You can tell the semester has finally begun when:

There are M&Ms in the candy dish in my office.

I finally got around to filling the M&M dish today. It was either that or figure out how to use Spartan or write ANOTHER recommendation letter.

As I was filling the dish, I was wondering if there were people in the hallway thinking: “What is the noise? Did someone drop something? A whole bunch of somethings? Maybe rocks?” And then the aroma of chocolate hit their nose and they would think: “M&Ms!! She’s finally filling her M&M bowl!!”

I was kind of disappointed that people didn’t come running as soon as I finished. But I didn’t have to wait that long after all. About an hour later, a student stopped by the office and said: “I heard that you had M&Ms!!” About 30 minutes after that, someone else stopped by and said the same thing.

I am known in the department for the never empty M&M bowl. I started keeping M&Ms in the office about two years ago in memory of a chemistry prof who died unexpectedly. He always had a bowl of M&Ms at the final exam with a sign that M&Ms were proven to increase test scores. After he died, I started keeping a bowl filled in the office to remember him and his great example.

This year, I got fancy with the M&M bowls:

Not the cool bowls, but the fact that there are TWO of them. With different flavors of M&Ms! The large bowl is dark chocolate and the small is regular.

One of the students took great joy in pointing out that I had a veritable smorgasbord of chocolate options on the table. I don’t eat a lot of chocolate and whenever I get some, I always bring it to the office to share. Now I just have to convince the newbie students to come by the office, ask a question and eat chocolate!

But my favorite is the NMR tube sitting in the vase. My advisee makes the most amazing pottery with crystalline glazes. Sometime soon, I’ll show off his work and talk about the chemistry of those glazes. It’s so beautiful!

He’s my hero.

I’m a big NPR fan. I go through phases where that is all that I listen to. (Then I get tired of hearing the same thing for about a week and listen to audiobooks, but it’s always back to NPR!)

Guess who’s going to be on NPR tomorrow?

That’s right: my hubby!!

The Environment Report interviewed MY HUSBAND about a recent discovery in water splitting. I’m so excited to hear it!! The audio file of the report will be on the web on Monday and you can be sure that I’ll link to it then. But if you are near a radio tomorrow morning, be sure to listen for the environment report!

The discovery was made by a friend of ours, Dan Nocera. Nocera (well, a grad student probably did the actual experiment) discovered a cobalt catalyst that can produce oxygen from water when a modest potential is passed through the water. The great thing about the catalyst is that it uses neutral water, under ambient (normal) conditions and earth abundant materials. It is a great breakthrough and it means we are one step closer to accessible hydrogen fuel cells. Go green!!

Who still uses plastic bags?

Apparently people in the Evanston Farmers Market.

I happened to pick up a copy of the Chicago Tribune this Sunday. One article about the farmer’s market caught my eye. There is a farmer who is starting to charge 25 cents for each plastic bag that the customers use.

He is an organic farmer who is using vegetable oil in his tractors. He cares about the environment and sells high quality, organic food. But every weekend he was partially responsible for adding a few more non-degradable plastic bags to the landfills. So he decided to take a stand. Every plastic bag now costs 25 cents. Each bag that you use to separate out the parsley from the carrots from the tomatoes. 75 cents right there.

His customers were up in arms. One customer threw her almost purchase back on the table when she was told about the extra charge. A lawyer emailed him complaining about the extra… dollar? that she had to pay for her all natural, organic vegetables. She claimed that she tries to avoid plastic bags when she can but doesn’t like people telling her what to do. “He doesn’t know that I recycle those bags. He has no idea what I do with those bags.”

GIVE ME A BREAK.

If you can afford to shop at the farmer’s market and pay double what you would at Meijer for parsley, you can afford 25 cents for a bag. If you don’t like the charge, bring your own bag next time. Plastic bag, cloth bag, your pockets, who cares.

Italy has “long charged” for the plastic bags that you get in the grocery store. (I can’t find a specific time, but it has been at least five months.) Granted, it’s only 5 cents, but still. I got used to carrying a few plastic bags in my purse for those random purchases. If we were heading out to the grocery store and I knew we would purchase soda or water, I took along my canvas bags.

You didn’t see plastic bags floating around on the streets. You didn’t see them littering the sides of the roads.

I still use plastic bags in the grocery stores, but only because I need bags to scoop used cat litter into. I have about a billion and four canvas bags that we’ve collected from conferences over the years. Since getting back from Italy, I’ve started taking them to the store with me for the heavy stuff. We go through about 10 liters of sparkling water every week, and about 6 liters of soda. Add to this laundry detergent and soap and anything sharp that can tear a plastic bag and I use about 4-5 of my canvas bags each week.

It’s not much, but I figure I’m saving a few drops of oil every week that would instead be used to make the bags.

So you don’t go to conferences once a year and get random canvas bags, but want to use cloth bags at the store? What can you do?

• Make your own. Easy, easy, easy! Lots of patterns out there. Here’s one pattern, and here’s another.
• Buy some. One of my favorite bloggers (www.crazyauntpurl.com) loves these. They are really cute and have little roll up straps but I have trouble paying for bags when I have so many extra around the house.
• My sister told me about someone who is giving away free cloth bags, but I deleted the email. Maybe she’ll email me with the link again…
• Sweet talk me. Sometime in about 2 months I’ll probably have free time and I KNOW I have a million yards of scrap material. Maybe I’ll make some and send them to people. But don’t count on it.

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Disclaimer: I do apologise for everyone who came looking for photos. I’m about to get boring because I’m almost out of Italy photos; only about 2 posts left. Now I get to use my blog to spit in the wind!