T-minus 2 days and counting?

Hmmm, so obviously I didn't finish this post before we left for Hawaii. Now it's T-plus a lot of days and counting! Oh well. I'm too lazy to waste all this work typing up a blog and then not use it..so I'll just finish it up and post it anyway.

I've almost made it to vacation time! Yay! The last two weeks have been seriously crazy. Last weekend our stake hosted a tri-stake activity for the youth 14 and up for 5 hours. Since I'm in our stake YW presidency, I was one of the people planning stuff, and feeding 300 people dinner! It was crazy, but it went well, and I'm glad it's over. AND, my symposium on campus yesterday was crazy too, but it also went well and is now over! I only have one big thing left before we leave for our trip: our lab is getting inspected by the university's chemical safety people tomorrow! Remember how I wrote about the chemical spill we had a while back? Well, apparently we triggered a "follow-up" check to see why we had these problems. I'm actually kind of happy that we're getting inspected, because it might just force some of my labmates to start being more responsible...

I have no pictures to post today, but don't worry--I'll be posting lots of pictures of paradisical glory soon. :) But, I did get tagged by Beth for another one of these crazy memes or whatever they're called. I'm feeling less contrary than sometimes, so I guess I'll answer it. But, I must warn you that my answers will most likely be boring. There's supposed to be Eight things about Eight things, but I reserve the right to not finish the lists if I can't think of 8.

1. 8 TV shows I watch
Ha! Boring right off the bat: I hardly ever watch TV. We don't have cable, and only get one fuzzy channel with the antenna. But, I will answer which shows I *used* to watch:
1. the Price is Right--this one I rarely missed growing up. I used to dream of being called to "come on down" the aisle!
2. Bob Ross's Joy of Painting--despite the fact that Bob (may he rest in peace!) didn't show any *real* painting techniques, he sure was fun to watch and inspired me to learn how to paint!
3. Dark Wing Duck--a favorite one as kids. What a classic.
4. Thunder Cats....ho!
5. Reading Rainbow--oh man, I can't believe I almost forgot about this one!
6. Square One. This was a truly great show, and helped make me the nerd I am today!
7. NPR--okay, so this is not a TV show. But is the program I most regularly tune into these days. I usually listen to NPR on my way to and from school.
8. ER--in college I watched this fairly often with Alicia

2. 8 Favorite Restaurants
1. Duke's on Waikiki beach! my newest fav
2. Chilli Works in Los Alamos (for breakfast burritos)
3. Ruby Tuesdays--love their garden bar!
4. Red Lobster--my mom used to take me here when we went to Albuquerque together
5. Kennedy's in Urbana (a really nice restaurant that I mostly only go to when I go to dinner with invited University guests and the university pays the tab.)
6. Biaggis--a nice Italian restauraunt not too far from Kennedy's
7. Ottavios in Provo
8. that one Thai place right next to Regency Apartments. What was that called again? I liked that place.

3. 8 Things that Happened Yesterday

Hmmm, should I write about yesterday, or about the day before I first started this entry? I guess yesterday, since my memory doesn't go back that far
1. I went to the doctor because my ear was hurting
2. I deposited a check at the Credit Union (it took forever!)
3. I slept in reeeeally late--combination of still being in Hawaii in my biological clock, and being kind of sick
4. I ate a lot of yogurt
5. I watched the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional for FHE (we forgot to watch it on Sunday--woops!)
6. I ordered some stuff on barnes and noble's website, but then tried to cancel my order when the confirmation email said it was backordered, and had to call in twice and ask for a manager before they would finally help me.
7. I read some Christmas letters from family
8. I did NOT do the laundry, even though I should have (I'd doing it today, though. Luckily, things hadn't *quite* reached critical laundry mass.)

4. 8 Things I’m looking forward to
Darn, this one was going to be easy back when I first started writing this--I was going to list Hawaii things I was looking forward to. Hmmm, I think I'm still going to put that list--things I *was* looking forward to (and am now happily looking back on)
1. Seeing my family for Thanksgiving
2. Watching the ocean and eating pineapple...for thanksgiving dinner!
3. hiking along the Na Pali coastline on the "Garden Isle"
4. seeing real live lava in person
5. being warm!
6. Falling asleep to the sound of the surf
7. Watching professional surfers on the giant waves
8. learning about Polynesian culture...and FOOD

5. 8 Things on my Wish List
1. A washer and dryer
2. A dish washer
3. A garbage disposal. I should have put this one higher on the list--I'd rather have a dispoal than a dishwasher if I had to choose between the two!
4. A house! Or at least a second bedroom in our apartment
5. A Ph.D.
6. A piano
7. Beautiful scenery to look at out my window
8. Central air conditioning (well, not right now, but in general we would really like to have that!)

6. 8 Things I Love
1. Kevin
2. my other family members
3. dark chocolate
4. step aerobics--does that make me weird? When I first started out, I was a total klutz, but now that I've done it for a long time, I love exercising in this way--the choreography keeps my mind busy so I forget that I'm tired.
5. good health
6. pain killers--I'm sooooo glad someone invented these!
7. going on vacation
8. my kitchenaid food processor

7. 8 Things I Can’t Stand
1. Girls who act dumb to attract boys
2. Cloudy skies--I hate it when I see no blue for days on end!
3. Exreme humidity
4. research projects that never work
5. not knowing how to help someone you love
6. beets. Yuck.
7. how fast my giant bushy eyebrows grow back after plucking
8. waiting in airports

8. 8 People I’m Tagging
Ummm, I don't think even 8 people read my blog! I guess it will have to be 8 things about 7 things...But I guess I will informally tag people reading my blog who haven't already done this one.

Hawaii and Halloween

Okay, okay--everyone keeps telling me I need to post more pictures, so I've overcome my laziness for today and actually uploaded one. This is at our church "Trunk or treat" on Friday night. As of Thursday night, I still hadn't put together a costume or even thought of an idea. So we ended up throwing together some stuff at the last minute and going as Tacky Tourists.

Which, as it turns out, is kind of relevant right now, because Kevin and I are leaving for Hawaii in two weeks! (We hope not to be too tacky there, though.)

Why are we going to Hawaii, you may be asking. Well, my sister Heidi's husband is a professor at BYU-Idaho, and he just happens to be doing a sabbatical thingy this semester and is teaching at BYU-Hawaii just for a few months. We also happened to have a bunch of frequent flyer miles, due to Kevin's numerous flights for conferences (most of which are in Europe) for his research, plus an American Express card we have that we can accrue miles with. So, as it turned out, we had enough miles to fly to Hawaii for free! (Well, almost free, we had to buy the last few miles because we didn't have quite enough...And, we have to fly on 2 different airlines, but at least the flights are almost the same times) BTW, it only takes 35,000 miles to fly to Hawaii, which is really not bad considering it takes 50,000 to fly to Europe, yet the airfare to Hawaii is usually just as expensive as to Europe.

So, we decided we couldn't pass up this opportunity and we'd better do it! We decided to go around Thanksgiving time, but since we were using miles, we were limited on our choices of dates...which means we ended up having to spend longer in Hawaii than the 1 week we were originally thinking of. (I know--darn!) So we're leaving in just a couple of weeks! It's crazy, because we planned this all months and months ago, and I've sort of had it way in the back burner for a long time, and now it's suddenly almost upon us!

The downside is that we have sooooo much to do before we leave! Kevin has two paper deadlines, I have a grant renewal deadline, plus some experiments that have to get done asap. Plus lots of church activities, etc. AND, there's an all day Symposium on campus that I am in charge of just a few days before we leave. So, by then we'll really need a vacation!

We're way excited. A year and a half ago, I went with Kevin to Germany (he had a conference there, so his way was paid by Purdue. I paid my own way and just tagged along for fun.) It was SUCH an awesome trip (you can read my blog from it here) , and I discovered that I really like to plan vacations! I'm thinking that I maybe should have been a travel agent for a living. :) I think I enjoy planning the perfect itinerary *almost* as much as actually going there.

I'm sure we'll do a similar vacation blog like we did for our Germany trip, but I won't promise that it will be done until we get back!

Tagged?

Being new to this whole blog thing, I'm not quite clear on this whole "tagging" idea. In fact, I generally decide not to do stuff like that I guess because I am too lazy to type out answers and because I am too ornery. But this time, Alicia says I will be "RECOMPENSA!" if I don't do this tag thing. Now, I don't know what "recompensa" actually means, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to be pleasant. Plus, this is Bingerang we're talking about. So I pretty much have no choice.

I guess I'm only supposed to use one word answers. Here goes!

1.Where is your cell phone? bag
2. Where is your significant other? meeting
3. Your hair color? Brown
4. Your mother? Angelic
5. Your father? Intellecutal
6. Your favorite thing? learning
7. Your dream last night? Failure
8. Your dream/goal? graduate!
9. The room you're in? living
10. Your hobby? Cooking
11. Your fear? spiders
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? mothering
13. Where were you last night? home
14. What you're not? early-bird (I hereby declare that hyphenated words only count as one)
15. One of your wish-list items? Ph.D.
16. Where you grew up? Geekville
17. The last thing you did? church
18. What are you wearing? skirt
19. Your TV? finicky
20. Your pet? nope!
21. Your computer? essential
22. Your mood? relaxed
23. Missing someone? family
24. Your car? well-used
25. Something you're not wearing? shoes
26. Favorite store? Target
27. Your summer? fast
28. Love someone? Kevin!
29. Your favorite color? Blue
30. When is the last time you laughed? today
31. When is the last time you cried? dunno
32. Listening to? silence
33. Waiting for? HAWAII!

Zuppa Toscana

Remember how I get various and sundry veggies from my CSA program every week? Well, this week, one of the things we got was a bunch of kale. Never having prepared kale before, I turned to Allrecipes to tell me what in the world to cook with it. I discovered this recipe, which claims to be a copy of the Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana. I LOVE OG's Zuppa Toscana; I order it every time I go there. But the problem was that while I DID have kale, I was missing a few crucial ingredients: sausage and heavy cream.

The closest thing I had to sausage was ground chicken. But, I read this vegetarian sausage recipe here and decided the same thing could be attempted with ground chicken. And it worked out pretty darn well! It turns out that if you add a bunch of sausage-esque spices to stuff, it makes it taste like sausage. I know--crazy. Instead of heavy cream, I used milk and cornstarch. That part, I must admit, was a definite down-grade from cream. Next time I make the soup, I'm going to do that part right. But I may just hang on to my "ground chicken in sausage clothing" idea.

So here's my faux-sausage recipe in case any of you are interested (taken mostly from that webpage above):

makes approximate equivalent of 1 pound crumbled sausage

Mince or food process the following, then sauté in a medium hot pan:

• 1/2 onion
• 3 garlic cloves
• a dash of ginger

When onions are clear, add and cook until whole seeds soften:

• 1 tsp ground fennel
• 1/2 tsp mustard seed
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp red pepper seeds

Add about a pound of ground chicken breast and cook until no longer pink. Then add:

• 2 egg whites
  
• 1 tbsp soy sauce

Allow to simmer until ingredients reach a thick sticky consistency

These days be crazy

So I just wrote the title of this blog, chuckling at the funny DC South mission reference, only the problem is that none of you know what that reference is! So, I shall take a few minutes to explain, even though the reference, in fact, has little to do with this post in actuality.

In the DC area, there is a man named Charles. I don't know his last name, and I don't know what he looks like, but BOY do I know the sound of his voice. Charles somehow (I have no idea how) had gotten the phone numbers of several different missionary apartments in the DC area. His favorite pastime--okay, his ONLY pastime really, was to call these numbers incessantly, at all hours of the day and night. For those nice/bored enough to not immediately hang up on him or new enough to not know better, he would then have the following conversation:

CHARLES: Sister Tonks, guess WHAAAT?
ME: What, Charles?
CHARLES: These days be crazy! These days be nuts! I sick of these days! Cops killin cops. Babies havin' babies. N**** on the streets sellin' they DRUGS. I sicka these days.
ME: Yeah, I'm pretty sick of them too.
CHARLES: Sister Tonks, guess WHAAAT?
ME: What Charles?
CHARLES: [LOUDLY] WhassUUUUUUUUP! (Imagine that beer commercial with the guy's tongue sticking out while he says this.)
ME: Goodbye, Charles.

He was kind of a mission-wide joke but also a huge headache sometimes. I mean, he would call a LOT. And sometimes it was at 2 in the morning! Not OK! Sometimes I reeeeaally wished we had caller ID.

But, this post isn't about crazy days of cops killin cops. It's about the crazy days in the Life of Mindy (i know--even more exciting, right?). So, the Friday before last, Kevin left for a week-long conference in Tennessee. On Saturday, we had a Stake Priest/Laurel conference at church, which I was one of the people in charge for. We had to cook dinner for 60 people (and I had to purchase all the food), decorate the cultural hall, help run the activity, etc. Oh, and I had to play the piano because the girl who was supposed to do it had to go home sick. I was setting up, etc. from 9 am to 1pm. Then I went into my lab to try to finish this experiment from 1 to 3:30, when I had to head back to the church. Then, the activity went from 4 to 9pm, followed by cleanup until about 10. Then, I headed back to my lab to finish the experiment. I FINALLY got done at nearly 1am.

Exhausted but so glad to be finished, I started cleaning up, only to find I HAD NO KEYS. I had left them in another room, which had a door that locks behind you. Doh. And it's Saturday night, so there's no janitors around. No one else is in my lab. Kevin is in Tennessee. And it's 1:00 in the morning. I figured I could walk home, but then how would I get into the apartment? Plus, it's not exactly a great idea to walk 2 miles home alone at 1am. Finally, chagrined, I decided to try calling Ben, one of my co-workers who I know is usually awake at 1am. Luckily, he was:
1. awake
2. not drunk (he's a big drinker on the weekends generally)
3. had his phone on (he often doesn't) and
4. was available to come open the door to that lab room with my keys in it for me.

As a thank-you present, I gave him one of the many, many plates of leftover baklava from the church activity. ...but still, I felt dumb. He made fun of me, of course, but that's pretty much to be expected.

This week was crazy too, with lots of stuff I had to get done at work, plus getting a little sick, plus being in charge of teaching twenty 12-18 year old boys an art class for their boy scout art merit badge yesterday. But, I'm happy to report that I' make it through alive! The days next week are gonna be crazy too, but I have something to look forward to: Kevin and I are going to Hawaii on November 18th! More on that to follow later, though.

Trashcans and video game heroes

Did you know that if you put your trashcan next to the oven, that it will start to smell bad WAY, way sooner than normal? It's true. For months Kevin and I have been complaining and wondering over why our trash seems to start REEKING so fast. We don't create trash that quickly, but felt like we needed to take it out everyday to keep our apartment from likewise reeking. (Which we didn't actually do everyday--hence the complaining). We kept wondering why it got so bad so fast--my parents' trash can doesn't even have a lid, and it was never this smelly. (Our is the kind with a step pedal thing and a lid). For a while my theory was that the air was so much more humid here, leading to increased microbe growth--a fairly plausible explanation, really. But it wasn't until recently that it dawned on me that our trash can is in thermal contact with our frequently-hot oven. Bacteria grow WAY faster at higher temperatures (I should know--I grew up 200 mL of the suckers just the other day in my lab!) So of course the trash will stink more when it is also at a higher temp...So, we moved it. Since we have an absurdly small kitchen, there are not many choices of places to put it. I now have to walk around our table to get to it when I'm cooking, but it is oh-so worth it! And, it turns out my graduate school training is not a giant waste after all! (Speaking of graduate school, you will all be pleased to know that all week I've been getting there around 9--in the MORNING! Except for today, which was 10:15--but that is still better than usual.)

Now that this important lesson in microbial growth conditions is done, I have a funny story to tell you. A while ago I bought Final Fantasy X off of craigslist. Hey, stop laughing--that's not the funny part yet! (Yes, we are nerds--but we're nerds together. How romantic.) Anyways, we played it ALL the way through (it's a long game) and had a lot of fun doing it. It's great family time for us--Kevin controling Tidus the hero and me giving input into battle strategy ("No, no--the Red Element is immune to fire attacks--you need to use Blizzaga!) This game has a story line with cut scenes that play periodically. The hero's name is Tidus, and he runs around with his little gang fighting the bad guys. He falls in love with Yuna, who is willing to sacrifice her life to save the world. But, as it turns out, it is Tidus that must give up his life if they want to defeat the big bad guy. So, we're at the end of this game, we just beat the big bad guy, and Tidus has to say goodbye forever to Yuna. I find myself very sad, kinda a tearing up, and I realize how ridiculous it is to be emotional over my Playstation. I'm a little embarrassed, but then I look over at Kevin and notice red eyes too. He quickly looks away, but it's too late--I'm already laughing that we are both so nerdy AND sentimental to be crying over Tidus the Playstation Hero.

A New Leaf

So they always tell you to pray for answers to your problems and you'll hear something in General Conference that will answer them, right? Well, this time I did that. I was praying for help with a particular problem I've been having lately. The problem is called "I hate graduate school." It starts with a frustrating research project that just never works no matter what you try, with collaborators and an advisor that can't really offer much in the way of help. At first you're optimistic and determined, but after 4 years of working on the same thing with no results, you start to feel like it doesn't make any difference how hard you're working--you work long days and try lots of stuff, and no results. Or, you don't get to work until noon and spend half the time at work reading news and looking at craigslist, and you still get no results. No difference in the outcome, so why work hard? And then, you find it harder and harder to focus at your lab and just start getting lazier and lazier. While you once considered yourself pretty dang smart, and a real go-getter and very self disciplined, now you feel like a useless failure who probably got admitted to grad school by accident and somehow passed the qualifier by sheer luck. But the worst part is, you feel like it's all your fault too--how do you expect to finish grad school if you you're not working hard? Your chemistry grad friends all work like 12 hour days, 6 days a week! Maybe you should just quit and do something else, but then you'd feel like the ultimate failure--going through 4+ years of grad school just to come away empty handed? Pathetic!

So when I prayed for help, I was pretty sure I knew what the answer would be: "Get your lazy bones out of bed and get to work!" (I've been telling myself that for weeks now, as a matter of fact.) But, although I felt a very strong answer to my prayers, it wasn't the one I expected at all. Instead of scolding, what I heard and felt was a message of hope, of encouragement, and of understanding. I felt assurance that the Lord understood why I was having such a hard time with this, and didn't blame me. But, he assured me that I *could* get my act together if I trusted more fully in Him. "Faith is a choice," one of the speakers said yesterday. And you know what? I feel that I can choose that. I can choose to throw myself at the feet of the Savior and allow him to carry me through this "I despise my lab bench" stage until I succeed.

This week I'm turning over a new leaf. I am going to be at work by 9am every day, and turn OFF my computer by 11pm every night! (I know, I know--most of you are thinking, "Um, and this is supposed to represent some difficult goal?" Trust me, it's difficult! My bedtime has been more like 2am for a long time, and I'm not sure I can remember the last time I was in my lab before 10am.) And the best part is, I think I can do it this time.

To help me, I found a fun "online sticker chart" thing called Joe's Goals. I don't know why, but I've always liked sticker charts. It probably seems lame to you all, but I think it will help me. If I can figure out how (translation: if I can get Keivn to come do it for me) I'm going to post the chart of how well I'm doing on here for you all to see--aren't you excited??

It once was lost, but now is found...

I spent about a week without my cell phone lately. I couldn't find it last Saturday, and searched EVERYWHERE at least a dozen times. Terrible! Kevin and I only have cell phones, and on Tues/Wed. Kevin had to fly to Georgia for a meeting with his eFolder business partners, so for a couple of days I was without a phone entirely. It was like the dark ages!

But...the good news is, it's back! Kevin found it on Friday. And guess where? In the car, there was a box of crackers, and the phone was *in* the box of crackers. What?? First of all, when I was searching for the lost phone, I didn't really look too hard in that car because I was pretty sure I had taken the other one. Plus, how does a phone end up in a cracker box??? We don't have any toddlers to do weird things like that, so I can only blame myself...WEIRD. But I sure am glad to have it back!

So speaking of cell phones, um....okay, this is totally unrelated to phones, but I can't think of a good way to change the subject, so let's just dive right in. I sang in a big musical presentation thing at church on Sat. It was called "When He comes for me," based on the Parable of the Ten Virgins. I was one of the wise virgins (phew!) It went well overall, but my solo part was NOT as good as I hoped. I was so NERVOUS! My voice sounded all shaky and airy. Argh! I don't think I'll ever learn to not be nervous when singing in front of crowds. I guess it's been a while since I've sung a solo in front of that big of a group, because I was extra nervous...Oh well. It wasn't really about me or my voice anyway--it was about the message, and I think that came across really well--people seemed to be very uplifted. After that we watched the General Relief Society broadcast (the female leaders of our church worldwide do a satelite broadcast once a year), which was excellent. I especially loved President Uchdorf's remarks!

And, in another totally unrelated subject, my neighbors are constantly burning their trash in their back yard. Saturday night the smoke was soooo terrible! I'm so sick of having to deal with their yuckystinky (and unhealthy!) fires--I have called the fire department on them twice before but they told me that since they don't live in the city of Urbana technically (the city line is just past our apartment), they weren't subject to the burning laws. WELL, I found out yesterday that the actual law says they have to be a whole mile away from the city line in order to legally burn. So, I wrote emails to the fire marshal/fire chief, AND the environmental protection agency of Illinois. That ought to get their attention! (I sure hope so anyway.)

A Touch of Ike

This morning I sprinted to my car in my church clothes but didn't escape getting totally drenched by the time I pulled the door closed behind me. But that wasn't where the excitement ended. It had been raining buckets all morning, and we had rivers of water streaming all over the place. Our own apartment complex parking lot was flooded--right as I started out I began wondering if I'd make it to church at all. I rounded the corner of the parking lot and drove straight into a large lake. I honestly thought my car would surely stall--I was thinking, well at least I can just walk back to my apartment! Kevin said I should have gotten out and taken pictures so I could show everyone, but that thought was far from my mind at the time. Besides, I was already running late for church! Anyways, I made it out of the parking lot. Things were crazy after that, too, though. I knew better than to attempt to drive under the underpass near our house--that place always gets washed out in big rain storms--so I took a different route. Kevin said he saw a car there almost completely underwater (maybe 4 inches sticking out) under there on his way home from church (Kevin came home a couple of hours after I did because of all his Elders' Quorom meetings). Even avoiding that area, I couldn't escape at least a dozen drive-through-the-river-that-once was-the-road experiences, although our parking lot was in fact the worst of them. I wondered if we'd end up stranded at the church building if the roads kept getting worse, but luckily the rain let up and had basically stopped by the time we got out. Our parking lot had even drained when I got back.

My latest obsession

In the last few years I have become much more interested in nutrition and cooking, and (hopefully) have gotten much better at both. I take a certain pride in cooking healthful meals that taste great but aren't too time-consuming (I do enjoy cooking but I'm also a graduate student and have limited time--actually, who doesn't?) Anyways, I've been collected recipes from various sources which meet my criteria for being healthful, at least relatively easy, and delicious and was looking for a way to compile them all in one place easily so I don't have to scour through my recipe books every time I want to make something or plan my week's menus.

And now, I have found an amazing program that not only organizes recipes, but has this awesome amazing feature where you just click on a recipe and it adds all the ingredients to a shopping list for you! It can also generate nutritional info for your recipes, and can adjust the recipes for different #s of servings, etc. I know that you can do that on Allrecipes.com too, BUT only for recipes that are already on the website. With this program, I can input my own stash of recipes and then with a few clicks--presto! My shopping list is ready--just print it and go. Awesome. And...it's free! Yay, free-ware! It does take an investment of time to input the recipes up front, but you can copy and paste or upload them from text files or even webpages, so it's not that bad. You just have to tell the program which parts are the ingredients, the instructions, and so on.

And, my awesome amazing husband wrote me a little program to take the shopping list that the program makes and put it into a format on my palm pilot so I can just check off the ingredients on my palm as I go. Man, this is the life! I heart technology! And smart husbands! And free software!

The Truth about Chile Peppers

After my blog about my salsa incident yesterday, I started googling for treatments for chile pepper burns, and I found a lot of people saying that if you immerse your skin in lemon juice, it gets rid of the burn. Lemon juice??? I wondered how that was possible, because if it's an acid from the chile burning me, I wouldn't think that adding more acid would help anything. So, I did a little research (aka looked at wikipedia and did another google search to find the chile pepper institute website) and found out some very interesting stuff!

It turns out, chile pepper "burns" are NOT acid burns. The compound that makes our skin feel like it's burning is called capsaicin (see the structure above.) It's made in the internal membranes of chile peppers (and in the other fleshy parts), with the highest concentration in the white pith around the seeds (no shocker there.) But here's the crazy part--it doesn't actually cause any real damage to the tissue when it's causing all that pain. Instead, it binds to some receptors in our cells (which, incidentally, are related to some of the ion channels we study in our lab!) and causes them to send a signal to the brain of pain and burning. It doesn't cause a chemical burn at all--just the sensation of one.

Apparently, birds are not affected by capsaicin at all, only mammals. And this makes sense, because when I bird eats the chile peppers, the seeds come out the other end unharmed, whereas when a mammal eats the pepper, the seeds won't germinate after digestion. So the plant is trying to make sure only birds eat it, not mammals.

So I didn't actually have chemical burns on my hands--that makes me feel better. But I'm still going to wear gloves next time!

Oh, the sacrifices we'll make for salsa!

Yesterday, I made homemade salsa from scratch. That's it above--not bad, eh? I had two small yellow peppers that I got from my CSA recently (what's a CSA, you're asking? Well, it stands for Community Shared Agriculture, and basically you pay some money at the beginning of the season to a local farmer, and then he gives you a share of his crop every week. It's pretty cool, actually, even though some weeks you get things like rhubarb, or much worse--BEETS. But mostly we get lots of yummy veggies and fruits each week. I especially like the raspberries. The joys of living in the middle of Illinois!) But anyways, the farmer guy knows I'm from New Mexico, so he gave me TWO spicy peppers instead of one, which is what everyone else got. I knew I couldn't disappoint him, so I made salsa. I chopped up the peppers last, and made sure to wash my hands immediately afterwards, and to not touch my eyes. We had chips and salsa as part of our dinner, and it was pretty dang spicey! And while we were eating, my fingers started hurting and burning like mad. I washed them again and again, and even tried soaking them in milk. But they just kept burning.

This morning the redness is gone, but they actually still hurt a little. Yikes! Who knew a tiny little innocuous looking yellow pepper (they are NOT habeneros, by the way) could be so dangerous! It's funny that just last post I was talking about lab safety and so on--I would NEVER use acid in our lab without wearing gloves, but here I am with acid burns on my fingers. Next time I'll make sure to put on my Personal Protective Equipment first! But I must say, I think it was worth it. That is some GOOOOOD salsa!

Lab safety comes back to bite us

In my lab I am the designated safety-worrier. Many of my labmates couldn't care less about safety (is that a cultural thing? it seems worse with the foreign students...). Anyways, parts of my lab are, well, basically disaster areas. The room where we have two of our fume hoods, for instance, is particularly bad. The picture here is not my actual lab, but it really isn't that far off from what our fume hood actually looks like. I've learned to just let some of that stuff slide--it's not my job to be the safety police or anything. But every now and then, I have to put my foot down.

When I first joined the lab, for instance, I learned that some members of my lab were using HF (hydrofluoric acid) with hardly any safety precautions--no goggles, no secondary container, no antidote anywhere nearby. For those of your who don't know, HF is a super-duper dangerous chemical that can easily kill you upon contact with your skin and which also gives off very toxic fumes. A palm-sized splash of HF on your skin, and you'll be dead by the next morning. I used to work with HF at BYU, and I had to wear safety glasses, a face shield, a labcoat, apron, and three layers of gloves. And I ALWAYS worked in a fume hood, and I ALWAYS had the HF antidote nearby. So that was one thing I decided to throw a fit about, and I got our lab to use secondary containers and stock the antidote and such. Not too long ago, we discovered one of the secondary containers totally full of an unkown concentrated acid because a bottle had broken, which actually turned out NOT to be HF (thankfully). And luckily, it was at least contained in that tub instead of leaking all over the room. But what if it had been HF and we hadn't had those secondary containers I insisted on--it could have killed someone! Or several someones.

Anyways, back to my point. Today was another day of me feeling vindicated for feeling anal about this safety stuff. A co-worker of mine was getting something out of the flammables cabinet, and because that thing is full to the utter brink with bottles hanging halfway off the edges, he accidentally knocked a bottle off the shelf as he was closing the door. It broke, and he started cleaning it up, only to start feeling dizzy and short of breath. Turns out it was very corrosive chemical with some moderately nasty fumes. We called the campus safety people and they came to check it out. Luckily, it was just like 10 mL or something, so it wasn't a huge deal, although they told my co-worker he should probably go to the doctor just to make sure everything was okay.

So, as soon as my advisor gets back from vacation, I'm going to have a talk with him about making some of my labmates clean up their work areas. The problem with bringing stuff like this up to my advisor is that he generally turns around and assigns you to be the one to fix it. But not this time--the messy ones are going to have to clean up after themselves!

Okay, so I'm making a blog

So, for a long time I've been avoiding doing the whole blogging thing for a number of reasons. Foremost among them is that I just can't handle the pressure! Unlike my blogger-type friends, I am not a hilarious person, I don't have any cute babies to post pictures of or fun toddler stories, I don't do digi-scrapbooking (and actually hardly ever take pictures at all...), and just don't have very many interesting things to say about my life. I'm a graduate student in physics--and even *I* am bored with my research these days! Pretty much everyday is similar to the last around here. Not that we have a bad life--in fact, life is very good to us. But, I just couldn't see why people would be very interested to read a blog post from boring little me.

But I feel kind of left out, and my friends tell me they wish I had a blog so they can keep up with what I'm up to (becuase apparently, email is too old fashioned nowadays.) So I am creating a blog, but I'm offering fair warning to any potential readers that it may very well be the boringest blog they have ever read, so no one *has* to read it unless they really want to. I'm not going to try to make my posts astounding and insightful or witty or anything. I'm just going to write, sometimes, and I'm just going to write whatever I want. And you, readers, can just read whenever you want but only *if* you want. Deal? Deal.