Day Nine Hundred Twenty Three

Two days after returning from Washington, my immune system decided it would be a splendid time to succumb to a horrific cold. The past 4 days have been spent sneezing, coughing, and generally sounding (and feeling) like the most disgusting person ever. It's been a dream. So this post will be dedicated to reminiscing over my visit to Washington a week ago.

First up was a trip to my alma mater, St. Martin's, to give a grad school talk. As far as I know it went well, and it was surreal/wonderful to be back on that small, quaint little campus. I didn't realize how much I missed it until I went back. The evening ended with dinner at one of my favorite restaurants (Budd Bay Cafe) with some of my favorite people, Greg and Laurie Creighton. Thank you for the delicious salmon dinner!

Next up was traveling to Puyallup, where the wedding festivities commenced on Saturday morning. Here we are at Amanda's mom's house doing hair and makeup for the big event later that evening. It was a time of many curling irons and much hair spray.

Once we were all pretty, we got all dressed up for photos. The bridesmaids dresses looked great, but let me tell you...it was an adventure to travel with that thing between Austin and Seattle. Because it was winter in Washington, Amanda kindly supplied us all with fur wraps to keep us warm while we gracefully waltzed around Tacoma taking pre-wedding photos (and when I say "gracefully waltzed", I mean "awkwardly got out of cars while simultaneously trying to hold an umbrella and our dresses and trying to prevent getting the pale pink satin dirty with mud").

My old friend Mary and my new friend Annie at the wedding.

My roommate from freshman year at George Fox, Emily.

And finally, the beautiful bride, Amanda.

My time in Washington ended with gallivanting around Olympia with one of my other best friends, Abbie. We went by my favorite used book store, walked around the harbor, and ate at my favorite restaurant downtown. It was the perfect end to a perfect trip.

Day Nine Hundred Sixteen

I spent the last week in Washington and filled up all of my time there with people and places I love. I'm exhausted and overly emotional about having to leave what I consider my home state, but it was an amazing trip - with a highlight of getting to stand next to one of my best friends as she got married on Saturday. Amanda, I love you to pieces and am so honored that I got to be a part of your wedding. To many more adventures in the future!

Photos from this past week to come soon.

Day Nine Hundred Two

Today, I spent most of my work day with a delightful German man named Claus. I've learned that in grad school, at one point or another everything in your lab breaks (literally everything, including grad students). And when that item is your $17000 microscope, you get to meet repairmen like Claus. In his own words, the inside of our microscope was "so dusty you could plant a potato garden." Now you understand what I mean when I say the man was delightful. He flipped our microscope on its head (which made me very nervous, but he seemed totally comfortable with) and worked some kind of magic involving hammers, Allen wrenches, sand paper, and lots of grease to make our vintage scope work like new again. He even polished it for us while telling me about one of his upcoming service trips to a naval base in San Diego to fix a submarine periscope. In short, Claus was the coolest.

The rest of the day was spent having an office hour to which nobody came, going to a seminar about catalysis where I understood about 20% of what was said, and polishing up my grad school presentation I'll be giving next week at my alma mater. Because guys, next week I'll be in Washington. I'm so excited I can hardly stand it.

I also replaced a (very) small but (kind of) important part on the interior of my car today! All by myself! Granted it was just the little piece that the sun visor clips in to, but I was still pretty proud of myself. I accidentally snapped the original one in half last week when I apparently got a bit overaggressive with the visor because it was way too sunny out for the middle of "winter." This resulted in the clip flying toward the windshield and the visor flying back toward my face, which made my drive home on the highway ever so exciting. Atleast it only cost $3.50 for the replacement part.

Day Eight Hundred Ninety Nine

This week was exhaustingly busy with both work related and non work related things. Fixing broken equipment, (new to me) book club, yoga, chemistry review sessions, and a Sherlock marathon...and more and more and more.

One of my favorite parts came when I was sitting in lab working on a presentation to give at my alma mater next month. I floated the question "what do you wish you knew about grad school before you applied/started?" My labmate immediately replied with "how it completely crushes your soul and gives you a constant feeling of inadequacy." My boss was sitting at the desk next to hers when she said this. And all he did was grin and continue to work.

Welcome to graduate school, folks.

Day Eight Hundred Ninety Five

Today was an unexpected sick day due to an unexpected stomach virus. It was also 74 degrees out today.

I find both of these things to be equally disappointing.

Day Eight Hundred Ninety One

Spring semester officially started yesterday, which means all of us grad students have had to exchange the peaceful silence of winter break for the stampede of undergrads wandering around Welch Hall with zero sense as to where they're going. It's delightful.

This spring I'm back to TAing an undergrad class - an analytical chemistry class with...wait for it...115 students! This is by far the largest class I've ever TAed, and thankfully there's three of us TAs to share the burden. Having a lab of 16 students was exhausting, so 115 should be quite the adventure. I've never been more thankful that I have a locked office I can hide in.

On a final note, I learned that I apparently have a distinct knock today. My boss recently moved in to a new office, but the office door doesn't have a window, which means we never know if he's on campus or not. Because like the grad students, the professors also hide from undergrads in their locked offices. Well, I'm no undergrad anymore, so closed doors don't deter me. I'll just knock on it. And I knock with purpose, because half the time a wimpy knock gets no results since nobody can hear it. Well, today I knocked on my boss's door, and when he opened it (HA! I knew he was hiding in there), he just looked at me and said, "you know, I knew it was you, because it sounded like a battering ram was at my door." Thanks, Jason.

Day Eight Hundred Eighty Seven

Yesterday at work, we finished the chemical waste tagging, and came out with a grand total of 344 different bottles of chemical waste. Thanks a lot, former lab members. I filled out every single one of those tags, and now my right hand is sore. I blame every single one of you.

I was in a bit of a trance following that particular lab adventure, so most of the rest of Friday I just kind of stared into oblivion. With a brief moment of focus thrown in to go to Target and buy cute storage bins for my kitchen (hello, newly freed up counter space) as well as a small plastic bucket for cleaning. Turns out, finding a small plastic bucket is impossible and Target only carries gigantic car wash type buckets that won't fit in my bathroom. So I improvised and got a small plastic trash can for $1.50. Because sometimes you just have to be flexible after spending 30 minutes wandering around looking for a stupid small bucket.

Today I tutored some high school kids in chemistry, bought groceries, and went to listen to some more live music at a local bar called Moontower Saloon. I went to see the Cody Bryan Band play, a local band that is absolutely fantastic and that you should all check out. Between Cody Bryan Band today and Macklemore this past Wednesday, it was a week of live music for me...and I loved every second of it!

Speaking of Macklemore, here are a few of the promised photos!

Thrift Shop

White Walls

Downtown

This was actually before the concert. Olja and I found a random photo booth
complete with props in the concert hall, and we had to participate.