So it's been a while since I last posted. Let's see if I can remember what I've been up to the past few weeks.
On Nov. 19 I went curling for the first time ever. A few Mat Sci grad students started a Northwestern club last year, and apparently the guy who's in charge of college recruitment for the curling sport in the entire US is letting us use his facility for free. I've got to say, it's a lot harder than it looks to hurl a rock down the ice with any accuracy. For those of you not familiar with curling, it's basically a form of ice shuffleboard. There are two teams with 4 members and 8 stones. Each member of the team has to slide 2 rocks down the ice and the teams take turns going to get their rock closest to the middle. If your team is closest to the middle, you get 1 point for every rock that you have in the target area, and the other team gets 0. Atleast that's how I think it works. I'm still kind of new, but that's what I gathered when I was there. There's a bonspiel this weekend (I guess that's what they call a curling tournament), so we don't have practice this week, but I'll probably go next time we have it.
Last week of course was Thanksgiving. I took the Amtrak down to Champaign to spend the 5-day holiday with my extended family. Thanksgiving day was a blast- I helped get the food ready for Thanksgiving dinner, and got to play croquet and the bean bag toss with my cousins in 60 degree weather. Later that night, we all watched family videos and laughed hysterically at all of our past idiosyncrasies (like 80's short shorts!).
For the ensuing few days, I worked on some homework (a travesty!) and took it easy. I went to go see For Your Consideration with Grandma James and briefly stopped by the mall to pick up a few things on Friday. Saturday afternoon I helped Grandma Sollars with her exterior Christmas decorations, and then did some Christmas shopping with Danielle and Kelley later that night. I really had a great time during my stay, and I'm glad that I live close enough now that I can come down for a short visit without much of a hassle. I think I missed out on Thanksgiving with the extended family for about 8 years. Definitely doesn't seem that long....
On a side note, it was also nice to see Grandpa Sollars out of the hospital and recovering from a bit of a nasty bout with pneumonia. His recovery has been a bit slow, but positive, so hopefully that trend will continue.
This week was pretty bad in terms of work. I had two homework sets to finish, a group meeting presentation, and two practice final exams to finish. I worked almost non-stop Monday through Wednesday to get it all done, and it feels great to have that behind me. Now I'm left with final exams and then CHRISTMAS!!! My group meeting presentation went well I think, even though I haven't actually started research yet. It was about what I had proposed to do in my NSF proposal, and my advisor came down to my office afterward and said he was very pleased with what he saw and said I did a great job. He's a very encouraging, laid-back guy, which I think will be very conducive to me getting work done.
Well, that's it for now. It's supposed to snow about a foot tonight, and it's started to sleet already. I'm hoping to wake up to huge sheet of white in the morning. I hope everybody is doing well and enjoyed their Thanksgiving holiday.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Trivial Defeat
So as you can tell from the title of my post, I finally lost at Trivial Pursuit tonight. I'll start with that I did today:
I organized a group of about 7 MatSci students to come with me to a soup kitchen in Chicago to serve Thanksgiving dinner (I guess a week early, but who's counting?). There were probably like 70 volunteers there (yeah probably overkill, but it worked out fine) and we fulfilled various tasks. Personally, I had to help wheel in a woman on a wheelchair, serve milk, and clean up tables. Others served soup, walked around with condiments, washed dishes, and who knows what else was needed. It was really a lot of fun.
Afterward, we ate at Chipotle in Evanston, and I had a chicken burrito that was monstruously sized but worth every bite. To top off the night, 6 of us came back to my apartment and played Trivial Pursuit. That's where the king's crown was sadly ripped from his head and tossed aside like pillow bodyguard.
I pretty much followed the same trend as previous games. We started off ahead 3-0 in pie piece terms, but then ended up being down most of the game 5-6. Pink is the bane of my existence! We can't answer any pink question ever (except the questions that aren't ours). Luckily we finally got one that I knew (me pulling the team in the pink category is not a good sign)- I answered "A League of Their Own" in reponse to a question about Tom Hanks being a coach in like a 1992 film. We would have gotten it sooner but I couldn't spit out "Fatal Attraction" before time ran out for the question before it- instead I was writhing under the pressure and came up with "Deadly Seduction" knowing I was wrong. I'm still proud that I got that close. You have to admit... maybe my brain is not wired corrected and its set on synonym mode. That happens too much. Anyway, the other team got some question about "The Joy of Sex" and somehow pulled that answer out of somewhere I don't want to think about. The next pink question was about what Judge Sheindlin is more commonly referred to....Judge Judy! I totally would have gotten that if we had made it to the middle (and obviously would have been asked pink). Alas... we still had a good show, even if we second-guessed ourselves a few times. Team games are so much fun.
I've got a research webpage now. It's not anything I'll update periodically, but it's more for general information for people who want to know what I'm researching (potential collaborators, etc.). The site is: http://shullgroup.northwestern.edu/member_profiles/Henderson.html . I suggest everybody check it out. I think it's a good picture of me that Eddie's girlfriend took a few weeks ago. Plus, I'm sitting on my infamous couch that everybody is jealous of... and by everybody I can think of about 3 people. Haha.
Anyway, I had a good night. The Trivial Pursuit game was more intense this time around becaues there were some underhanded tricks going down. My team personally rolled a few times extra to try to land on specific spaces without the other team noticing, but they would rig the question order to keep from giving us easy questions. Haha, plus we timed eachother's respones and made noises or sang songs to distract the other team. Well, I was the only one who sang songs... Endless Love... and Celebration. Haha. There were related to questions. I should have sang Nancy Sinatra- These Boots are Made for Walking (I don't know the title) but that was my teams question and I had to think.
Well, I need to get some sleep. Next week should be nice- classes until Wednesday and then Thanksgiving with the extended family! I'm excited.
I shall contain myself.
Until next time...
I organized a group of about 7 MatSci students to come with me to a soup kitchen in Chicago to serve Thanksgiving dinner (I guess a week early, but who's counting?). There were probably like 70 volunteers there (yeah probably overkill, but it worked out fine) and we fulfilled various tasks. Personally, I had to help wheel in a woman on a wheelchair, serve milk, and clean up tables. Others served soup, walked around with condiments, washed dishes, and who knows what else was needed. It was really a lot of fun.
Afterward, we ate at Chipotle in Evanston, and I had a chicken burrito that was monstruously sized but worth every bite. To top off the night, 6 of us came back to my apartment and played Trivial Pursuit. That's where the king's crown was sadly ripped from his head and tossed aside like pillow bodyguard.
I pretty much followed the same trend as previous games. We started off ahead 3-0 in pie piece terms, but then ended up being down most of the game 5-6. Pink is the bane of my existence! We can't answer any pink question ever (except the questions that aren't ours). Luckily we finally got one that I knew (me pulling the team in the pink category is not a good sign)- I answered "A League of Their Own" in reponse to a question about Tom Hanks being a coach in like a 1992 film. We would have gotten it sooner but I couldn't spit out "Fatal Attraction" before time ran out for the question before it- instead I was writhing under the pressure and came up with "Deadly Seduction" knowing I was wrong. I'm still proud that I got that close. You have to admit... maybe my brain is not wired corrected and its set on synonym mode. That happens too much. Anyway, the other team got some question about "The Joy of Sex" and somehow pulled that answer out of somewhere I don't want to think about. The next pink question was about what Judge Sheindlin is more commonly referred to....Judge Judy! I totally would have gotten that if we had made it to the middle (and obviously would have been asked pink). Alas... we still had a good show, even if we second-guessed ourselves a few times. Team games are so much fun.
I've got a research webpage now. It's not anything I'll update periodically, but it's more for general information for people who want to know what I'm researching (potential collaborators, etc.). The site is: http://shullgroup.northwestern.edu/member_profiles/Henderson.html . I suggest everybody check it out. I think it's a good picture of me that Eddie's girlfriend took a few weeks ago. Plus, I'm sitting on my infamous couch that everybody is jealous of... and by everybody I can think of about 3 people. Haha.
Anyway, I had a good night. The Trivial Pursuit game was more intense this time around becaues there were some underhanded tricks going down. My team personally rolled a few times extra to try to land on specific spaces without the other team noticing, but they would rig the question order to keep from giving us easy questions. Haha, plus we timed eachother's respones and made noises or sang songs to distract the other team. Well, I was the only one who sang songs... Endless Love... and Celebration. Haha. There were related to questions. I should have sang Nancy Sinatra- These Boots are Made for Walking (I don't know the title) but that was my teams question and I had to think.
Well, I need to get some sleep. Next week should be nice- classes until Wednesday and then Thanksgiving with the extended family! I'm excited.
I shall contain myself.
Until next time...
Friday, November 10, 2006
Excited!
So I'm in a pretty good mood right now. It stems mostly from submitting the NSF application last night, which means I don't have to worry about editing all those essays anymore.
On Tuesday, I pretty much didn't get anything done because I decided to make sugar cookies and watch the election results on TV. I've got to say, it was a great night, and I'm pretty pleased with the election results. However, I would have liked to see more support for the Green Party candidate for Illinois governor. Haha, I wasn't really a fan of either Dem or Rep candidate, so voted Green Party for the first time, and the candidate garnered about 11% of the vote. Not too shabby, but the incumbent Blagojevich was re-elected, the lesser of two evils between him and Judie Barr Topinka, who I fear would eat my children if I had any.
It will be interesting to see the new dynamics in politics for the next two years, with Bush still on his throne and a Democratic-controlled Congress. Plus Rumsfeld stepped down. Hopefully, they'll hit the ground running with some new legislation in January and get Americans less apathetic about politics. It's so disheartening to hear everybody talk what little faith they have in politicians all the time. It's probably somewhat justified though.
My hope is that we'll see more expansion of research funding in the coming years. There have been a few bills tossed around in Congress, one of which would double that National Science Foundation budget by 2010. I am a little biased, but I strongly advocate expansion of research in biotechnology, green chemistry, renewable energy, and fuel cells in particular. Since America's losing its edge in science to many Asian countries, we've got to put a firm foot forward to stay ahead of the game. Of course that's not all we need to be worried about, but it's what I'm most qualified to assert. I'll leave Social Security and healthcare-related matters up to the more qualified and experienced in those matters, but of course those are topics that need to be addressed as well.
I've got a lot of good ideas for my research, and I'm ready to get started as soon as next week. I'll need a short stint of training to use lab equipment, but I'm practically frothing at the mouth to get started. If working on my NSF proposal did nothing else, it forced me to do some background reading on what I'll be doing and gave me a lot of good ideas. Hydrogels are awesome!
Tomorrow (or today rather since it's pretty late at night) I'm probably gonna have another wild and crazy baking night. What will it be this time? The jury's still out on that one. I already made cookies this week, so maybe I'll try to make something substantive. Some vegetable fried rice? Metal muffins? Nobody knows. Stay tuned for more details.
On Tuesday, I pretty much didn't get anything done because I decided to make sugar cookies and watch the election results on TV. I've got to say, it was a great night, and I'm pretty pleased with the election results. However, I would have liked to see more support for the Green Party candidate for Illinois governor. Haha, I wasn't really a fan of either Dem or Rep candidate, so voted Green Party for the first time, and the candidate garnered about 11% of the vote. Not too shabby, but the incumbent Blagojevich was re-elected, the lesser of two evils between him and Judie Barr Topinka, who I fear would eat my children if I had any.
It will be interesting to see the new dynamics in politics for the next two years, with Bush still on his throne and a Democratic-controlled Congress. Plus Rumsfeld stepped down. Hopefully, they'll hit the ground running with some new legislation in January and get Americans less apathetic about politics. It's so disheartening to hear everybody talk what little faith they have in politicians all the time. It's probably somewhat justified though.
My hope is that we'll see more expansion of research funding in the coming years. There have been a few bills tossed around in Congress, one of which would double that National Science Foundation budget by 2010. I am a little biased, but I strongly advocate expansion of research in biotechnology, green chemistry, renewable energy, and fuel cells in particular. Since America's losing its edge in science to many Asian countries, we've got to put a firm foot forward to stay ahead of the game. Of course that's not all we need to be worried about, but it's what I'm most qualified to assert. I'll leave Social Security and healthcare-related matters up to the more qualified and experienced in those matters, but of course those are topics that need to be addressed as well.
I've got a lot of good ideas for my research, and I'm ready to get started as soon as next week. I'll need a short stint of training to use lab equipment, but I'm practically frothing at the mouth to get started. If working on my NSF proposal did nothing else, it forced me to do some background reading on what I'll be doing and gave me a lot of good ideas. Hydrogels are awesome!
Tomorrow (or today rather since it's pretty late at night) I'm probably gonna have another wild and crazy baking night. What will it be this time? The jury's still out on that one. I already made cookies this week, so maybe I'll try to make something substantive. Some vegetable fried rice? Metal muffins? Nobody knows. Stay tuned for more details.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Pumpkin pictures
While I'm working on my NSF proposal, I'll provide these pictures for your viewing pleasure. Haha, check out the pimp mustache on that pumpkin.
Short update: Last night I went out to a Peruvian restaurant for dinner with some friends and had the chicken in peanut sauce. It was quite the delectable dish (much like myself, haha), though the Inca Cola wasn't my favorite. It was like drinking Bazooka bubble gum. But I guess if you're into that sort of thing, then be my guest.
On Friday night, I took a break from homework to make a little brochure for my mom to use at work that contains lots of spanish words and phrases for nurses. I'm planning to print it off in color at Kinko's and have it laminated so it's durable and easy to clean off it it gets dirty. You know those hospitals. Mucus flying everywhere! She offered a few suggestions for some phrases, but I may need some assistance from my spanish-speaking friends on some of them. We'll see how that turns out, but it was a nice little break.
Alright, back to work. I've had a hankering for some sugar cookies all week (or even better, sugar cookie dough!), so I may throw down a baking party on Thursday after the NSF proposal is due. That's how I roll..
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