Day Nine Hundred Eighty Seven

I'm writing this on my charged laptop! So without further ado, some photos from the past few weeks. 

First up, the San Antonio Zoo! My friend Mindy had never been, and I figured the combination of Mindy's love of birds and the San Antonio Zoo basically being half birds was a winning pair. Sure enough, I was right. And considering I also love birds, I didn't hate it either. They took away their penguin exhibit though, and that made me sad.

My selfie with a lorry.

Mindy was somehow a bird whisperer, and both lorries she fed
immediately jumped on her shoulder and just hung out there for
a few minutes.

Next up, this cursed, dysfunctional laser that has stalled all research progress the past couple months. We finally had to give in and take the cover off the entire thing to fiddle with the mirrors inside. See that green laser? That laser is so powerful it vaporizes air, and will slice through both a sheet of paper and your hand if it gets in the way. So I volunteered to fold the lens paper while my boss sacrificed his hands for the cause. While we all came out unscathed, the laser is still broken. Awesome.

The laser also has the exciting trait of causing instant blindness if
it reflects off something and in to your eyes. So this is what I looked
like for the duration of the attempted fix. The dark goggles block out
red laser light, the orange block green laser light. Together, they
maintain my ability to see things.

Last up, my office hour activity last week. No one showed up, so I drew Chem Bevo and hung him up in the room where a bunch of TAs hold their office hours. I checked today, he's still there. I'm a bit proud. If you can think of any catchy slogans for him, let me know.

This week thus far has been more fiddling with the laser and more office hours, as final exams loom over all the undergrads. Oh, and book club, where we talked about the behemoth of a book that is The Goldfinch. It wasn't my favorite, but I'm still happy I read it.

Day Nine Hundred Eighty Five

I forgot to charge my laptop again, so this will be another picture-less post since the phone blog app just cannot handle photos. But fear not, my laptop is charging overnight tonight so tomorrow I'll have no excuse.

This weekend was.....busy. Saturday was filled with tutoring, a baby shower, a Mary Kay makeup appointment (I looked fabulous afterwards), and going to see the new Jungle Book in theaters. That remake was absolutely amazing, and all of you should go see it. Today was spent doing all the stuff I didn't get done on Saturday, such as grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, going to the gym, more tutoring, and data analysis for work. Thrilling stuff, let me tell you. It's especially fun when you don't realize you were saving said data analysis in the wrong format until too late, so you get to do it all over again. Excel, you kill me sometimes. Absolutely kill me.

Day Nine Hundred Eighty One

Remember how in my last post I said life felt a bit like a tornado? It hasn't changed yet, and it's continually exhausting. Things are very tense in lab, and an immediate resolution does not appear to be on the horizon, so spending 8+ hours of my day in that environment has got all my nerves frayed. I won't go in to what's happening, because I'll just get worked up (trust me), but it's an unpleasant situation at the moment.

Outside of lab, finals week is creeping closer and closer, and while I don't have any finals of my own to worry about (thank goodness), the students in the class I TA for as well as the students I'm tutoring are starting to feel the pressure. This means that extra office hours, review sessions, and tutoring sessions are all forthcoming. It takes up a chunk of free time, but the money made from tutoring makes the idea of paying for moving expenses a little more bearable. And for that I am thankful. Let's just hope I can calm these students down enough that they don't go in to panic mode when their exams and finals are dropped down in front of them.

On a final note, the weather has been absolute madness recently. Horribly stormy on Sunday (think flooding and emergency rescues - thankfully not in my area of town), then lingering storms all throughout the week that follow no rhyme or reason. Today was all thunder and lightning this morning, hot and muggy this afternoon, and then absolute perfect weather in the evening. I have no words.

PS - I haven't forgotten about posting photos. I'll get to that on the next post, when my laptop is fully charged again.

Day Nine Hundred Seventy Five

Last week was an absolute whirlwind of emotion and tension after a freshman girl was murdered on campus. For those who aren't aware, they were able to catch the guy (or should I say kid... 17 year old boy) who did it just 2 days after the body was found. Which is impressive, and we're all thankful for it. May Haruka Weiser rest in peace, and may everyone keep her family in their prayers. Yesterday was the first day where no news crews were on campus, which makes things feel a little more back to normal. There are still police cars everywhere, but I'm completely fine with that not changing for a while.

This week has been a completely different kind of whirlwind, with broken equipment in lab and suddenly realizing I'm going to have to move come June. $220 increase in rent (24% rise) after one year?! No thanks. I'm more than happy to leave. Thankfully today I was able to lock down an apartment for when my current lease ends, so cheers to not having to go a week or two with no place to live!

It's been one of those times of life where you feel like you're trapped in a tornado. If you all could pray for things to calm down (even just a bit), I'd very much appreciate it. There has been a highlight in recent days though during a trip to the San Antonio Zoo last weekend. Photos to follow in a post soon, since I'm writing this on my phone, and the blog phone app hates uploading photos.

Day Nine Hundred Sixty Seven

I recently hit the one year anniversary of living in my current apartment, and decided to celebrate by buying myself new dishes and a new shower liner. It's times like this that I realize just how much of a grown-up I've become. Yay? I also learned to smell a shower liner before you buy it, as I put my new one up, and in the course of 30 minutes took it back down and made a beeline for the dumpster before going to Target and buying another one. I may be a chemist, but that doesn't mean I want my apartment smelling like horrific chemicals. Crisis averted courtesy of Target being the best store to ever exist.

Besides the bad shower liner, it's been an odd/tragic week. Yesterday morning on UT's campus, it was discovered that a homicide had taken place overnight, with the victim being a female student. I've spent my week walking to and from work within 100 feet of an active crime scene, observing an extremely large number of law enforcement officers and news crews milling around the area constantly working. It's been surreal, scary, and completely heartbreaking. And I assure you all that I'm being as safe as humanly possible when working and moving around on campus, especially in light of certain events. So everyone say a prayer for the UT family, for students and staff to stay safe, and especially for the family of the victim.

Day Nine Hundred Sixty Two

This morning while walking with a friend to Starbucks on campus, we passed a guy on his bike singing "Roar" by Katy Perry and yelling "gotta start this day out RIGHT!"

Ahhhhh, college campuses. You never fail to entertain.