Another milestone

I am pleased to announce that my extended absence from making any posts has been broken! After a considerably long lapse since my last post, I have finally gotten around to writing again. As indicated by the title of this post, I have reached yet another milestone in my academic career- the end of classes FOREVER! I finished the 15 course requirement for my PhD in the middle of June, and now for the next 2-3 years I will be doing strictly research. The next step for me is to gather a committee of 4 faculty members and present my qualifying exam before December where I will propose the topic I will be studying for the rest of my PhD. Grad school is going by so fast!

It's already midnight, so I won't write much. I did want to mention that last weekend I went to a funeral for one my grandparents- Grandpa Sollars. While I am comforted by the fact that he no longer has to struggle to breathe and deal with recurring bouts of pneumonia and hospital visits, he will be sorely missed. He always had such a warm personality and a great sense of humor, and it was always a treat to come visit him, even as his health started to fail him in recent years. As kids, my brother and sisters and I would always joke that Grandpa Sollars knew everybody, and we would count the number of people he would talk to at restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, etc., because anywhere we went, he always seemed to find people he knew by name and could strike up conversations in a heartbeat. That's just the kind of person he was, and by no means do these few simple sentences do justice to the life that he led and the strength of character he possessed.

We all miss you Grandpa Sollars and love you very much. Rest in peace.

Happy New Year!

Hello all,

Since my last post, there have been many events that have transpired- a visit to North Carolina, Thanksgiving, end of exams, Shull Group coffee hour, more broomball, Christmas, and of course New Years.

Since that's probably too much information to summarize in a single post, so I'll just ignore most of it. Pictures are better anyway so here are some pictures from my past few weeks:


Kristin, Brian, Abby, and me at Grandma and Grandpa Sollars's house for Christmas.

Abby and me at Grandma and Grandpa James's house.

The beautiful kitchen table decorations/food for Eddie's surprise birthday party.

Me with an amazing broccoli/alfredo/garlic/sun dried tomatoes/onion pizza at Eddie's party

Me at the Sollars' Christmas.

The next academic quarter starts next week- classes begin on Monday and I haven't gotten my books or anything yet. I'm not sure I'm ready for classes to start so soon. On the bright side, I only have to put up with classes until June and I'm done for good! How's that for some good news?!

Alright, I need to get back to work. Hope everyone is doing well.

Broomball and more

So as follow up to my last post, I've included a picture of everybody who came to the first broomball outing. There were 31 of us total, and it was a blast. I personally had three goals- one of them from between the legs and another beautifully coordinated with Sapana from the sidelines. I think everybody had a great time, and I'm expecting an even bigger turnout for the next event, which will be November 30 from 9-11 pm.

In research news, I finally characterized one of the diblock copolymers I had made at the beginning of October. They were better than I could have expected. The length of the polymer was almost exactly what I predicted, and it had a low polydispersity (meaning that all the chains were pretty much the same length). Since then, I've had a few complications with equipment working- I had to order some new glassware, rewire an electrical plug, and change the oil in a vacuum pump that I use for polymerizations. However, this past week, I dropped a class so I have a bit more time to be working on research, which I'm pretty excited about.

Yesterday, Eddie's family came over for dinner, so Eddie and his girlfriend made an awesome turkey dinner. The three people on the side nearest to the camera are Eddie's dad, mom, and sister, respectively, and in the back is Eddie, me, Joe, Andres, and Diana. Nikhil is standing in the back. Anyway, it was a very tasty dinner, and we had the place looking cleaner than it's ever been for their visit.


There's not much else going on. Between classes, research, and being a TA I haven't been getting much done, but I'm having a good quarter overall. I'll be sure to keep putting updates as I have time. I hope everybody is doing well!

Is Kevin dead?

Contrary to popular opinion, I have not died despite my lack of posting updates on my blog. Since my last post, I have moved into a new apartment with 5 other guys. The moving process was long and arduous, but we have settled in after our first month here, and I really like the place. Here are some pictures of my room:



If you can't tell from the pictures, my room is like twice as big as it was at my old apartment. However, I don't currently have a door that shuts all the way, compliments of the people who put in the new carpeting in the adjacent living room.

So you may be wondering what prompted me to write all of a sudden. Well, today I stayed home sick due to a sore throat. We kind of had this sickness epidemic going through the house, and now all of us have been sick except for Kunal.

I've had a lot going on recently- I'm taking 3 courses right now plus I'm TAing another course. In addition I've been organizing The Graduate Broomball League (http://studentassociations.gsad.northwestern.edu/tgbl/) for Northwestern graduate students, as I got an $1800 grant to start the organization. Our first outing is tomorrow and I'm expecting about 30 students (though mostly from Materials Science). I've also had all my research to do, so I keep myself occupied.

Anyway, that's a very brief summary of what I've been up to. More to come later...

Busy Summer

As you may have noticed, I have not updated my blog since June, and it is now almost mid-August. Here are a few updates of what I have been up to-

Research- I've been trying to get a lot done this summer in lab before classes start again, but I'm having some difficulties with some polymerizations so work has been going a bit slow. In addition, I had a summer research student (actually a teacher but that's another story) who I had to mentor this summer, which also consumed some time. Her last day was actually yesterday, and though her project didn't go exactly as planned, the data we got from her project will be useful to me as I try to finish it up. I'm supposed to be getting an undergrad this fall who is interested in hydrogels for biomedical applications so I'm thinking that he can continue on the project from my summer student. We'll see how things turn out...

Visiting North Carolina- I made it down to NC for a week in the middle of July for my summer vacation. Brian and Rachel brought down Abby with them from Connecticut, so I got to see my niece for the first time (I'll post pictures later, but I'm currently at a lab computer running an experiment so I don't have them with me). We stayed near Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks, and I managed to get a lot of reading done as well as lots of rest. Before heading back, I was also able to see a good number of my friends in Chapel Hill who were there for the summer or hadn't already graduated yet. I drove back from North Carolina in the minivan that Kristin used to drive (she now has a Mazda Tribute so I acquired the party wagon). On the way, I stopped by Aunt Carlene and Uncle Bob's house in Tennessee and was able to visit with them and Dawn as well as see their new house which I hadn't seen since it was being built. My friend Joel accompanied me on the trip so I wouldn't have to drive alone, and he flew out the day after we got back to Chicago. Also before making it back, I swung by the grandparent's to pick up some corn and visit. I had 96 ears in the back of the van before we headed out, and it was gone within 2 weeks. I wouldn't mind having some more right about now....

I've got about three weeks left until I have to move into my new place. I'm waiting to hear back from my new landlord as to when we're able to move in, since our lease at our old apartment ends on Aug 31 and I can't move in until Sept 1. I do have some friends I can stay with or my five roommates and I may need to go camping or something for a night. I heard from my friend Sapana that she'll be moving to Chicago that same weekend, so maybe if I snag some free time I can go down to South Chicago and help her move in.

Alright, I'll try to post some pictures later. I don't really have many except for the beach pictures, but I'll try to post some pictures of my new place once I move in. I hope everybody is doing well, and I'm sorry for not posting in so long!

Summer!

So there has definitely been yet another lapse in my blog posting. I was hoping that since I had finished classes I would be able to post more regularly, but as it turns out, my computer decided to just stop working, so I've had to deal with that first. So here's what I've been up to:

-End of the quarter! Finally, the courses for the year have finished and I can focus on some research for once. Since I've been putting off my independent study, I only finished two classes for the quarter, but I did well in both.

-Movies!: Since the end of classes, I have been watching an inordinate number of movies. Included in this list are Tremors 4, Stranger than Fiction, History Boys, and Da Vinci Code, and I'm planning to watch the Last King of Scotland this week. It's a nice feeling to be able to just sit back and do nothing for hours on end and just relax.

-Picnic!: This past Sunday, several of my friends and I dragged a cooler and loads of food to the beach near Lake Michigan to grill out for the afternoon. We had loads of hamburgers, hot dogs, watermelon, chips, strawberry pie, and who knows what else to gorge ourselves on, and we spent the rest of the time throwing around a football and frisbee or walking on the beach. I think we might make this a weekly occurrence to replace Sunday brunch during the summer.

-Nonfunctional appliances!: So as I have mentioned, my computer decided it would stop working the day I turned in my final paper (luckily after I turned it in, not before). For the past week and a half, I've had to deal with a computer that would randomly not turn on or decide to freeze when it was working. I have since purchased another hard drive (for only $57), and while it works much more dependably now, I've been having problems with my video card since I reinstalled it. I may just need to start over and reinstall it again, since I don't think it's a hardware problem as I would have noticed it before. On an unrelated issue, I also bought an air conditioner, which has a fan that works wonderfully, but does not cool at all. Some Frigidaire person is supposed to come take a look at it. Maybe I'll have air conditioning in like 2 weeks....

Okay, that's about it for now. I'll try to update more regularly now.

Here's a picture of Joe, Matt, Andres, and I at a picnic for the department last week. I think Nikhil is the partially hidden person behind Joe. Anyway, my face is classic as always...

The Past Few Weeks

After a few more weeks, it's about time for me to post again. Let's start from the top:

-Katie's graduation- I flew down to North Carolina the weekend of May 6th to see the last Henderson sibling graduate. We are all now officially finished (unless you count graduate school for me, which will be another few years). It was good to see the family again and drive my car again. Unfortunately, I had a test on Monday so some of my time was spent studying. I also had to catch a flight Sunday night so I had to cut out early after lunch on Sunday. In any case, it was nice to be back in NC for the weekend and meet Kristin's new chinchilla Mya. I also got to see Naman for the first time since he was in India, so that was also cool.

-Birthday!- That's right. I'm getting up there- 22 years and counting. My MatSci friends came over at midnight on my birthday and we had a Dairy Queen ice cream cake. Nikhil bought me a deep fryer (and Louise bought me potatoes) so we tested it out by making curly fries. They definitely tasted awesome, though Nikhil broke out into hives from the seasoning that we used, so we try not to use it anymore (unless he makes me mad...haha). That night I went out to dinner with Alpana, Louise, and Nikhil to celebrate, and we went to an Indian restaurant in Evanston that I had never been to before. The food was really good, and I would definitely go back in the future.

-Broomball!- I rented an ice rink for 2 hours on Saturday, May 12, and about 17 of my friends from the department came to play broomball. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the sport, it's basically like ice hockey, except everybody runs around with tennis shoes on the ice, and instead of a hockey puck and hockey sticks, we use a rubber ball the size of a soccer ball and "brooms" which are really just sticks with rubber wedges at the end that resemble brooms. It's one of my new favorite things to do. Here are a few pictures:

This picture is kind of funny because Eddie, Nikhil, Andres, and I all have our sticks parallel to each other.
Here's a nice image of me after falling on the ice.

This is a pretty good picture that shows most of us running around on the ice.

In conclusion, broomball is amazing.

Frisbee- This past week was the start of the ultimate frisbee tournament for intramurals. So far, our games have been rained out on two different days, but our co-rec team was able to squeeze in a game on Wednesday before the rain. Unfortunately, we lost the game to a pretty bad team, so we're out of the tournament, but our men's team still has a chance. The game is this Wednesday at 4, but we'll see if I even go because this week is probably going to chew me up and spit me out. Too many things going on- presentations, projects, hw, coffee hour, group meeting, etc. etc. If I could just fast forward the next two weeks and forget they ever happened that would be nice.

But hey, on the bright side, classes will be done for the semester and I'll have all summer to recuperate!

Oh, before I go, I thought I'd post a picture of my new niece Abigail. That's right. I'm now officially an uncle. Enjoy!

Abigail Joy Henderson