For the last few days, Ben and I have been biking to and from work. Our new apartment is located at the top of the “bench” (ie. giant hill) so biking is a feasible and fun transportation option. During the week, parking is tight on campus and sometimes it takes as long to drive through the lots looking for parking spots than it takes to drive to work. I feel stronger (and sorer) after each of our bike rides. Yesterday, I spent $90 tuning up my bike. I got a new rear tire, brake cables, a new chain, and my gears are functioning beautifully. My bike is a safe, clean, well-oiled machine. The weather has been a bit spastic–generally between 35-45 degrees during the day and I’ve seen a bit of rain and snow, but generally it’s done by the time I’m ready to ride home. See my 2.3 mile route. There are bike lanes on every major street and the neighborhood streets and sidewalks on campus are wide and easy for biking. I hope I can keep up this good habit and build strength in my legs, butt and abs.
Archive for the ‘Grace’s Work’ Category
Biking to work
Thursday, February 2nd, 2012
Working on Sunday
Sunday, January 8th, 2012This morning, Ben and I went to Trolley Square (a shopping center in SLC) to purchase tickets to the Sundance Film Festival. Sometimes the director or actors in the movies attend some of the screenings during the festival. We got tickets for a thriller (scary) movie called “Black Rock.” We hope to take Mary Jo and Dave to see this movie when they come to visit. We also got tickets for a humorous movie called “Predisposed,” which plays the following weekend. I plan to write reviews of both movies in the upcoming weeks. The showings we chose are playing at the Tower Theater, which is about 2 blocks away from our current apartment.
After picking up the tickets and a few groceries at the Whole Foods in Trolley Square, Ben and I ate brunch at a new restaurant, Eggs in the City. It was very crowded and popular. Ben ate eggs benedict with crabmeat. I ordered the huevos rancheros. Both dishes were delicious. We sat at the “bar” which overlooked the kitchen and enjoyed the lively, colorful ambience.
This afternoon, I went to work for about 6 hours. It was painful and long, but I got one experiment completed. While waiting for my data collection to finish, I watched Youtube videos of some old episodes of the Food Network show, “Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.” Specifically, I was interested in clips from Salt Lake City restaurants, Blue Plate Diner, Ruth’s Diner, and Pat’s BBQ. The show makes all these restaurants look quite tasty and I plan to visit each one someday.
Tonight, I am making a cornish hen soup with ginger, ginseng, Chinese cooking wine, and salt. I purchased the bird from Whole Foods this morning and got the recipe from my mama.
The first apples of the fall
Sunday, August 15th, 2010Yesterday morning, I went to the Waverly Farmer’s Market and bought some apples. Every year, I look forward with great anticipation to apple season. Apples are my favorite fruit. The apples I purchased were small, about the size of a billiard ball, and pale yellow-green in color. They were crispy and bright in flavor and tangy with a hint of sweetness. They tasted very fresh and new. As the weather gets cooler and days get shorter, the apples will grow larger and sweeter. This year, I am on a low carb, high protein diet, so I will probably not bake any apple pies. However, I can still enjoy the raw fruit.
It’s been a rough week back to work after visiting Ben and his family in Chicago/Wisconsin. I finally talked with all my bosses (current and former) about my plans to move out to Salt Lake City. My decision may seem foolish to my ambitious tenured faculty mentors, but the more I think about it, the more confident I am about my decision to try to get a teaching position at the University of Utah. The reason I went to graduate school in 2004 was because I wanted to teach chemistry. I felt that my undergraduate chemistry courses did not sufficiently prepare me to be an expert in the field and in order to teach the subject, I wanted more exposure to it. My Ph.D. and postdoctoral experiences provided venues where I could apply the concepts and hypotheses I learned in class to hands-on experiments where I could test my knowledge and gain new skills.
While I may not know everything there is to know about chemistry, I think that teaching will help solidify my knowledge. I will spend as much time and effort as is necessary to learn to clearly communicate concepts I’ve learned to students who are being exposed to these concepts for the first time. My goal as a teacher is to help students who may enter college with slightly less chemistry background finish the class with a firm grasp of the key concepts. They will be able to apply these principles to problems in their chosen fields of study. I hope my students will finish the courses I teach with a profound respect for and interest in the subject.
My 30th birthday
Saturday, July 3rd, 2010On Thursday, I will turn 30 years old. I like this milestone. I feel like I can be proud of making it to age 30 in good physical and emotional condition. I finished college, got married, got my Ph.D. and learned to cook– all in the first 30 years of my life.
I watched the movie Greenberg today (stars Ben Stiller, directed by Noah Baumbach) and decided that I can identify with 40 year olds better than with 20 year olds.
I’ve been having a mid-life crisis recently trying to decide what I want to do with my career. It’s good to have this crisis earlier than mid-life, I think. Better than wasting 10-15 years at a job that I am not sure about. I experienced a lot of turmoil during and after college about what to do with my life and career. All the angst and anxiety turned into a good thing. When I entered grad school and throughout my 5 years at Northwestern, I felt very confident that I was in the right place and was very happy. I think part of my contentment came from overcoming the insecurities and confusion I encountered before I started my PhD. I hope that during my post- postdoc years, I can feel as confident and passionate about my career as I did between 2004-2009. I will continue to meditate and contemplate and see what kinds of opportunities are available when I start job-hunting this fall.
Day One: Without coffee
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
I have to admit my addiction. I love to drink coffee. I am not too picky about drip coffee versus single-cup coffee versus instant coffee. I love it all. But it’s time to take a few days off. This morning, I didn’t drink coffee for the first time in several months. To help with the caffeine headache, I slept an extra hour (until 7:30 am).
It’s 7 pm, and I’m feeling really good, after a few cups of earl grey tea. No terrible headache and still relatively productive at work. The best part of my coffee fast is that my stomach hasn’t troubled me at all today. For the last two weeks, I’ve been having discomfort after breakfast almost every day. I tried to change what I ate for breakfast, but it didn’t help. My husband suggested that it may be the acidity in my coffee, but I tried to deny that option. I so love coffee, not only for the taste and caffeine, but for the warm feelings the smell and hot beverage brings me.
But my good digestion today without coffee may prove that Ben was right about my coffee addiction. I wonder if the acid has burned a little hole in my stomach lining? I will see how long I can go without coffee/espresso drinks.
Speaking of such wonderful things, I went to the new Spro coffee shop in Hampden last weekend. It was so-so (espresso-wise), and was in a cute space, but the beans were from Intelligentsia in Chicago, which I thought was odd. Are there no good coffee roasters in Baltimore? I don’t like Zekes, even though I’ve tried very hard to like it.
I am amazed at the far-reaching influence of Intelligentsia, whose coffee roastery is located on the same street that Ben lives on, just about 1 mile west. I clearly remember how fun it was to take a tour of their roastery several years ago. Ben and I drank Intelligentsia coffee while we were in New York City at the Chelsea Market. OK, no more coffee talk. Back to my decaffinated green rooibos tea.
Word of the day: micaceous
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009Means resembling mica or other aluminum silicate minerals commonly found in igneous and metamorphic rocks. They are characterized by their ability to separate into thin sheets. This word was used to describe the physical texture of a chemical that I would like to make.
Humbling experience
Friday, October 23rd, 2009I broke a sample inside the EPR tonight. Everything was going so smoothly and I got some beautiful spectra. Then, when I went to take out my EPR sample, I found that it was broken in half. I was very alarmed. I didn’t know what to do. I knew that part of the instrument was still under vacuum and I wasn’t certain what to do about it. Thankfully, an experienced EPR-user was answering her cell phone on a Friday night and told me which pumps to turn off and in what order.
My postdoc has definitely been a humbling experience. In my post yesterday, I set up my computer to print to a printer. You’d think I grew up in the pre-computer era, but I started using them in 3rd grade. Yesterday, I was ready to ask for help after working at it for 1 hour and generating lots of junk printouts. However, I didn’t ask for help initially because one of the Stone lab members had written a detailed email about how to set it up and I tried to follow them to a tee, but after doing it multiple times, eventually I found the correct settings.
I’ve had to ask for help on many other elementary issues in the last five months–how and where can I print a poster? How and when can I get reimbursed for attending a scientific conference? I also had to re-learn things I thought I already knew, like how to measure pH or make a buffer or calculate ionic strength or calculate the reaction rate constant (ironic because a large portion of my Ph.D. thesis was focused on reactions kinetics).
One day at a time, but some days are downright difficult, not matter how positive an attitude I had going into it.
Baby steps
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009I need to learn to live one day at a time and be content with the little victories of each day. Today, I finally learned to print to the new Stone lab printer. This is something I thought I should have learned in June when I first moved to Johns Hopkins, but in fact, it has been a 5-month battle to get a reliable, convenient work printer. Each day, I am going to learn to be grateful for the little things I learn or accomplish. For today, it’s the ability to print to the Stone lab printer.
Two new vocabulary words
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009halcyon (pronounced HAL-SEE-YON): tranquil, peaceful, calm
resection (medical term): removal of organ, or part of organ, or tissue
Another new word for me: Granuloma
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009A granuloma is a mass of cells which form when the immune system is trying to fight off a foreign species but can’t eliminate it from the body. It is a type of inflammatory reaction which can occur in the lungs when nanometer-sized particles are inhaled.
I read about this medical term in a chapter of Vicki Grassian’s book “Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.” The chapter entitled “Neurotoxicity of Manufactured Nanoparticles” was authored by the DOGEE seminar speaker Kurt Pennell. The author suggests that these nanometer-sized particles can cause neurological damage because the small particles can cross the blood-brain barrier.