Blues

I can't believe how long it's been since I've updated. Ironically, my last post was about making a resolution to update more often! Well, we'll try that again. Since my last post in January, I have landed a really amazing job at Abbott Laboratories (a very large pharmaceutical company) here in Chicago. I love it. What's most amazing is that I can get paid to do chemistry and make a huge difference in the world without all of the horrible slave-like pressure of grad school. Best decision I ever made was to leave with my Master's. I feel like I'm doing what I love and I have my life back too. I also have a great new apartment. 1 bedroom. Too many windows to count and about 3 times the square footage of my last place. Best part: enough counter space in the kitchen for me to lay myself down on. It's amazing!

Anyway, that's enough background information for now.

Dave is studying for his qual and I miss him at night sometimes. All the time. Over the last week he's really been buckling down, working long hours, eating little, and worrying too much. It's literally taking all of my strength not to run over to his apartment and throw my arms around him right now, but I don't want to distract him. Two more weeks of this and then we can go back to normal. To help him de-stress, I've been cooking some amazing dinners lately because it's......farmer's market season!

Last Saturday at the farmer's market I bought asparagus, wild morel mushrooms, rhubarb, eggs, leeks, milk, tea, and some dried strawberries. So: Sunday- I made a hearty 15 bean soup with the leeks and bacon and homemade corn muffins. Monday- spring vegetable risotto with the morels, asparagus, peas, and good parmigiano reggiano I got at Whole Foods. Had amazing leftovers all week. I have a "French Desserts" cookbook that Dave bought for me in France a few summers ago that has a recipe for a strawberry rhubarb crumble that has a modification for dried strawberries. Unfortunately, the entire book is in French, but I can actually make out what most of it means. I think when you start to bake enough you just get a feeling for how most baked goods are generally prepared. Plus, some of the words are similar-ish to Spanish. Meh. Shouldn't be too bad, pretty excited to try it. Maybe I'll consult Julia Child first to see if she has a version (in English!) first though.

Side note: bought a new apron at World Market. Looks like it's from the '50s. It's red and white with a red ruffle trim and red pockets! Best investment ever. To try: cook for Dave some night in this and heels :-)

I am very bad at being an eloquent blog writer. I think part of the reason for this is I haven't had a creative outlet in 2 years. I read scientific journals all day, write deeply analytical reports, and half the time I don't even use words: just molecular models and pictures. I'm not sure how I feel about this actually.

Sometimes, I wonder what my life would have been like if I became an anthropologist instead. I finished Infidel for the third time last week and I'm aching to go back to my progressive ethics discussion group. More on these feelings later.

Still Searching

Well, the New Year has officially been rung in and I'm still looking for a job :-(

I guess the worst thing about not being able to hold a steady job is that I've had to give up cooking. Low income diets suck as far as nutrition is concerned. Unfortunately the only fresh produce I can afford right now is bananas and potatoes. Although, I read once that potatoes have the most vitamins and minerals of any other vegetable, so I guess that's not too bad. But I really miss being in the kitchen doing some serious culinary work. I'm sick of playing the "what should I do with this can of cream of mushroom soup tonight?" game. Bleh.

I applied for a job at a pet store today! That would be pretty awesome.

So, what I wrote above is kind of depressing, isn't it? Jeez. Actually, apart from the job search everything else in Chi-Town is going well. Dave and I are closer than ever. Going through a rough patch in my life searching for work could have had one of two options, but we chose to run toward each other. Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is if I didn't have a rough year like this, I'd never be this sure I'd found my soulmate.

A much-needed update

I haven't updated in forever. Sorry.

Well, I guess the biggest thing that's going on with me is that I'm no longer in grad school. It ended up kind of sucking, actually. I ultimately left with a Masters (still pending...), but I think I made a good choice in that matter. I have my life back now, and to be honest I don't think I was really into the whole "work-in-the-lab-for-the-rest-of-my-life" thing. I think I would miss being around people too much, and I'm not exactly the type of person for that kind of field (aka a person not possessing a narcissistic cut-throat-type personality).

So, like so many people these days I'm on the hunt for a job. I have a pretty promising interview this Friday for a substitute teaching position at a community college near Lincoln Park. Apparently there's a chemistry instructor about to go on maternity leave in October. I'm keeping my fingers crossed on this one. The salary seems to be pretty good, but I won't exactly be making the big bucks. I really love teaching though.

In the meantime, going from working 80 hrs/week to 0 hrs/week has been a bit challenging. Itchy, I guess, is the best adjective for it. I wish I had something to occupy my time with other than worrying. It's driving me nuts.

This is going to sound kind of cryptic, but I sometimes wonder if I'm living my life the wrong way. Viewing my life the wrong way would be a better way to put it, actually. I've spent a lot of years thinking that I shouldn't do certain things, and so now I think I can't do things. I often wonder if I was never as open-minded as I believed I was. For example, things like smoking pot scare the hell out of me. I honestly don't think I'll ever understand it. However, I don't understand it and won't understand it are two different things. Am I being stuck up or wise? I don't know anymore.

What I do know is that after battling my way through grad school, I'll never allow myself to run away from my problems without keeping both my feet planted in reality. I've never fought for anything more than getting my Masters. When I couldn't fight for myself my friends, family, and boyfriend fought with me. It's hard for me to say things, but I'm proud of myself for what I accomplished. So maybe I'm not viewing my life the wrong way, but just living it faster than I'm figuring it out. Does that make sense? I know the terms of the path but not the direction. Yep. Glad I figured that out :-)

Keeping my fingers crossed for that interview.....

Spring Break

It's beginning to look a lot like springtime around here. I took that picture up top yesterday in the Shakespeare garden on campus. That was the first tulip. It took me a while to get this page just right, I don't think the previous versions really suited me.

Spring break is here at last. I finished my last final on Thursday. That was intense. Probably the hardest test I've ever taken. As long as I'm in the mix with everyone else I should be fine. That's really all you need to aim for in grad school.

I love Sundays. David was over for breakfast today and I made chocolate chip pancakes before I went to church. I managed to make a disaster area out of my kitchen though. I can make a pretty mean pancake with the right equipment, but in my apartment all I have is a small skillet and a stupid plastic spatula that's way too wide to even be functional. So that's going to take some practice.

My phone is all wacked up. I'm going in later to get it fixed/replaced. It's been having some problems for a while, but yesterday it just quit all together and now I'm just about fed up with it. Unfortunately the stupid Verizon store in Evanston can't replace it, so poor Dave has to drive me out to Skokie this afternoon. What a headache.

I've had a pretty exciting weekend. This past weekend was the first of three visit weekends for prospective chem grad students. It's so weird to think that a year has already gone by since I visited, and even weirder to see how it all works from the other side. I definitely feel more legitimate, but it's pretty surreal not being the new kid on the block anymore. Karl, my adviser, is the new man in charge of graduate admissions, so our group has been recruiting our brains out. Yes, that's right. Karl manages to even make social occasions a stressful time. But in all honesty I had a fun weekend. A bunch of us took some of the students around the city yesterday. Dave and I were in charge of the Millenium Park group, and Jon and Rikki (two friends of ours) went to the Art Institute. I was originally supposed to chaperone the Shed Aquarium tour, but things got shuffled around quite a bit. The best part of the day was the lunch at the top of the Hancock building. The view was absolutely incredible.

Working on getting my taxes started today. I also need to do some research for my first group meeting presentation in a few weeks. Yikes. Luckily, I can do presentations without getting too nervous. The only thing I'm worried about is getting all the chemistry up to scratch. Hopefully starting so much in advance will iron all those things out for me.

Back to work.

Experiment

Hello,

So I'm not sure what the proper way is to start out on these things, but I guess that I should start off saying: Hi, I'm Erin.

I'm a chemistry graduate student at Northwestern University, so I suppose you could say this is an "away from the bench" type of blog. But, who knows, I might throw a bit of chem your way every now and then :). Of the three things I love, two of them are chemistry and cooking. It's amazing how similar these two things are. Both allow you to use your senses, require careful time and care, and, best of all, there is more than one way to make the same dish (molecule) from scratch. And the third thing I love is a chemist who eats my cooking, so you can see how nicely everything ties in together.

I'm currently working in the field of synthetic chemistry (i.e. making large complex molecules, with therapeutic applications only found in nature from small non-complex molecules that are commercially available). This is a lot easier said than done. Since I don't have enough experience yet to do a total synthesis, my first project is to optimize a reaction that will lead me to a very specific conformational arrangement of the recovered molecule in a way that has never been done before. This too is difficult, but the cool thing is I get to make sweet catalysts such as this one:



That guy is a bright purple crystal because it has an iodine counterpart to it.

Chemistry aside, I now live in Chicago and have been thoroughly enjoying every minute of it. There is just so much to do in this city! I wish I had time to try out every restaurant there is (albeit I have seen quite a few good ones already). Grad school gets pretty tough sometimes. I've had my share of rough patches from just being over worked and over-stressed (plus my adviser is a bit of a slave driver...), but apart from all that I love what I'm doing and I have really carved out a good life for myself here. I've met a lot of great friends and Dave's as amazing as ever, of course. I'm living in my first apartment, too. It's just over a little Mexican restaurant and the train goes by my window (the noise of which I have now become immune to, thank God).

Looking forward to the end of finals...Speaking of finals I have to say goodbye to all of you fine people and study, study, study. Thanks for reading! I hope you check back often. I'll try to keep it interesting!

P.S.

I tried out Jaci's gingersnap cookies last night and accidentally added an extra 1/4 cup oil. If this happens to you bake the cookies an extra five minutes and no one will be the wiser :) So go make them because they are amazing! Plus, super cheap because you don't need to use butter or eggs, saving you $ for that omelet later on in the week...which we all need in these hard times.