Persuing Domestic Goddessness
Friday, February 27, 2004
 
Merengue
So last night I went salsa dancing! It would have been better, but stuff came up so I ended up going alone. i was determined to go, dammit. And 3 of the male instructors danced with me.i must have looked really pitiful, sitting all alone... Man. Well next week I have 4 people that say they want to join me, so it'll be loads of fun then.
This weekend is recruitment weekend, so today Dhana and I took people out to lunch. They were cool people, I thinkthey all should come here. One guy went to the same school as Susie and is also originally from Denver, so I introduced them quickly before we all left for lunch.
Dhana and I took them to the Canoe Club, which was oh so tasty. The service was not ideal, but they apologized for that by giving us each 2 truffles on the house. Oh so tasty truffles... lol. Good eatin' today.
In an hour I'm going with Jack and Molly to a wine and cheese party at a pharm/tox'er's house. i hope it ok... I feel weird, 3 MCBers crashing a pharm/tox party. They generally don'tlike to mix with thelikes of us.
My neighbor went ballistic after a successful poker night (went with $5, came out with $10. and a lot of dishes, but that's ok. Lots of leftover food too, which I brought to share with my lab adn the guys feasted like they have never feasted before), people left at 1030, and I went immediately to check my email, as the lab reports were due the following morning and I knew I'd have a million frantic last minute question emails (got 16). So, when I'm on the second email, she starts this double-fisted banging, which lasted for a significant amount of time. I was like, um you have problems, woman, chill! Actuallyy I was scared. I had wanted to go work out, but damned if I would set foot outside of a locked door for her to come tackle me! In the words of Ann, why bother knocking when thenoise is gone? True! She is INSANE. I'm going to talk to the condo manager to complain about her, because she is unreasonable. I can't even play music int he evenings anymore. I play it extra loud int he mornings though, I getup between 6 adn 6:30 depending on the day, so I BLAST it then. And it usually takes me about 20 minutes to actually wake up so I can go and turn it off (the stereo has speakers going to both the living room adn the bed room). And she generally leaves at 8. Take that, ho. I just wish she could tell me if there is a problem. I mean, then we can come to a compromise, I am willing to say, ok that's fine, no music on Thursday nights, I can deal with that. But now it's justevery time I make noise, she gets pissed. Which is unfair! Oooh I hope she is jsut a renter so I can lord my condo fees-paying, voting rights, owner status over her. Take that, beyatch.
Shopping with Eileen tomorrow, skating with Staceyand Eileen after wine/cheese tonight.
Love, revenge and some more wine, please
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Tuesday, February 24, 2004
 
Queen of Soap
So, I am yet again in office hours. I’m a good TA- I had office hours on Friday afternoon, last night, and now, for 1 or 1.5 hrs each. Then I arranged meetings with students Friday morning and this morning. I am so dedicated!
Last night I attended a dinner at a frat. Oooh a frat. It was like a computer science frat, they had a really nice house. And it was a dinner the brothers/sisters/siblings/whatever cooked for faculty they wanted to invite. It was a little awkward, because all the profs were like, oh are you a member here, and all the students were like, who they hell are you? But the food was pretty good, and I discovered that Alli, my UGTA in the evening, roomed with Margie that I went to high school with. So Alli and Sheila, who also knew Margie, knew a bunch about MPS. Random….
Tonight is my first poker night since my move. I cleaned up the place over the weekend, and worked a bit on it last night and this morning (tired-slept late). I have to get out a new bar of soap, my old one is all in pieces. So I open the cabinet, thinking, hmm what soap to use now. Well, I have a rectangle piece of cantoloupe soap (with a hole in it), a round white tea & ginger soap, mango/lime soap, tequila sunrise soap, and a floral-ish soap with a cat on it. As well as other soaps that I know are tehre but I did not encounter in my quick search this morning. I have a lot of soap!! I dunno what it is about soap, but man I like to collect it.
This morning we were all drilled to death in lab. They’ve been doing electrical work since the summer and they’re still not done. So this morning was drilling fun on the other side of our lab wall, from the hallway. They drilled for 90 minutes with a 5 minute break in the middle. And since all the doors have giant vents in them and huge spaces underneath, shutting the doors to the lab does nothing. It was agonizing, I thought I was either going to go insane or go beat the electricians up (the hot one was not one of them, unfortunately). Or both. But it just ended up that I forgot to add 2% SDS to the top of my resolving gel after I poured the gels in the 13 stacker, so once it all polymerized and I went to pour off the SDS, I noticed it was dry and said, huh, that’s weird. Then I looked at the gels in the stacker and noticed they were all uneven. So… they’re unuseable, I had to trash them. All 13 of them. Sigh.
Over the weekend I went ice skating. So much fun!!! I had a great time. Then I went to “The Wrap” with Molly and Mark, the new place in downtown Hanover. Very yummy, not a bad price. I got the classic burrito with chicken, and a mango smoothie. Mmmm….. Then Saturday, Mom and Dad came, they helped me clean and we went out and bought me a new humongous 27’ inch tv and a dvd/vcr combo player thingy. The tv is seriously big enough to swallow me whole, it’s so enormous. But beautiful… I still have the old 13’ one because I haven’t yet learned to program the new VCR. Then Sunday we hung out watched a movie and cleaned. I finished grading on Friday so the only task on my weekend to-do list was to clean. Check! The place is spotless. Hopefully after I make the pizza crust and brownies tonight it will still be spotless when everyone arrives…
Love, soaps and electronic equipment.

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Wednesday, February 18, 2004
 
A stalker of my very own
Yesterday was lab. Looooong lab. The first one actually got out early, but that was still 4+ hours on my feet, with an hour break, and another 4.5 hours on my feet. I think the lab went well, the only problem was that one of the gel cassettes was broken and so the first lab that got their gels going in the evening section had the broken one, so they were waiting and waiting and getting really annoyed, til I finally just took the gels out (which I was afraid would totally ruin the gels) andput them in another cassette. Then they only let it run halfway becuase they wanted to leave. Well guys I said you could leave it in stain and I'd take care of it....
So I went back to mylab, checked email briefly, chatted with John and Andres a bit adn then said, well, I'v been up since 530 so I am very tired. I will go home now. Andres then thought he could trick me, so he said, so you're bringing in cookies tomorrow, right? um ah no tired, can't bake, must sleep! So I promised to bring some in on Thursday. Which I don't mind doing anyway.
Ok so then- I'm walking out, adn I cross the street to the parking lot, and enter the parking lot. Now, I also crossed over a sidewalk to enter the lot. So this car is coming just as I'm almost across the street. Then it just drives over the sidewalk adn follows me. I'm thinking, .... um...this must be someone playing a trick on me. But from the glimpses I got of the car when I half-turned, I coudlnt' figure out who it could be. So after a couple min the car just pulls up along side me. And it's Andres! lol it was funny. Partly becuase I was so tired.
I am grading exams this week. One girl thinks that errors are necessary in DNA replication because if you didn't have errors, every cell would be a clone. Um... honey, I really hope you aren't planning to major in bio...
Such is life. Must return to grading.
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Friday, February 13, 2004
 
Happy Car Anneversary!
Nine years ago today (I think), my wonderful little red Pontiac Sunfire became a member of the Bue family. To celebrate, yesterday I took her for an oil change. And tomorrow, I'll take her to the car wash. I think that's a pretty good present for a car.
Valentine's Day is seeping into everything in my life. I hate Valentine's Day this year. Hmpf. Brandon is doing wonderfully with his new girlfriend, he's planning a potluck soon to introduce her to everyone. That'll be ....fun. Maybe I'll bring a bottle of vodka for myself.
No just kidding, that'd be awful.
I'm going home tomorrow morning so I can avoid all the happy lovebirds. You all suck! Again, just kidding. But I'd rather hang out with my family, because otherwise I'd be alone. I had 2 potential plans for tonight, I was ditched for both. Therefore I will pack tonight so I can get out of the state of No Ham early tomorrow morning.
I baked today,that was yummy. I'm still working on grading the lab reports, I'm halfway through the last group of 3 and have 2 more pairs to do (I'm doing them all by lab partner groups). Then I'll have to go through once more to finalize the grades (like I'm not sure what very common errors should have points taken off, because if everyone missed it, maybe I shoudlnt' take off points. But if only like 4 people missed it, then that was their mistake and it'll cost them.) I've found that I'm a hard ass when it comes to grading. Well, they should know enough to read the lab report. Sigh but for some, this is their first lab course. Hard to find thehappy medium...
I have pictures from the semiformal- http://grapefruit12.tripod.com/semi04.html
Happy Friday!
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Monday, February 09, 2004
 
Deadlines
So I am again in office hours (great time to blog, but Corinne would kill me, even though she is the lab coordinator for Genetics and therefore has no power over me, as I TA cell bio). I've been here 40 min and have had a rush of 5 students who all arrived within 10 minutes of my office hrs starting time. (Their lab reports are due tomorrow morning) All their questions are answered. I'm so paranoid I'm giving htem advice not stated in the lab write-up handout. I mean, I know what I'll look for when I'm grading, but geez I dunno what the dumb handout says. I guess next time I should know what the dumb handout says.
So the conclusion of my semi formal scandal: he called yesterday and I declined as nicely as I could. Brandon happened to stop by (he drops off his recycling at my complex and saw my car so knew I was home) adn I told him the story. He thinks it was awful of me to cancel, he thinks I should have gone. But... should I really go on a date with a guy who admits he's in love with me and feels no remorse at trying to kiss and grope me all night long? And let him spend loads of money on me (because he has money and spends it easily, adn I know he'd make sure I had a great time on the date) adn *then* say, "oh sorry, just kidding, I actually dont' like you." I think that's meaner. So I stand by what I did.
I'mparanoid this'll get around. No MCB people read this blog besides the ones that know the story already anyway, otherwise I would never say any of this online.
In other news... Notice how I only ever use that when there's nothing else. Well, mostly.
Oh I bought yummy cookies at King Arthur Flour yesterday, after Molly went on and on about them. Then I made kheer (indian rice pudding) which was from a low fat/healthy Indian food cookbook, and it was *nasty*. I think I should just toss it all out, it was so gross. I'm going to try again with a recipe from a regular full calorie/fat Indian food cookbook.
I also went to Walmart for a crappy, overpriced collage picture frame for pictures of day studs to hang over my couch. That didn't work so well, becuase all of the openings were like the same size, either all landscapes or all portraits, and the pictures for the frame are a mix. So I put in WCC pics and will get another frame. I almost bought 2 yesterday, I guess I should have. But K-Mart has nicer frames (believe it or not...) Actually maybe I'll just hit Target when I'm home next weekend...
Oh funny thing today- at Dartmouth, after you get your exams back (like midterms, I don't think this goes for finals), you can check out the answer key and write up a reason why you think your answer was graded wrong and submit it to get regraded. So this time we had 6, and two people wanted the question I graded redone. So one of the guys I gave half credit, becuase technically he got the "false" of true/false right, but his reasoning was totally off. But the other guy was like, please read my answer more carefully, it says the same as the answer key. So I read it, and I had written 0 points for it. So I was like, hmm did I screw up? So I read hte answer. No, that's definitely wrong. So then I"m like, well crap what does the answer key say? So I read it, and yeah it says what I thought it'd say. The stupid kid didn't even read the dumb answer key to see that his answer was totally wrong. ugh moron. No points, dumbass! And no soup for you either! He did that on 2 of my questions, 34B and D and 8A. Just said, please reread, my answer is the same as the answer key. Yeah maybe in your world, buddy. Lol regrades were great because I was in a pissy mood. It was very satisfying to write exactly *why* they were getting no credit and to write No E.C. in big red letters. heh, I am evil.
Oh man I am evil. Well, hopefully this is temporary.
Well I will get a few other things done before my office hrs are up. Then I'm outta here, going home to have dinner adn then work out and get some sleep. :)
Love, lab reports and embracing the inner bitch
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Saturday, February 07, 2004
 
New dress
So.
Last night was the semi formal.
....
I'l post a couple pics either tonight or tomorrow. They're all on my desktop and I'm at school now, so well I can't really post them from this computer.
In other news!
I'm at office hours for TAing. I've been here 45 minutes, and I've had one student show up. I explained to her how to use excel to make a line of best fit for her standard curve, and I showed her how to do some calculations that she was confused on. But, I'm worried that maybe I'm not doing the calculations right. Molly did them differently. But they seem ok to me... I doubt myself too much, I'm aware of that, but I don't want to give the students who come to ask the wrong info, and the rest of them know how to do it fine. I could probably go over with Molly how we do them (we did the lab together at teh start of the term, so we have the same data)
Well ok so the semi formal. I made the mistake of agreeing to go out on Valentine's Day with a guy who Ithought just asked because we would both be alone then. And who wants to be alone on Valentine's Day? (I should have rememebred I planned to go home and see my family that weekend). Well after I said yes, it basically comes out that he'd wanted to ask me out pretty much since he met me, but Brandon and I started dating before he did. And now that we broke up... I screwed up here. How do you let someone down like that? I don't like him in that way, yet I'm flattered he asked me. But I really do not want to hurt him.
I think this is all a result of me looking particularly gorgeous in my new dress (never got new shoes for it, just went with my old standby-s, the nine west mary janes I've had for several years. They're good shoes, and I know I can handle snow with them). Sigh, it's tough to be beautiful. (heh)
So such is my life. Tonight is the Dartmouth Glee Club concert, they're performing Mozart's Requiem, one ofmy favorite pieces. I'm going alone, but this is ok. I invited people from my chamber choir to come with, at Eileen's recommendation, even though I'd already bought a ticket (but I figured maybe I could return it if other people wanted to come, so we could sit together- I hate assigned seats at school concerts). There's one person I would have loved to mention it to, to see if he would also attend. But I didn't.
Where are all my students?? Come on people, I am here to help you with your lab reports! You'd all better get the full 20pts on this! Lol oh well.
TAing continues tobe enjoyable. We learned to use pipetmen this week, which was chaotic in the afternoon section, but luckily Peter, my undergrad TA, is so good that he helped the people that didn't know how to use pipetmen. I honestly can't remember a time when I ddn't know how to use a pipetmen. I remember some vague confusion when I started using the Gilson ones (there are a couple different brands around), which were not the first ones I'd used. But the evening session was better. More people could use them, and I did a better job explaining. I have some real smarties in both sections, people that totally know what they're doing.
One funny thing- a girl in my evening section broke her wrist recently and is in a cast, onher right hand (she's right handed, too) So she came in early and showed methe cast, and was worried about how it said we have to wear gloves inthis lab, since she didn't know if she could get a glove over the cast. So I said, well, you only need gloves for working with the bradford reagent (which is in a very strong acid), and an additional person was joining our lab just for this week, so I would put the new girl in her group, so she and the other lab partnet would pipet and hte girl with the broken wrist could do whatever she was able, adn they woudn't be really slowed down by her injury. So after a while, I look over, (and the broken wrist girl had been working in a lab for a bit so knew how to do all this, and the other two hadn't and had some trouble with the pipetmen) and broken wrist girl had gloves on and was adding Bradford Reagent to one set of samples while the other two were still making up the other set of samples. lol, she was so sick of waiting for the other two. It was amusing.
So, lab. Their reports are due on Tuesday, so it will be grading fun for me for a week. Susie said it's awfully boring, and I'll have 27 to grade. Woohoo! One kid (a know it all but not snotty this week like int he first lab) promised to put something amusing in his lab report so I wouldn't be so bored. Lol, thanks, Danish kid.
So. That's about it. It's snowing out, it's really pretty- big fluffy flakes that are melting when they hit the pavement so the roads are stil ok. Hopefully they'll also be ok when I"m driving home around 11 tonight. Hmm...
Love, lab and getting things straightened out
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