Rain Boots to Cowboy Boots: Day Four Hundred Forty Two

This is the saga of the last couple days. After getting back to Texas from vacation, I noticed that our apartment was starting to smell faintly of tobacco smoke again, especially in the evening when we crank the A/C. Why, you ask? Because our downstairs neighbor smokes like a chimney and it comes through the plumbing and vents. And makes me absolutely lose my mind. LOSE. MY. MIND. After talking to the front office (result - deal with it or move), making maintenance reseal all the plumbing in my bathroom, crying, and talking with my parents about how unfair life is, I decided to buy an air purifier. It only arrived today (Amazon was amazing and delivered it one day after I ordered it), but I'm already hopeful that this may have been one of my best purchases ever. Bonus - it should also help with my allergies. There is literally no down side.

My new best friend.

In other news, I got my first Texan spider bite. Right smack on the back of my knee. Fabulous. After watching it progressively swell, I decided that perhaps I should get it looked at to make sure I wasn't going to lose a leg (I'm quite fond of both of them). I'm happy to report that while it is a nuisance, it should go away with the help of some steroids and benadryl. I was also supposed to get some fancy cream to put on it, but when I went to the pharmacy they told me it was $72 post insurance. Seriously?! 72 dollars?! Is it magic cream? No thanks. I'll just stick with $5 hydrocortisone cream.

School has gone well in the 3 days I've been back. It's nice to return to focusing on research, even though my first experiment back failed at the second to last step. It was my very first experiment working with bacteria (yay!), and I was disappointed (boo). But hey, it wouldn't be science if it worked perfectly the first time.

And to finish off this post, photos from Colonial Williamsburg that I promised a few days ago. Enjoy!