no, i haven't dropped off the face of the earth, it just seems that way

i keep wanting to update here a bit, but never seem to find the time. we moved most of my stuff to the house in decatur yesterday(where i will be dogsitting for 6months). Tejas pointed out that, for someone who moves almost yearly, i own way too many sturdy hardwood pieces of furniture. its true, my body is revolting against me today. i just can't part with those things though. anyway, we are leaving for india on wed., and i am trying frantically to finish up some research, start a proposal that i need to write for a post-doc application, clean-up the apartment, and pack for the trip before then. and now i have to waste a few of these precious hours at a party for the group at andrew's new house. weeeee! i promise to post pictures and whatnot when we get back! and then i may be gone again until i finish my thesis in march!

flikr crapped out on me and we went camping this weekend!

so my flikr account seems to be acting up. its not showing the better portion of my images! so, i've moved on over to picasa. yay, google! we went camping near callaway gardens this weekend. we went to the gardens, and the safari, and ran into tejas' advisor at an icecream shop while playing chess. i lost.

knitting books and the library

rather recently the library obtained a couple of knitting books that i was really excited about being about to get my hands on:

fitted knits: which i'm really excited about because i like pretty much every pattern in the book, and the author explains how to tailor all the patterns to be (properly) fitted to the individual knitter (hence, the name). anyway, its finally been catalogued, but i was third in line so probably won't be seeing it until december anyway.

romantic hand knits: there were only a couple of patterns i really wanted from this book, but i was first in line so i picked it up this evening. turns out there are a couple more things i might like than i thought originally, but mostly all i could think while looking it over was, "My GOD, can someone PLEASE put a bra on these girls!" i'm pretty sure there's not one bra to be found behind all those romantic hand knits and its pretty freaking obvious. seriously, this book is obviously being marketed to women. do we really need that much boobage to be sold?

anyway, because i was thinking about the book i had to pick-up this evening, this afternoon i went on a search of my computer for the patterns i had scanned from a few other library knitting books. and they seem to have disappeared. i'm not really sure how that's possible. its also kind of sad, considering the excessive amount of time it took me to do the scanning in the first place.

long time gone

i really do have things to tell and still have pictures to show from my birthday boating in the park. just don't seem to find the time to sit down and type them out in an orderly fashion. so, a small list of things and a promise to elaborate on most of them at a later date:

1) no longer planning to graduate in december, more like march or april now.

2) i had a very nice b-day in nyc where bethany and thomas took me out to the trailer park for a b-day eve dinner and i had champane in a can! (obviously i still have the can). it was really nice getting to see them so regularly during the summer.

3) rach call me on my b-day as well even though 3 days before i had NOT called her on her b-day.

4) kati called me too!

5) stealing an excellent birthday plan from bethany, we took out a rowboat in central park! then we went to a schmancy fondue place and had cheese fondue for dinner! followed by desert at max brenner's chocolate bar. perhaps i was just too full from the cheese, but the chocolate bar wasn't THAT great.

6) ACS was ok. would have been lots better if i had not been left to entertain courtney the entire time (she's completely incapable of being by herself, and would rather hang out with someone she greatly dislikes than go it alone!). neetu was meeting with her future husband, and therefore can not be chastised for leaving me alone with the beast.

7) tejas is moving to midtown this weekend. yay! no more crazy middle aged man (and sometimes wife and 3 kids) to contend with! plus, he has a little front porch area, just the right size for my little patio furniture set from my mom!

8) i'm finally getting back into the swing of things in the lab after the move and ACS and all. my laser set-up is almost complete (this time with properly expanded beam) and a replacement polarlizer arrived yesterday for the one i seem to have burned a hole in!

9) the ~1oz polarizer can in a respectively huge box that weighed 2 lbs. when i opened it up there was this large red box that says LAB SNACKS: A Treat for Humans. and it was filled with SNACKS! its awesome. Thorlabs is the best! there are 2 trail mix bars, cheezits, 2 twizzlers, tic-tacs, roasted almonds, and fruit snacks! obviously, thorlabs is very smart and realizes how easily swayed grad students are by free food!

10) job searching sucks. i applied to a position at sandia. haven't heard anything yet. am going to the job fair on campus next week. don't think i really want an industry job, but i'm gonna give it a go anyway. not that i can even give them a approximate starting date yet. geez.

11) the church is a having a pet blessing for the local community next weekend. i agreed to make homemade doggy biscuits and organize others to make people treats. i'm still a little on the fence with this one, honestly. i think its sort of odd, but i understand why they are doing it. they are trying to meet people where they are. the community is full of pets and pet lovers, so what better way to meet these people and get them to at least know that Epworth exists than through their pets? still, i think its weird. thoughts?

i suppose that's all for know. neetu should be coming in soon and then we will be heading to the gym.

who else has a key to my apartment?

this morning i get home from the house i'm dog sitting at to find that both the dead bolt and door handle of my apartment are locked. i ONLY ever lock the dead bolt! what the HELL?!?
now i'm really starting to get creeped out by paul. i mean, who else could it have possibly been? and if it had been for a legitimate reason, shouldn't he have called me first? or at least afterward or something?

not so yes, yes, yes

so turns out eric doesn't have the budget to pay me, so bye bye post-doc in the weeks lab. he gave me a few suggestions of others at emory that might match my research well. one is a guy who's ex-wife works in the chem-e department at tech, and is an ex because he was apparently sleeping with an undergrad student (information received at a group meeting when bart picked one of his papers to discuss and andrew said the guy was a creep and shared the story of why). needless to say, i have no interest to work for him. i don't think its a particularly good thing to go into a job already thinking your boss is a creep. there is one other physics guy at emory that i might ask, one guy at tech in chem-e, and a woman in physics at tech (my personal 1st choice) that i will probably get in touch with soon. its not looking super promising though.

i'm also torn between wanting this week to fly by so i can see tejas sooner, and wanting it to creep so i can get done all the crap i need to do before next monday when i need to turn in my written research summary to my committee. i'm pretty much in a constant state of anxiety since my parents left friday over how much i have to get done. its strange how when i have something so important coming up i get so scared about it that i freeze up and do nothing, making the whole situation even worse. I am doing lots of work now, but i still just feel like curling up in a ball on my bed and just giving up completely. really useful.

YES! YES! YES!

so, i emailed the guy at Emory that's on my committee about the potential of getting a short-term post-doc position in his group in starting in january, and he said he'd be EXCITED to have me work in his group, and he'd get back to me next week about whether or not he has the budget to do it! i know that means its not a sure thing yet, but its still FREAKIN AWESOME! and there is also a small possibility that i could get a 6-month rent free dog sitting job close to Emory. maybe. we'll see. it would be cool though.

also, i get the weird feeling that paul was following me this evening when i walked to publix. mostly because i walked past him messing with his flowers and down the street, and while i was waiting to cross the street i saw him turn the corner and look the direction i turned then sort of stop and walk back from whence he came. what the heck, man. why do i have to have such a freaking weird land lord. plus, that was just creepy.

my parents will be here sunday night til friday morning. should be fun balancing that with getting my crap together for my final research review.

this afternoon i saw a guy walk across north ave just to turn around and pee onto the street he just crossed. perhaps he thought it would be funny to pee right next to the fire hydrant, i don't know.

i also finally figured out how to get comedy central on my tv. it requires keeping the dvd player on and changing the channels through that, and taping the cable wire to the wall in two different places. now i can finally watch jon stewart again.

oops....

so, now i feel a bit like a jerk. apparently, masha's bladder has so many crystals in it looked like a snow globe. and that's a direct quote from the vet. poor baby. she was just trying to tell me something was wrong. :(

attack of the peeing cat, part 85 million

AGHGHGHGHGH!

5:30 am. i'm about 2 cm away from having a nervous breakdown over this. we're going to the vet this evening (they were both due for shots anyway, so i figured i'd take them in and see if the vet has any suggestions). i really just don't know what to do about it. damned studio apartment! if i had a door, i could just shut it!

if i hadn't forgotten my purse as well this morning (which meant i had to sit outside the building for 10 minutes until the doors unlocked at 7am, which of course set me to crying hysterically for about 45 seconds) i would show you all pictures of me fancy new plastic peg board that i installed in my bathroom on sunday in an attempt to have something resembling counter space (thank you Martha Stewart for your many wonderful organizational ideas!), and also a picture of the galley proof of my paper which is FINALLY about to be published (its mostly just a picture of the title and authors and a bit of the abstract). I'm pretty sure its probably a copyright infringement to post that on-line, but considering the only person that is in anyway involved in the scientific community at large that might ever see this blog is crye ( and i like to think she's cool enough not to rat me out the the acs journals publishers) i think i'm safe.


so you will all just have to wait until i get back from the vet with pissy mcpees-alot to see my cool new things!

what i did this weekend (in no pArticular order):

• 6 syntheses
• finished bethany's pink bag. boo, kitchener stitch.
• finished a tank top out of rement from a sari that neetu bought for me in india that is WAY to big under the arms and i don't really know how to fix it now that i've put in a zipper and all.
• went to trader joe's and saw "The Namesake" with neetu
• watched a Monk marathon on USA
• watched a Law and Order marathon on USA
• made myself some very yummy delicious pav bhaji, enough to feed me all week.
• went to the fabric store for a sale
• finished about 1/4 of kati's poncho, then ripped it all out and started from scratch becuase i wanted to try it a bit differently.

in other news, masha has taken to peeing on me again in the wee hours of the morning (ok, more like 7 or 8 am, but its still freaking early for being peeed (sp?) on!) twice now since i got done with the dog sitting gig i had last week. boo.

lots to say, and even more time in wich to say it!

why all that time you ask? well, sort of all of the sudden tejas was offered and decided to accept an internship at google in the nyc office. he left saturday morning. so, basically its going to be a rather long and boring summer, but i will most likely be taking a handful of weekend trips to nyc to keep the both of us sane (which means i may get to see bethany and thomas some as well). other than that i guess i'll be getting in a lot of knitting and sewing and reading when i'm not hanging out in the lab. maybe i'll even pull out the quilt i started last summer and haven't touched in months. mostly i hope to get in a lot of lab time so i can try to have most of my experiments done before we have to move the labs in august. and to keep myself so busy that i don't start to mope around and end up watching too many sappy girly movies, eating lots of ice cream and crying to myself. that would suck.

The previous weekend, my sister and cousin both received doctorates (one of pharm. one of philosophy). too bad that up till the day before i was supposed to be in west palm for kris' hooding and graduation, i thought it was this last weekend. i found out the ugly truth just in time to get my flight switched to the next evening for the low cost of $490. My dad said he would pay for it, but i haven't seen the money yet and i don't have the heart to ask for it. The hooding ceremony was nice. kris got 2 awards for patient care and translating book knowledge to practice in her rotations. she still seems to have the amazing ability to find any excuse to NOT go to the gym, but i don't really know how to change that so i guess i can't.

ok, so i guess it wasn't really all that much to say. back to the microscope.

bethany, birthdays, and research

so obviously bethany beat me to the punch on detailing my quick nyc visit. it was really a great trip, even if my flight got canceled and i missed my tues mornging TA responsibilities (which, thankfully, zhiyong covered for me!) I don't have much of a friend base in atlanta and it seems like everyone is scattered to the 4 winds (or from it, come to think of it:) ). and we played hand and foot which was of course awesome!

yesterday was tejas' birthday and we celebrated it on sunday. and after getting him an extremely fun board game that he loves, i proceeded to lose one of the pieces to it after the inaugural round.

......AND my paper got accepted FINALLY to j chem phys B with very mild revisions requested!
woohoo!

meow

haha this is awesome:

http://zeitgeistyarns.blogspot.com/2007/03/daily-conversation-with-cat.html

just add: because crazy turkish landlady is afraid you will break into her house and sufficate her baby. to the list of reasons and its MY daily conversation with my cat.

i also tend to pick them up and talk to them if they are in the bathroom with me when i'm peeing. i don't think this is weird. tejas thinks it is really weird.

....but you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two

so we took a mini vacation last weekend to jekyll island (just south of savannah) which involved sleeping in a tent:

cooking over an actual fire:

AND riding around all day on a tandem bike!:

all of which were 1st time experiences for me. also, we took like a million trial pictures of us on the tandem bike before we got the perfect "action" shot.

kati, this "research free" post is for you. can't promise too many more though. pretty much living in the lab these days, and probably until i graduate.