Apples!

Cider donuts really do make the world go round.

 World War II aircraft?  There were a bunch of them---kind of crazy!

 Ladders!

I love apple orchards...

So many apples!  Another GRT and I picked about 150 pounds at Honeypot Orchards: Spencers, Empires, McIntosh, Cortland....all just so wonderfully fall tasting!   Many were used today for the apple baking event here in McCormick, but many more are leftover for making apple butter.  But not today.  I am knackered.

I love the BSO.

There has been a lot of hullabaloo lately on whether James Levine, conductor of the BSO, can handle his job as the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and of the New York Metropolitan Orchestra....he's had some pretty severe health/back issues, surgeries, all that.  But he can't keep away.  The music keeps pulling him back.

Bryn Terfel, famous bass/baritone, and James Levine (from here)

But after seeing the opening concert, an all-Wagner show, and this week's Mahler 1, even with him walking cane in hand, wow.  Orchestras really just do it for me.  Music that just vibrates in your soul like that---I need it in my life more often.  

whew. what a day.

First of all, whoa.  This day was frantically running around, finishing my poster for the Bionengineering retreat on Monday, finishing problem sets, attending our weekly student seminar and NOT having enough copies thus warranting me running---fast---in my three inch heels to pull an amazing confusing-copy-machine-feat, then being frustrated with lab buffers and having a terrible headache.  Ugh.

And then there was this:

Recitation professor:  So, does anyone have any questions before we start?  General things, the readings?

Me:  So, why exactly do you call removing hydrogens abstracting them?

Recitation professor:  (hedges a bit)

Me:  I guess, I'd never heard of it put that way before this class...we just called it removing hydrogens in undergrad.

Girl behind me (who continually editorialized our class with comments):  God, uh, where did you take organic?

Me:  seething.  (also, upon looking it up, abstract has an alternate definition of "to steal away" and it comes from the late 14th century and is from the Latin word "abstractus," (drawn away).  This is legit...but I had seriously never heard it in terms of hydrogens before)

Now, organic chemistry is not my strong suit.  As I've pointed out, the slight lysdexia and complete lack of spatial perception make this subject terribly difficult for me.  Histology just makes sense.  Physiology (yes, even action potentials!)  -- we understand each other now.  I've been able to get by in orgo and learn because I studied hard, not because it made sense to me in some sort of natural way.  But holy schmole, just because I didn't go to MIT and take Their organic chemistry doesn't mean I'm an idiot.  (says me, who, you know, read the book and did the problem set and ---whoa, wait for it---got several things right during recitation.  N-deacetylation for the win).  There are no stupid questions when you're trying to learn...I've been there.  A lot.  See: my entire first semester of graduate school trying to program math-based systems for which I'd never actually learned the math.  But there are people like you, who are in a whole different league, and because my mama told me not to say anything if I can't say anything nice, I won't.


Fortunately, I finally got my drunken noodle tonight as well (plus a boba bonus!).  Earlier this week, a labmate was eating spaghetti for lunch, and I excitedly shared that I learned what pasta puttanesca meant (whore's pasta!  it's true...)

And we got into a whole conversation about people's rationalizations for the names of food, like drunken noodle.  It's not called that because the noodles are swirly, it's called that because it's easy good food to make/eat while drunk. 

And then I said, "Man.  I want some drunken noodle."  And tonight, spicy deliciousness in Allston ensued.  After today, it was exactly what I needed.

And then my male-male audio cord came in, and there is SOUND.  Oh man, I may just watch something on Hulu right now, at 11:49 pm, just because I can. 

Polaroid

As many of you might now, Polaroid stopped producing its iconic film two years ago, much to the chagrin of polaroid enthusiasts and photographers everywhere. A few former employees have set up shop in an attempt to recreate the film and bring it back to life, but until then, loving what is already there is all we've got. It's called The Impossible Project, and while they're on the road to recreating this film, it does merit the question...why? Why do we care?

Many of my favorite photographers use Polaroid as a medium that expresses spontaneity and beauty, and one of these is Shannon Leith, a photographer who received her BFA from Biola in California. For her senior design project, she had a room filled with polaroids where attendees of the show were encouraged to take a piece that spoke to them.


She had a few leftover, and I ended up getting one in the mail!


Add that to the fact that I just found an old polaroid camera in unclaimed storage...and it looks like I'll have a chance to try the medium for myself. If I can stomach paying $40 for a roll of film. Yikes.  Maybe I'll just hold onto it for awhile...

Speaking of polaroids...wow.  The Gaga was here.

new household addition!

After this fiasco and missing all of the Olympic coverage, ice skating, everything---I decided that I needed a TV. Well, wanted a TV. And so, after discovering quite a few unused Target giftcards and quite the sale, I had a 32" TV shipped to McCormick.  It was quite the box.

But then...wow.  It looks like it was meant to be there! 

But don't be fooled..it took about two hours and lots of pulling down shelves, moving things, screwdrivers, all that...turning my apartment into an absolute disaster.  And this was all to figure out that wow, the stand that it's on won't fit at all.  Since the shelves are on a slant, if you set the tv + tv stand on the desk portion, it just wouldn't fit.  Balderdash.  But I futzed and cursed and wished my brother was there, and finally came up with the idea of just balancing it on the ledges of the shelves, and because of the slant, the top of the tv rests surprisingly sturdily on the vertical posts of the shelves.  Precarious?  Not at all.  But to put at least my mother at ease, the set-up has been Mech-E grad student  stress-test approved, which means I am go for launch!

...too bad the dumb TV box didn't include any cables with it, so all I can do is turn it on and change the clock.  Then I bought an HDMI male/male cable and an HDMI to mac cable at the suggestion of the employee at Microcenter, only to figure out that telling someone you'd like to connect your computer to your tv so you can watch movies doesn't mean that said employee will tell you how to include SOUND in this discussion.  So I'm currently soundless, and patiently waiting for my student amazon prime shipping for my headphone connection.  Then, my friends, there shall be Stargate. 

tax receipt

Recently NPR's Planet Money linked to a study done by a think tank called Third Way (they bill themselves the moderate voice of the progressive movement).  It's an intriguing and helpful look at where my money actually goes.  Surprise (and yeah, I'm a bit socialist on this one)---I feel like I could give more. There are so many things that I have benefited from over the years--the arts, highways, transportation, and especially education.  Here that, congress?  Someone making less than $200,000 a year could deal with her taxes being raised.  Now, that statement comes with specific responsibilities, like actually putting that money towards doing good in those areas, but you have my vote.  For instance, if there was a box on my tax form that said I could donate $100 extra for programs that directly fund students doing gap years after high school in Americorps or City Year, done.  No qualms from this girl.  I feel like there really is a general dislike of taxes because it's like money that is thrown away.  And, I kind of feel like that as far as some of the money in that list.  As in, if I could put my portion of the defense budgets towards clean energy R&D, or towards employing servicemen and women in Greg Mortensen's school-building initiative in Afghanistan, that would be swell.   One day, when I'm enlightened despot of the world and get to design tax laws...ha.  In my dreams (nightmares, more like!)


PS  Science naming hilarity of the day: farads are used to denote capacitance, or the capability of an object to hold an electric charge.  When you have a picofarad (pF), you have, quite literally, a puff.  Seriously.  One picofarad=one puff.  Whoever thought scientists don't have a sense of humor was way off.  Okay, so maybe our sense of humor doesn't make sense to your average non-periodic-table-reciting crowd, but a puff?  Excellent.

blast from the past!

inspiration in the every day

Between the Boston Globe's Big Picture series and Daily Dose of Imagery in Toronto, I get a full day's worth of images to make me think, laugh, smile, and cry.  The above touched me to the point of "oh my gosh I need a bike and paint chips stat!"  and transitioned to "wow, wouldn't it be cool if you did it with school colors to ride in a parade..the possibilities are endless!"

Their newest is a series of satellite images from the housing boom in Florida recently detailed on NPR's Planet Money.  Sad, horrifying, and greedy, all at once. 

"A toast, to siblings who actually like each other."

Missing you, brothers!  

(well, and Hillary too.  I've been skyping lately with my family, and the fact that she can hear me and kind of see me but that I am absolutely NOT there rubbing her tummy, well, she is not down with that, I think)

October 2010

Say hello to a weekend full of studying, trying to get over these nasty barometric pressure-changes-induced sinus headaches, and working on my poster for the BE Retreat.  That, and finally catching up on packages and letters to send, for I am woefully behind in that department....


Inspiration

My Body Gallery: proof that women who are the exact same height and exact same weight can look completely different...a redefinition of what it is like to be "normal."  Put in your height and weight and see the spectrum. It's pretty amazing.




Colander as succulent planter. Why didn't I think of that?!


Originally seen on Share Some Candy (artist Will Bryant)

Ikea's brilliant new cookbook; so pretty!  (these are before and after pictures of kannebullar, or almond cinnamon rolls)



The broken ceramic pottery of Li Xiaofeng



The story of the Voynich Manuscript...all I want to do is get out a pen and paper and try to crack the code!

Tilt-shift Van Gogh...genius!


...and just plain funny:

Star Wars status updates.  Yeah, I'm pretty sure that I laughed just as loud at these. 



Things to look forward to:

--first orchestra concert of the year!  Chadwick is going to kill me, or at least make me beg for an oxygen tank:



--data!  I have some.  And today was so incredibly productive it hurt.  So much accomplished.  Now, to get back into malaria culturing, lots of DNA, and more progress.  Finally.


--apple-picking and the apple dessert study break!  Mmm, pie.


--Opening Gala Concert of the Boston Symphony Orchestra -- tomorrow night!  I'm going to get all gussied up and enjoy some lovely Wagner.


--Mechanisms of Drug Action.  Despite the 150 pages of reading this weekend (?!  come on.  Seriously?)  ---this is a class that is making me stay interested in chemistry.  Which, if you know me, is really hard.  A penchant for dyslexia makes remembering a nucleophile versus an electrophile really hard.  Phile means likes, electro means electrons, so do electrophiles like getting electrons?  Or do they have them and like giving them away?  I seriously cannot remember this for the life of me, and it keeps making me look ridiculous.  Never you mind that these things make complete sense in anatomy and physiology..but chemistry and those bond things?  Not so much.  So--here's to learning to not look ridiculous, especially with a thesis committee composed of three bioengineers with chemistry backgrounds (wait, why did I do that, again?)


And with that, I've finished my mug of tea, and it's time for bed.