this thrill just walking through the airport looking at all the gates as pass thinking, "Oo! I could go to Seattle! Or Memphis! Or Montreal! Or Tokyo! Or Cairo!" And the list goes on, and on, and on. Dad commutes to DC (from Boston) almost once a week. I don't think I really want to do that; it just seems draining. He takes a 6 or 7 am flight down and then gets home between 9 and 11 pm. And then goes to work at his normal 6 or 7 am the next morning! Besides, who wants to go to the same place over and over and over again? :P
• Benefits. Growing up we were very fortunate that we always had great health insurance as part of one parent or the others' benefits package. Now in grad school, paying too much for pretty mediocre insurance makes me really, really appreciate the value of good benefits. I'm really looking forward to having better health insurance, hopefully with vision, dental, and prescription included!! While we're at it, let's admit that money is nice, my travel addiction is expensive, and I'd like to think I will have toiled through let's not think about how many years of graduate school to make more than $30,000/year. Oh, and a decent amount of vacation time would be appreciated.
• Mass spec vs "other" analytical chemistry vs "other" chemistry. I'm pretty sure that I want to stay in mass spec. Most chemists seem to wind up in positions drastically different from their dissertation work. That's not necessarily a bad thing - I most definitely don't want to do the same thing forever. That said, I really like the wide variety of applications, instrumentation, and problems encountered in mass spectrometry. Which brings me to my next point,
• Variety. I absolutely do not want to do the same thing everyday for the next year, let alone the rest of my life.
• Learning opportunities. Whether that's in the form of in-house seminars and classes as very-BC talked about at lunch, attending conferences, training from instrument companies, and who knows what else. I certainly don't know everything I'll ever need to know, nor will I when I've actually finished this stupid degree.
• Interaction. As much as other people drive me crazy sometimes, I ultimately do want to interact with lots of people in my job. Working by myself all the time would get really boring really quickly. Fortunately science doesn't happen in a bubble.
• Application. I like coming to specific results or conclusions that can be of use to other scientists or people in the near-ish future. I loathe strictly theoretical or computational work. As an analytical chemist this isn't likely to be a problem. After all, the whole point of analytical chemistry is to measure stuff. I'm also really not attached to doing true research. I'm ok with more application-oriented problem-solving.
  

I'm sure there are other things I'm not thinking of now, and probably things I won't realize I care about or should have been thinking about until after I've had a "real, grown up" job for a while. This is a pretty extensive list though, and hopefully thinking about what I want from a job will help me decide what will be a good choice for me.

Eventually I'll get around to musing over various options...

The Upside of Being Sick

Over the weekend in StL I somehow managed to catch a pretty miserable cold. I couldn't breathe well enough to sleep, and I had pretty much no appetite whatsoever. Saturday morning Tony's mom sent me home with enough food for oh, about 2 meals. It lasted me through Sunday night and I even gave some of it to my little brother before I flew back to Tucson Monday morning.

The upside of being sick is that I lost a good 8 lbs in no time flat! While I realize it's totally not healthy, I'll take weight loss any way I can get it. :P

Wedding #5 is in 3 weeks (I got back from Wedding #4 - Angie & Tony's on Monday morning to find the invitation to #5 on my desk!) - and I'd really, really love to not gain those 8 lbs back. Because without those 8 lbs, my blue dress (one of my favorite dresses) fits perfectly after not zipping for the past several months. Not to mention I'm certain there will be lots of photos posted on Facebook...

I'm mostly better now, as in I'm working a "normal" day rather than spending the day on the couch. I'm still hacking quite a bit (yay for a big new bag of cough drops this morning!), but let the effort to keep those 8 lbs off commence!

Save Second Base

My roommate Jen is doing the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure later this month in Denver. It's a 3 day (in case you hadn't picked up on that), 60 mile walk to raise awareness and research funds for breast cancer. The fund-raising goal (requirement) for this event is huge - $2300/participant. Needless to say, $2300 and 60 miles are huge numbers, and Jen's been working her butt off to be ready.

Last week, with help from friends, she had a taco dinner and bake sale to raise some money. Straight-up asking people for money is just so awkward, so she's been trying to have various events or goods for people to enjoy in exchange. (Tucson folks - FYI I think we're having another Beer for Boobs kegger in a few weeks.)

Considering baking is one of the things we do best, E and I baked up a storm the night before Jen's bake sale. (Yes, we have very healthy egos when it comes to our abilities in the kitchen. :P ) Here's E in my kitchen:
For some reason, she thought you needed to see the flour hand print on my butt:

Over the course of about 6 hours, we made rolo cookies, gooey butter cookies, pumpkin cookies and muffins (both with frozen pumpkin from our CSA pumpkins last fall!) , snickerdoodle cookies, mini zucchini breads (with fresh zucchini from our CSA share!), red velvet cupcakes, and chocolate nutella cupcakes. It was insane, and my kitchen was an absolute disaster area afterward. We're a little crazy, and eventually we were curious to see just how much we could make in a night.

Red velvet cupcakes with buttercream frosting - Red velvet cake is VERY red! And delicious if you make it right. Red velvet cake is NOT, I repeat NOT, chocolate cake dyed red!

Snickerdoodles

Zucchini bread

Chocolate cupcakes with nutella frosting

All the loot packaged and ready to go. (Side note, I think it's quite funny that the common bookshelf in our house is over 50% travel and/or hiking/climbing books...)

The craziness was worth it - between the dinner and the bake sale Jen made nearly $500. I went to the bake sale for a while to help out, also figuring I had a better idea of what was in everything in case people needed or wanted to know (after nannying for a peanut-allergy kid when I was in high school I'm super allergy-paranoid and made sure to label everything very clearly). I think the funniest thing I saw all night was the rather crabby looking doctor who came in, handed me $10, took the entire container of pumpkin cookies, and said he'd be back to return my container!

Jen still has a long way to go to reach her $2300 goal. If you'd like to donate let me know and I'll put you in touch with Jen/let you know how.

You wish you were as cool as I am.

This is what happens when you go to student health and they decide the gigantic scrape on your leg is infected. I'm seriously considering getting out my leg warmers to put one on my other leg.