"Acid into water...

...is doing what you ought-ter."

Very valuable chemistry saying. It's sort of like "i before e except after c" in that it keeps you from screwing up. Unfortunately, it appears as though some graduate students are unaware of this. But unlike the "i before e" saying, you don't just look stupid, you BLOW YOURSELF UP. And so was today's big happening here at Duquesne....

At just about 11:00 this morning, lots and lots of fire trucks flew up the hill outside of my window. "Some idiot burning a pop tart," I thought but then a few minutes later, even more firetrucks flew by, so I figured something was actually on fire. Oh noes! As it turns out, it was a minor lab accident, nothing to worry about, they were allowed back in the building after about 20 minutes. Or so we thought...

A little later when I was in genetics, we heard lots and lots of sirens AGAIN and after class we discovered all the lab people standing out on A-walk/clogging the Union since the building was now closed until further notice. Around back, there were lots of fire trucks and the lovely Hazmat team, not so happily suiting up to go contain our mess.

So by this point you may be wondering just what the "acid to water" saying has to do with a lab fire. Its quite simple, you see. Add acid to water, the heat of reaction is quite high but manageable. Do it the other way around, all hell breaks loose. Well, this is what our good friend on the 4th floor did. He was pouring a very concentrated acid into a new reagent bottle and it was a little moist. Tsk, tsk. There are air tanks for that! Anyways, concentrated acid + moist bottle = BAM! And fiery chaos ensued.

Fire, fire, fire!

It is now about 11:30 pm, my hair is wet, my shoes are on but not tied, and I just got back inside. And, oh yes, I also reek of smoke. Thank you, retarded Assumption residents, for microwaving your popcorn for 5 minutes. -ahem- YOU CANNOT MICROWAVE ANYTHING FOR 5 MINUTES; IT BURSTS INTO FLAMES!!!!

So, yes, as you may have deduced, we had a little fire scare tonight. About an hour ago, Jamie and I were sitting here, enjoying our night, when suddenly the obnoxious buzzing of the fire alarm started. "You gotta be kidding me, now is not the time for a fire drill!" I thought, in my pjs and freshly out of the shower. -sniff, sniff- -sounds of panic in the hall- Ok, so maybe its not a drill... In that case, we have to save stuff! So I was hopping around like an idiot, screaming that I needed real pants, and Jamie was debating whether or not to save her computer. In the end, though, we decided that they probably wouldn't appreciate us carting our stuff out. So off we went...

Upon opening the door, we immediately started gagging from the smoke. OMG, a real fire!!! And ran extra fast down the steps and out of the building. There is where we learned it was a rogue bag of popcorn, not the end of the world fire that we were thinking. But seriously, that was a lot of smoke for just one bag of popcorn! And I'm sure that's what the poor firemen thought too, so they had to check and make sure that's what it was... and that everyone evacuated. And finally, my favorite part, after standing outside for an hour, the RAs inform us that we all have to enter through the front and show our IDs. Most people do not have their IDs since HELLO?!?!?! If you can only save one thing in a fire, I'm pretty sure your school ID is not on the top of that list. Hmm, treasured memories/valuables or my ID... which to choose, which to choose?

Luckily, we are now safe and sound... and a little smelly... in our room. The hallway is still a little hazy and it completely reeks. But, hey, at least we don't live in Towers.. we'd still be sitting out there.

It IS a pony!

So, uh, Duane got me a pony (and flowers, of course. Yay, lilies!) for Valentine's Day. Lola is so cute. She's a Beanie Baby originally named Thunderbolt but her name had to be changed to Lola. Oh the irony! You see, as children Duane and I both had those little riding horse things (not rocking horses) that were mounted on springs and made gallopping sounds when you flipped a switch. Well, Duane named his Lola. (Who names a horse Lola?! :-p) And upon learning this, I obviously made fun of him A LOT.

So somewhere along the way, he began saying that he got me a pony, a real Lola, when I would pester him for hints about a present.:

Me: Whaaaaaaat did ya get me? Huh, huh, huh?!?!
Duane: A pony!
Me: Gah! Its not a pony!

Well, this time it was a pony. And as for why its slightly ironic and oooh so funny that its Beanie Baby name was Thunderbolt. My play horse's name was Thunder. Ya know, a manly, tough, rugged stalion kinda name, so not Lola. Don't laugh at Duane too much.Aslo here are my pretty flowers, lol.

IT WORKED!

-ahem- IT WORKED!

What is this "it," you ask. It is the gel that I've been running for the last two weeks in my lab. I finally got that sucker right. The first time I ran it, I had the voltage too high and left it running for too long, so all of my sample just ran right through and I got absolutely nothing. Now thats depressing. The second time I ran it, I mostly fixed the sample-losing issues but one of the lanes didn't even run. I just had a big ol' blob of protein stuck in my well. And, rawr, that was the IMPORTANT PART OF THE EXPERIMENT!!! So I was all set to go for round #3 on Tuesday and seconds away from the point of no return when Lakshmi informed us to freeze, put our stuff away and go home, SNOWDAY! Thank goodness she walked in when she did, I was about 2 minutes from the point of no return. Had I added that peskily clumping protein, I would have either had to stay all day by myself, which probably wouldn't have been an option, to finish or had to just scrap the whole thing and start over. Its not cool to go wasting my RNA like that. -whew- So I was quite nervous this morning as I finished loading the gel that it wasn't going to work at all. I had no idea what stashing it in the fridge for two days would do to my STD genes.

I stayed in the lab for most of the afternoon, checking it every 5 minutes or so, which was just a touch paranoid. So I figured around 2:15, I would take it off and oh boy, I was nervous and going to be very sad if it did not work AGAIN, especially since it absolutely has to work before the ACS presentation in March. Anyways, I took it down and put it in the pretty picture taking machine, clicked the buttons and waited--with my fingers crossed, of course--for the image to appear. -heavens part, angels sing, God smiles upon us all- THE BANDS ARE THERE! Not only are the bands there, but they are there in a pretty, asthetically pleasing, poster presentation-quality fashion. I then printed out my beautiful little picture and skipped down to Dr. Rita's office. She was quite happy and came back to the lab to look at it some more. We were so excited, I thought the protein was all clumpy again, but it wasn't! We did a little happy dance. Yeah... So maybe you had to be there... and be a science nerd...

And now it is almost time for my Ochem exam. Here's hoping that science nerb euphoria holds over...

Be My Valentine

Today is Valentine's Day and more importantly, ITS A SNOWDAY! As I said in my previous post, we were already on a noon start, but I woke up around 10:00 this morning to the happy squeals of some of the girls in my hall. I don't know which ones, but I'm sure it was the same ones that like to squeal similarly loud in the middle of the night. Argh, all I want is to sleep. Is that such a horrible request?!

Anyways, no classes, hurrah! This snowday is muuuuuch better than yesterday's snowday. Only getting out of one class (which I was considering skipping, btw) is not as fun as getting out of Wednesday Hell Day. No lab. No night class. Just a whole day of laying around. That's what I'm talking about. Although we didn't lay around all that much. Jamie and I decided to go to Wendy's downtown for dinner since our original Pizza Hut plan fell through. Everyone and their 50 closest friends ordered Pizza Hut this evening and there was a ~2hr wait for delivery. That doesn't fly so well when you're starving NOW. So off to Wendy's. Yeah, that was a retarded idea. "Gee, its so bad out that the school is closed and only Towers is open. Let's order out so we don't even have to leave the room!" Five minutes later... "Well, since Pizza Hut sucks, lets walk downtown!" Yeah, great idea. We just got 8" of snow with a few inches of ice mixed in for fun. The sidewalks and roads are just lovely, lemme tell ya. Also, its about -80º again. But, hey, my chicken nuggets were delicious.

And, oh yes, its Valentine's Day. I should probably acknowledge that, huh? Actually, its not my Valentine's Day. Due to my planned abundance of classes and then the ridiculously icy crap outside, Duane and I are not celebrating until this weekend. And I have gotten no hints about my gift. :-( This makes me very sad. I do enjoy my hints and his fallback of "Its a pony!" is clearly incorrect.

I <3 Snowbird.

This bird is my hero!


I awoke this morning to lots and lots of snow outside, certainly more than the "inch or so" predicted for the morning commute. A snowblower woke me up around 6:30 and I could tell it was REALLY snowy then. And that was without my glasses, so in other words, if I could see it without my glasses, there must have been truck loads of snow.

Anyways, yep, we're in the midst of an awesome winter storm. Perhaps a foot of snow! It all depends, of course, on the amount of ice we get, which is what is falling right now. It should switch back to snow sometime tomorrow though, w00t!

And that brings me to why I worship the Eternal and Almighty Snowbird. I had no class today, Duquesne closed at noon because of the weather (I don't have class until 3:00) and we're delayed until noon tomorrow with the very real possibility of having the whole day off. Two snowdays, woooo! Extra wooo since college isn't exactly known for its snowdays. Of course, it'd be a lot more exciting if the Almighty Snowbird could tell me that my classes are cancelled. The snowflake on Channel 11 and the Duq TV station just don't do it for me.

26062

Home for the weekend. Oh boy, I better not get too excited.

I've only been here for a few hours and I'm already bored out of my skull. I think there's a little time warp somewhere between Weirton and Robinson that causes each minute to pass like its an hour. I've already whacked a penguin many, many times and read countless random articles/links. I'm out of stuff to do! Well, unproductive stuff, that is. I actually have a mountain of Ochem and a book to start, but I'm saving that for the even more skull-bashing boredom that's to come tomorrow.

I did have one small adventure today. I went to Walmart to buy Ty and Nate some Valentines goodies. Simple enough, no? Well, as it turns out, the Valentines card aisle is CHAOS! All I needed were 3 simple cards. A cute, funny card each for the boys and then something for Duane. Oh boy. Even getting to the cards in the first place was tricky since the whole aisle was choked with old women's buggies (shopping carts for non-Pittsburgh people). And these old women weren't going to make a selection and leave. Oh no! I've determined that by the time you reach around 65-70, you acquire the habit of sending cards to every person to whom you've ever spoken: relatives you haven't seen in 20-30 years, the neighbors from the house you lived in 3 before the current, the mailman, that nice boy at the grocery store one time, etc. And of course, you've got to send these people meaningful cards, not just any old card will do! This, of course, means they stand there and read EVERY card on the shelf. Then you've got the "OMG, its Valentine's Day!" guys. They tend to look a little like deer in the headlights. What card do I buy her? they think. I imagine this is especially hard for those who haven't been dating all that long since cards come in one of 3 varieties: 1) I confess my undying love for you. 2) Haha, this card is funny, let's have sex. 3) Happy Valentine's Day, wife. Poor guys.

Luckily, I got my cards and the boys' candies... and then went and had a tastey, tastey dinner at Undo's with my parents. Cheesy bread, oh yeah!

Your Thoughts?

WHAT IS THIS DAY?!?!

Since the new year, Duane has agreed to give me April 25, 2008 hints. Really sucky hints, but hints nonetheless. Take what you can get. So I thought I'd do a little recapping and see if someone, anyone... please?... has any thoughts.

To recap from the stuff I already knew:

• While occurring on April 25, 2008, I will not have to wait until that day to find out. It is something that I will be informed of about a year in advance.
• He is not just messing with me. Something worthy of such anticipation is involved.
• I will really like it.

And now for my additional, albeit crappy, list of hints:

• The date is negotiable. Whatever this is does not have to absolutely occur on April 25, 2008, although Duane thinks that general time frame, April-May-ish, is what we're shooting for.
• This must be planned in advance.

C-O-L-D

About a month ago, I was sad that winter was no where to be found. I like--well, LOOOOOOOOOVE--winter/snow and its a little tricky to get snow when the temperature barely dips into the 30s. Now, having said that, I like winter, NOT ANARCTICA.

If you added up the degrees of the high temperatures from yesterday and today, I'm fairly sure we still wouldn't have hit 15. Factoring in windchill, we're about -100. Ack. That's cold. So cold, in fact, that all learning institutions not known as college are closed. No fair! There are like 5 kids that ride the bus, so it's not like the masses would be freezing at the bus stop for hours. Nope, they could just run out of their house at the last minute since there appears to be a bus stop every 10ft or so. Seriously, have you ever gotten stuck behind either the Pennsylvania Ave. or Weir Ave. elementary buses?!?! No wonder kids are fat. Anyways, those few kids would manage and then everyone else either gets curbside service from their parents or in the case of the hight school, drives themselves, so they just gotta walk into the building. Voila, you're inside, all is well. I, on the other hand, have to HIKE...HIKE, I say!... across campus and such. A very, very windy campus, I might add. I'm pretty sure my face was completely frozen and already cracked off by the time the door finished closing after I walked out of the dorm this morning. And I was bundled like an Eskimo.

In addition to the face cracking off and probably losing some fingers and toes to frostbite in the next few days, we've got an interesting little "situation" in our room. The window is COMPLETELY frozen over. And I mean frozen, not frosted. Frost can be scraped off, perhaps even peered through a bit. This is ice. Thick ice, perhaps about half an inch in some parts. I sleep against the window, btw. So my bed is like being in the freezer and when it melts, I'm gonna wake up in freaking Niagara Falls.

Not to let the cold get us completely down, of course, Jamie and I just got back from a random ENP run. She worked all day and was starving, while I didn't have the greatest dinner. So we were like eh, let's go to ENP... Mmmm, senior portion of chicken fingers.

Contact Precautions

So I worked a bit this afternoon. Don't ya just love posts that start off like that? It just screams "CRAZY MAN STORY ON THE WAY!!" So yeah, crazy man story on the way...

I arrived at work, lucky not to have died of hypothermia on my trip down the hill (gee, I can't wait for it to be negative degrees tomorrow :-\), and was ordered off to 12E for my shift. Oh boy, a "Tower" room, I thought, some idiot who OD-ed or a confused old person. -crosses fingers for the druggie- So then I get to my patient's room to find him peacefully asleep; however, the sitter I'm about to relieve is all gowned up. F-ing grand. Blue plastic contact precautions biohazard gown and gloves. So I step back outta the room and begin my HazMat process.

Eventually, I managed to get myself all sterilized and such, which sucks since the gowns only come in one size: GINORMOUS, and the only gloves in the room were larges. I'm sure I looked just lovely. Anyways, the other sitter comes out to give me a nice little rundown of our sleeping friend. Besides being HIV+ (hurrah, IV drug use), he's got MRSE, hence the uber contact precautions. MRSE, in case you're not aware, is a fancy acronym for "People freak out anytime they sniffle and run to the doctor for antibiotics when sucking it up and chugging some Day/Nyquil would work just fine. Consequently, we have created several super strains of bacteria that are nearly impossible to kill and are only killed once the patient is subjected to elephant doses of antibiotics. Oh yes, lest I forget, they're becoming resistant to those now too." So basically, touching this man without massive protection is a BAD, BAD idea. Luckily, however, he just got all kinds of Ativan, my favoritest drug ever! and was expected to sleep for my 4 hours of fun with him.

Oh, to be so lucky. Nope, not me. Funny thing about crazy people. They all tend to be druggies of some sort. And funny thing about druggies or some sort. ATIVAN DOES NOT WORK SO WELL! So while you or I would have been comatose for the next 6wks, this dude is barely drifting off, waking up every twenty minutes or so to yell some confusing stuff, falling back to sleep before he finished his thought. But, of course, in case it happened to be something I needed to hear...Like "I gotta pee!" or something of that sort... I had to keep getting up and walking over to hear what he was saying. Mostly it was something along the lines of "I want the good stuff..." And by good stuff, he meant more Ativan so he could sleep. Now, being crazy and all, these people do not often have the best logic, however, I would like to note that if you FALL ASLEEP in the middle of your sentence requesting something to help you FALL ASLEEP, you do not require said substance. Gah! Another tipoff... the inability to stay awake long enough to chew each bite of your dinner. No lie, this dude would take a bite of something, chew once or twice and then fall asleep. But he can't sleep and really needs something, don't ya know?

He finally managed to conk out for good... well, as far as I'm concered, don't know what he did from 7-11, but hey, that's not my problem... around 5:30, only waking to demand more blankets and the heat be turned up b/c he was very, VERY cold. Alright, dude, you're allowed to be cold but AHHH, the heat was already on 80. The heat does not need to be on 80. The heat especially does not need to be on 80 when I'm being forced to wear a giant plastic baggy. That thing is a SWEAT MACHINE!

Ugh, its time for a shower.

Oh, swell...

I have fat toes. Really, they look like Victor's and my shoe is waaaay too tight. Unfortunately...well, maybe fortunately since it means I haven't gotten suddenly fat... only one foot has fat toes, and they are fat because they are swollen. But I thought you hurt your knee, you ask. Yeah, me too. But I'm just that good. Apparently, my whole leg from the knee down has taken to swelling now. Awesome. And good ol' 20/20 hindsight has informed me that that has been the case for a while now. Gee, that shoe feels tight. Hmm... must just be the extra pair of socks. It's been cold out, ya know? So I've been wearing extra socks. Nevermind just one shoe was tight...

Anyways, thanks to this awesome new development, tomorrow's return visit to Health Services should be a real fun time. Hopefully, I'm not all puffy then. Riding the bus is bad enough. I do not want to lug crutches on there with me when I go to Duane's later in the evening. So hopefully she'll just give me more "take it easy"/"I don't really know what the hell's wrong with you, so let's just wait it out!" advice.

But now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to being a waste of life for the day. Lakshmi kicked me outta the lab today, telling me to go rest instead so I have a whole lot of nothing to do. Hurrah!