Favorite websites

I spend a lot of time on my computer. Lots. I’ve started to leave my laptop in my office so I won’t be distracted by email. Plus the fact that when we removed the keys that had been in the locks for about two years, the part showing was pretty corroded and brown. I like my laptop too much.

In between email and making up exams and horrible problem sets for my students, I surf. These are my four go to sites:

http://epicute.com This is my new favorite site. It’s all about food and photography. What’s not to like? I love to look at the pictures and think “Wow. Thank goodness I don’t have that much time on my hands.”

icanhascheezburger.com Cute photos of cats with funny captions. It doesn’t get much better. I look at it three or four times a day. I also check out GraphJam across the top.

Girls with Slingshots My favorite webcomic. Treat yourself and start from the beginning.

XKCD My next favorite webcomic, only because it’s three times a week and it sometimes makes me feel out of the loop. I’ve had to look up some of the references. I totally want this shirt though.

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I spent the evening with a bunch of high school chemistry teachers. I was invited to talk at a meeting that the ACS local section holds for local chemistry teachers. I talked about fat and how to incorporate some of the ideas into an already jam packed schedule. My part went OK. I think they mostly liked my ideas about using household solvents in chemistry labs. Acetone and methanol is much cheaper from Home Depot than it is from Sigma. It works just as well in most experiments and demonstrations that they are going to do.

I really enjoyed meeting the high school teachers and hearing what some of their problems are. Turns out, we face a lot of the same challenges! I’m going to start going to the meetings. They are only once a month and I can get a lot of ideas from them for non-majors labs. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to network and spread the word about my college!

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Mmmm…. Blueberries.

And I thought the Italian Post was bad

One of my favorite things to do when I get home from work is to check the mail.

I have ALWAYS loved to get the mail. I think it stems from growing up when we had a P.O. Box. It was a big production to go into town and get the mail. The trip was never just getting the mail; there was a trip to the grocery store for the ever needed gallon of milk and maybe even to the hardware store for some thing that my stepfather needed his business. If I was lucky, there would be a stop at the new McDonald’s for a soda or ice cream on the way home.

There was always something exciting in the mail too. Perhaps a catalogue to look through or some “Try it for free for 30 days” offer that I would drive my mom mad ordering. And there was always the granddaddy of all giveaways: the Publishers Clearing House Giveaway! I must have spent hours looking through the envelope for all of the stickers to put in just the right places. A trip to the post office might mean a check for $10,000,000! But I haven’t sent in an entry to win big for probably 10 years. I guess after taking my stats class, it never seemed like it was worth it anymore. In college and grad school, a stamp was better spent on a letter home and not an entry to something I had a one in ten million chance of winning.

To this day I get excited to go and get the mail, even though I know that there will only be bills at the beginning of the month and a pile of circulars at the end of the month. Husband doesn’t understand my fascination with the mail. He teases me and races me to the mailbox if we happen to get home at the same time. At least “My Friend Lisa” understands my obsession and will indulge me. When we go walking, she lets me check her mail.

When Husband and I were first dating and he lived out on the left coast and I was on the right, I sent him a card. It was a sweet little card and full of tender and romantic gushiness. But weeks went by without him calling and saying “How sweet!!” It was almost two months later when it finally showed up. The cancelled stamp showed that it had somehow been sent to Dubai before making it to his apartment. And I thought that was an interminable delay! But somehow I think Al Gore will be pretty upset with this one:

Eight years to get a letter from the Vice President? Can’t we have someone look into this?[1]

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[1] Yes, I know that the title “Vice President” is for life and even though he isn’t VP now, he still gets to be called that. But personally, I think he has a few more titles that are even more impressive than VP. How about “Nobel Prize Winner” or “Academy Award Winning”? Just my opinion.

Fireworks are in the air…

In more ways than one! I hate when I fight with people. I had a big disagreement/argument with someone very close to me today. (No it wasn’t Husband. The worst fight we’ve ever had was over toothpaste!) Most people wouldn’t believe it, but I don’t like to argue or disagree with people. After the fight, I feel horrible. My stomach gets out of whack and I mull over it for hours. I generally end up convincing myself that it was my fault. I did try to apologise, but damn call waiting!!

Anyway, to cheer myself up, I thought I would share some of my favorite photos from the 4th of July.

My friend Claire and I went to see the fireworks at the local fairgrounds. I definitely stood out carrying my tripod and Nikon. Claire had a great time watching the show, and I had a great time taking pictures and fiddling with the setting on the camera. The best pictures I took with a shutter speed of 4 seconds and an aperture of either f/20 or f/4.4. iPhoto tells me the aperture of f/20 but a max aperture of f/4.4. I can’t remember which one. I think it was the 4.4, but I can’t remember.

Enjoy! (Sorry if the page loads slowly. These photos are pretty large. I didn’t want to compress down much smaller.)

I love this one. It’s the drama and violence of the fireworks with the absolutely still spectators in the front.

This one was fun. Some of the reds are a little washed out and the black isn’t as deep, but it still works.

It looks like an explosion of galaxies!

But these next two are my absolute favorites.

  

There are about 120 more photos, and some of them not very good. But I had a great time. The only problem is that I’ll have to wait another year to take more photos of fireworks. Unless I start traveling to fireworks shows. Kind of like following the ‘Dead around the country.

Normal

I feel like I had a halfway normal evening. It wasn’t an evening spent by someone who is a work-a-holic or someone who is so far behind in their work that I’m pretty sure they can see the Four Horsemen screaming over the horizon. It was a good, relaxing evening but one where something actually got done. Something other than free up another bin in the wine cellar that is! An evening where I feel inspired to write again!

I did a little work when I got home; I finished grading the lab finals. Woo hoo! But beyond that, no work. I cooked a real meal for myself. Husband was at dinner with The Chad. It was actually work, but nonetheless I was alone. Usually that would be a time for popcorn and a few slices of cheese. Maybe some frozen pizza, but tonight, I made Pad Thai. Granted it was a mix from a box, but it involved several dishes and the stove! It also involved lots of improvisation. You can make Pad Thai vegetarian, but I was craving meat. Nothing was defrosted and I think microwaving makes chicken rubbery. So I used Krab instead. Any Pad Thai from a box gets a huge bump from peanut sauce and Thai hot sauce. I was a little nervous going in, but I think it turned out pretty good. Good enough that I’m going to eat it for lunch the next couple of days!

Then it was puttering around the house. I cleaned up the kitchen (slightly, we’ll see what Husband says about it) and watered the orchids. I’ve just added two new orchids to the mix and it isn’t a small amount of effort to keep them all happy. (One of the new ones is a “Rescue and Rehab” from a friend. It really perked up today so I have hope!) It took about 45 minutes to water all of the houseplants tonight. I’ve pretty much exhausted all available space and I’ve having to think up of creative ways to arrange the orchids. I don’t think I could sneak another one onto the counter by the sink without Husband noticing. I have some ideas and hopefully this summer will find the time!

Beyond that, it was fritters. I felt normal, even if I did answer several emails about the organic waitlist. We finally found a solution that seems to be taking care of most of the people!

I love the end of the semester.

Mother nature was waiting for February

It’s been COLD up here in the frozen tundra of MI. And when I say frozen, I’m not exaggerating. There has only been two or three days in January that the temperature has been above freezing. But the house is heated and when I have the stove going, it can get positively hot in the den.

Funny story about the cold. When I moved to North Carolina for graduate school, my uncle gave me a lined Gortex jacket because he didn’t need it in Texas. I only wore it once the entire time that I lived there and I nearly died of heat exhaustion the day that I did. I honestly thought that there was no place that ever got cold enough that anyone would need a coat that warm, except maybe Antarctica. HA!!

When I got to Michigan, the first winter I pulled that coat out and nearly froze to death. That was the first indication that I might have made a mistake in choosing my new home. I suffered through the first winter but upgraded to an Eddie Bauer coat the next. This one actually covers my butt, which I didn’t think could get as cold as it did.

But even with all of that, it usually doesn’t get so cold in MI that I feel that I need to take a photo of the thermometer in the car. Until two weeks ago.

That’s right, it was *3* F out there. Thankfully I have the new car that has heat. I might have died in the old Neon. I loved my Neon but it was not built for the tundra. If I drove faster than about 45 mph when it was less than 35 F, the air cooled the engine block off and I didn’t get heat in the car. (There’s another funny story about that one.)

It gets worse though.

Not a minute later, the temp dropped to 0!!

WTF?!? I called Husband and told him my thermometer was broken; there is a dash in front of the number.

Honestly, I get it. It’s cold. Enough!

Now she’s just showing off. And I thought that was it. Seven degree drop in five minutes of driving. I cranked the heat up one more notch and drove a little faster.

But it didn’t end.

MINUS FIVE DEGREES. Doesn’t life stop when it gets that cold? I swear that I saw deer with sweaters out there.

That was January 19th or so. Look at what it did today:

Yup, 40 degrees outside! Snow melted! The sun was shining! Cats and dogs sleeping together!

I think Mother Nature was just waiting for February. I know how she feels. January is kind of a crappy month. It’s the first month of the year and we’ve broken all of our resolutions. What was supposed to be shiny and new turns out to be the same old dented year, just with an extra number. The days are short and everyone misses the sun.

But February! You don’t have to live up to the hype of the new year anymore. You can slip back into the comfortable sweats of the old routines and no one gives you dirty looks. Winter is still around up here, but it’s starting to pull out of the southern states and we can live vicariously through our relatives.

But Mother Nature is fickle. She’s not ready to give up the goods just yet. Wednesday, the high is supposed to be 13 F. Just to show that she can.