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

Another long-overdue post

Alright, so I'm getting really bad at posting. Hopefully by the time summer rolls around I'll be back on my game. Let's see, what have I been up to since last time?

I volunteered at the Illinois State Science Olympiad tournament last weekend at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. I was the event supervisor for an event called Write It Do It for the middle school division. Basically the event consists of a pair of students, one the writer and one the doer, who get a structure provided by yours truly that they copy as closely as possible by having the writer look at the structure and write instructions on how to make it and the doer using those instructions to try to recreate the original. I brought a few of my friends down with me to Champaign for the competition and we all stayed with the grandparents, who were very gracious hosts. I've included some pictures below that Alpana took with her camera:

Kunal, Nikhil, and I the night before the competition getting everything assembled for the next day.
Me in Grandma James's basement, staging a picture to give to one of our friends to show how bad the living conditions were.

The past few weeks have also been the start of the intramural frisbee season. I've got to say, Wednesday has been the worst day of the week to play games, but that is the day we have been assigned to play every week. Two weeks ago, it was snowing on a Wednesday. Last week, it was about 40 degrees and windy. This week it was about the same except it started to rain during our games. I have never played in such bad weather. In contrast, every Monday has been sunny with 70-80 degree weather, but I don't think anybody plays on Mondays. This upcoming Monday is supposed to have a high of 87 degrees, while Wednesday is supposed to be about 58. I smell a conspiracy. If this keeps up, I may not play next year.

Oh, I went to an informational session this week about a "Medical Innovations" course that is being offered for the first time this fall at Northwestern. Basically, it draws students from four different Northwestern schools (the med school, business school, law school, and engineering school) and about 10 teams are assembled consisting of students from each school. The goal of the course is for each team to develop a medical-related innovation based on shadowing doctors at Northwestern's hospital in Chicago, pitching the idea to get funding from the faculty and venture capitalists funding the course (~$15,000/group in actual money!), using that money to develop a working prototype, filing a preliminary patent application, and delivering a final presentation to market the idea to potential investors. It sounds like an awesome opportunity. The course is actually a two-quarter course, so it runs from September to March, but I'm seriously considering taking it for my PhD minor. It sounds like it may be a lot of work, but it's divided up into a group project, so my main contribution to the team as the engineer would be developing the idea and determining feasible ways to go about making a prototype. In principal, if I apply for the orthopedic research area, I could potentially use my own research as the motivation for artificial cartilage applications. Not a bad idea... The application is due by May 11, but I'll probably try to get it done this weekend.

Other than that, I can't think of much else I'm up to other than coursework and research. I'll be visiting North Carolina next weekend for my sister's graduation from Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. My birthday is also coming up in a few weeks. I'm thinking about having a broomball party, but more to come on that later.

Sorry for the long-delayed post. If it happens again, just leave me nasty comments or something. Hope everybody is doing well...

Long time no post

Sorry about not posting for a while. I guess it's just been one long progression of events. Finals week, then Science Olympiad tournament, then visiting North Carolina, then ACS meeting and the start of a new semester.

As to not write a monstrously long message, I'll keep it fairly short.

The Science Olympiad tournament went really well. I wrote the exams for two events, but given my limited ability of being in only one place at a time, I only ran one of them, but was in the room next door to the other one so that if there were any questions the proctor had about the other exam, they could easily come over and ask me. Alpana and Nikhil volunteered with me, which was really helpful, and I think both events went smoothly (at least I didn't hear any complaints). I've talked to the state tournament director, and I'll be running another event at U of I on April 21 for a middle school event. I'm having trouble finding people to help me out for that one though... everybody seems to be busy that weekend.

My visit to North Carolina was nice. The weather was warmer, and it was relaxing, albeit short. I'll have to find time to visit longer next time, but it was good to see everybody since it had been 7-8 months since I had been home.

In other news, I found out I got an National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship! This means I have my own funding for grad school for the next 3 years, and it gives me a lot more flexibility for projects I want to pursue. This is excellent news for any grad student, so I'm very excited about being awarded such a prestigious fellowship. Of course, it was also great news for my advisor, since he'll save a lot of money from not having to pay my stipend.

I'd love to write more but I'm exhausted this week from class and attending the ACS meeting. The meeting started Sunday and runs through Thursday, and I've had to take the train over an hour each way for the past three days to watch 4 hours of talks every afternoon. I enjoy it, but it's just tiring.

I'll try to post again soon, and not wait over 3 weeks to update.

Another update

Alright, I never posted what else I did besides the ski trip last week. I can't even remember what I did in the early part of last week- it was probably just studying for my polymers test so who cares about that. Thursday I presented at group meeting again, and Brian visited me Thursday night since he was in the area for the week. We made homemade pizza (alfredo/broccoli, pesto, and tomato/onion/garlic/pepper/pepperoni). I hadn't had a pizza night since December, so the pizza was especially tasty. Then Brian and I had a Trivial Pursuit showdown which was rather disappointing. We pretty much each got our 6 pieces at the same time (technically I was first by a turn or two), but then I absolutely could not get to the middle of the board for the final questions. Brian ended up getting into the middle 6 times before getting his question right, and I only had 2 chances even though I had probably rolled the dice about 3 times more by answering lots of science questions. Anyway, he won legitimately (even if the question was ALMOST a repeat question about agent orange), so I can' complain.

This past weekend I went to a blues bar called Kingston Mines with prospective students for the department and a whole bunch of current grad students. The music was alright, but I wasn't the biggest fan of the smokers, loudness, drunk people, etc. Not exactly my scene, but it was cool to get to talk to some of the prospective students (after leaving of course, haha).

This week I've got two finals and a project due so I'm not getting anything productive done in terms of lab work.

In other news, I ran into a door today. Yeah, that's right. I was leaving campus, and I wasn't really paying attention when I went to open the door to leave the building, and the door just stopped opening about halfway. The door stopped, but I continued moving and ran headfirst into a giant heavy metal door. Needless to say, there's a huge gash above my left eye (about an inch long) that gapes wide open without the butterfly band-aids and liquid bandage I covered it with. There was a guy coming in from the other side of the door at the same time, but after he saw what happened to me said "I think I'll try another door". I proceeded to bleed everywhere and had to go back into the building to the men's bathroom to check out the damage. It actually stopped bleeding rather quickly, but I had a case of the uglies before walking to CVS to buy hydrogen peroxide, Neosporin, and all the band-aid equipment. Now when everybody asks me what happened to my face, I hesitantly admit that I ran into a door. I may need to complain to somebody about that door. It's strange because I always walk out another door, but for some reason I went out a different one today, and needless to say, I won't be using that door again.

I'l have to post a picture later. I've got work to do.

Hope everybody is doing well, and avoiding all doors...

Ski Trip and more

So I haven't been able to post since the ski trip, so I'll give a little run down on how it went to start off:

A group of 12 of us headed up from Evanston last Friday to Wausau, WI, to enjoy the slopes of Granite Peak. The car I went in left around 7 since some of the students had group meeting until 6, so we didn't end up getting there until midnight. We played a huge game similar to Mafia for a few hours, and in the morning at 9 hit the slopes. I had to teach Nikhil how to ski, so the entire day I was going down the beginner's slope helping him. He actually wasn't that bad, aside from not being able to turn right. Here's a picture of me, Andres, and Nikhil about mid-day. My face is half-frozen so I'm not smiling normal, but I assure you I would be smiling less awkwardly if I had feeling in my cheeks.

I kept skiing all day until about 7 o'clock, after which I came back to the lodge to find almost everybody in the hot tub situated outside in the freezing weather. As nobody brought their swimming suits, everybody was wearing either their underwear or a pair of shorts, so it was rather comical. We relaxed out there for a while and then dried off in the sauna for a bit before having an awesome dinner cooked by one of our classmates, Zhenxing. By that time, I was pretty exhausted, so I ended out the night with a game of Taboo and a few more Bang games, and headed to bed.

Luckily the next morning it wasn't snowing and we were able to hit the road and make it back to Evanston on schedule. It was a great trip, and I look forward to doing it again. Here are some more pictures:

A scandalous picture after coming back inside from using the hot tub.

The Rib Mountain Inn, where we stayed.

A picture of the group who went; I'm the one taking the picture so I'm not in it.

I'll post more about the rest of my week later. I hope everybody is doing well.

Oops

I apologize for not having posted something in the past few weeks. I was trying to hold out until this weekend, as I am going on a ski trip and I thought it would be nice to post a few pictures after that, but I figured a small post now wouldn't hurt.

So what have I been up to? Well the first thing that comes to mind is hockey this week. I had my last two games on Monday and Tuesday. Both of my teams lost in the first round of the final tournament, but the co-rec game was a heart-wrencher. We went into the tournament with no wins, so of course we were seeded against a higher ranked team. Surprisingly we tied the game 3-3 and went into overtime. You'd think it would stop there, but we held them in overtime twice and went to a shootout to decide the game. After the shootout, both teams had scored 2 goals, so we proceeded to have everybody on the roster participate until we were out of players. We then had to start from the top of the roster again. At this point, the other team scored a goal that we couldn't match, so we ended up losing. It was painful. The men's game we just flat out lost 3-1.

Another exciting occurence in the past few weeks was the 8 inches (or so) of snow that we got. I hadn't been in that much snow for a while, so it was nice to have to trudge through the winter whiteness for a few days, despite the blisteringly cold wind and sub-zero temperatures.

Oh, speaking of hockey and winter, I played broomball a week or so ago with the department, and it was AWESOME. I had forgotten exactly how much fun broomball can be. I'm looking forward to playing again hopefully a few more times intermittently throughout the year. I was a bit crazy on the ice, as I would run harder than anybody else and just stop myself on the side of the ice rink, so I was typically falling over but seeing a lot of broomball action.

Dad came to see my last week, as he had some appointments with clients throughout Indiana and Illinois for a few days, but thanks to the snow, many of them were canceled so he just stayed at my apartment from Monday to Wednesday. It was good to see him, and Eddie and I made dinner on Tuesday for the first time in a while, and that was also nice. Brian will be visiting next week, so I'm planning to have a pizza night and possibly a Trivial Pursuit showdown. We'll see how that goes. I'm hoping that I won't be busy at all next week. The following week I have final exams, so I should probably start studying for those... now. I don't really want to think about the next few weeks.

Anyway, I need to get to bed. I'll post more after the weekend when I should have some pictures. Sorry if this post was a bit scattered- I haven't really organized my thoughts, and I've got a lot to finish before leaving for Wisconsin on Friday. Hope all is well!

Classes...again...

I don't have much time to write as I am studying for two tests this weekend, and the Superbowl is tomorrow! I'm hoping that if I get a few practice tests done before I go to sleep tonight that tomorrow I'll be prepared enough for the Monday tests that I can watch the whole game. Otherwise I'll have to take my dad's advice and only watch the first half unless it's close and gets interesting in the second half. The other alternative is staying up til about 3 am tomorrow. Also feasible.

Just as a quick update, I'm applying for housing in the fall at a 6 bedroom duplex apartment. Joe, Andres, Eddie, Nikhil, and Kunal (Nikhil's roommate) will be living with me. I found an advertisement for a place on Monday, we looked at it on Wednesday, and if we turn in our applications by tomorrow I hope that we'll be approved for it. There are atleast two other groups filling out applications, but I am optimistic because the other two groups are undergrads, and I think the landlords really liked the idea of having 6 graduate students over 6 undergrads. I can't blame them. Anyway, they told me that none of the applications have been turned in fully yet, so if we get our applications in by Monday it is likely that we will have turned in the first completed set of applications. If all of this works out, it will be nice to already have a place squared away for next year. It's only about 2 blocks away from where I am now, and runs roughly the same cost, but I'll like having more company around and 2 kitchens! Pretty sweet if you ask me.

Hockey is cancelled this week because of the Superbowl, but we had practice today, which was fun. Our team captain thinks we may have too many forwards so I may have to start playing defense. It's okay though, I think I'm pretty good at defense anyway. I won't have to worry about puck handling as much.

Oh, I got a few pictures from Ivana this week from my friends visiting in December. I'll post them and then get back to work! I hope everybody is doing well.

Me, Matt, Ivana, Emily, and Naman skating at Millenium Park.

Naman, Joel, Emily, Ivana, and me sitting on some cow statue by the old public library.

Well, it started off as Joel grabbing Emily's leg, and then things just got out of hand...

Long week

This week consisted of... well basically homework everyday. I had a math homework set due on Wednesday and a 3 hw sets due from my other classes on Friday. Not my favorite experience. I'll just provide a recap of what I've been up to:

Last weekend: I went to a musical last Saturday with a few of my friends. We saw Into the Woods, based off Grimm's Fairy Tales, and it was really good. It was put on by a group on campus, and student tickets were only $10, so it was pretty cheap too. On Sunday, I started writing the exams for the Science Olympiad tournament events that I'm supervising. There were five of us working on it, so we planned a brunch and had cinnamon rolls, metal muffins, banana bread, fresh fruit, and omelettes. We're planning the same thing for tomorrow, so I'm pretty excited about that. Sunday night I had hockey games again, and we won our first men's game, but lost in the co-rec league. Maybe tomorrow will be our day!

Wednesday was my friend Nikhil's birthday so a few of our friends organized a surprise birthday party for him on Tuesday night. I had to keep him distracted until 8:30 and then bring him back to his apartment. We watched an Indian movie, but I don't remember the name of it. I ended up getting back home at 1:30 am and was up til 3 finishing my math hw which was due the next morning.

In terms of research, I started doing mechanical measurements on my polymers this week! I like to think of my experiments as controlled poking, because that's essentially what I'm doing. Poking stuff. Preliminary results indicate that the double network polymer systems have increased strength over the single network systems, which is what we anticipated, so I should be able to move forward with my polymer gel experiments. Good news...

That's about it for now I guess. Not a whole lot of excitement around here. Just the humdrum of classwork. That's what I get for taking an extra course this quarter. Though if I do an extra course the next quarter and in the fall, I'll be finished with classes forever in December, a quarter ahead of schedule. More to come on that later. I'm off to bed. Good night everyone!

Quick update

I've been busy this week working on homework so I haven't had time to post. Here's a quick synopsis.

I've starting doing intramural hockey now. Our first games were on Sunday- I'm in both the men's league and the corec league, and both of my teams lost our first games. The corec team's game was against another MatSci team, who just happens to be the returning champions from last year, so we got obliterated. In the men's league we didn't do so badly, but we just didn't get a lot of shots off. A lot of us are new to the sport, and I personally haven't played since middle school. Oh, and it's floor hockey, so we just run around in our shoes, not roller blades, which is kind of disappointing, but I won't complain.

I also went curling this past Sunday, but I think it will be my last time until hockey is over. Both are on Sunday, and I can't waste my entire Sunday just playing sports. Plus it's tiring. Anyway, we had a mini-curling match, and my team beat the other team 7-0. I had some particularly good placements that were pivotal in our win, so I was pretty excited about that. In our last round, the other team had like 4 stones in the 'house' and we only had one, which they had just knocked out. I was trying to take out their closest stone to keep them from winning 4 points, but instead, I messed up the shot, knocked out their second closest stone, and ricocheted off it to put my stone smack dab in the center. The beauty of it was that this was blocked in front by about 3 other stones, so the other team even with two more stones left, was unable to take out my stone so we got the point instead of them getting 3 or 4. I was quite proud of my mistake.

Also on Sunday (I know, busy day) I met with the regional science olympiad director, and she gave me the rules for the events I will be supervising. I have a group of 4 friends who said they'd be willing to help me out with writing the exams, so we're having brunch on Sunday at my apartment and doing some brainstorming. The two events I will be doing are Five Star Science and Forensics. The Five-Star Science event is a pentathlon of Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Earth Science/Astronomy, and Data Analysis, while the Forensics is like a crime-solving event where I get to devise a made-up crime with suspects and the students have to solve the crime using fingerprint analysis, chromatography, identification of white powders and polymers, etc. It should be a lot of fun, and I'm really looking forward to this weekend (gotta get past the homework this week though!).

In lab, I was able to successfully polymerize poly(n-butyl acrylate) as an elastomer and then polymerize the same thing in the presence of a triblock copolymer. The idea is that we will compare the two polymers to see whether the triblock copolymer strengthens the poly(n-butyl acrylate) network, and then proceed to the hydrogel systems if it looks promising. I'm presenting at lab meeting this week, but once again, there are like 4 of us presenting so I want to keep it at about a 5 minute presentation with room for questions. Next week I'll actually be doing the mechanical measurements to see if the one polymer is stronger than the other. I would have done it last week, but I had some issues with my polymerizations shooting into the water bath and then bubbles forming during polymerization, which I have since corrected.

I guess that's about it for now. Thankfully my homework this semester is only worth about 10-15% in most of my classes so I don't need to worry about it so much. However, I'm doing an extra class this semester so that probably makes up for it. But, if I take 4 classes this quarter and next quarter, I'll only have 4 left until I'm done with classes forever! That means I could potentially be done with classes in December, but my guess is that I'll just end up taking like 1 or 2 at a time instead because of when courses are offered that I want to take.

Anyway, I need to get back to work or go to sleep. Sleep sounds better. Hope everybody is doing well. For your viewing pleasure, I'm attaching a picture of a group of us doing homework in my apartment with the "wall of laptops". I'm not in it, as I'm taking the picture. The guy on the couch is Nikhil, the girl standing up is Louise, and the guy in the background is Andres.

Doritos Commercial

Courtesy of Kristin, I would like everybody to look at the following link and vote on this commercial to win a Doritos Superbowl contest. It's actually really funny, and two of the people making it went to my high school.

http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1128505/

That's the link for the story.

http://www.jumpcut.com/view?id=F0CBEA0C841311DBA3823EF340157CF2&b_id=1FE7BE2457D211DB9D601EE329CBD869

That's a link for the commercial.

First Week of Classes

Now I'm back in lab and starting courses all over again. The first day of the quarter was Wednesday, and lucky me woke up having a bit of a cold (or something respiratory). Anyway, I was pretty miserable for the first day, as my nose was running everywhere and I didn't have any Actifed or Sudafed to put a stop to the torrential downpour. On Thursday I felt pretty much the same, but I suffered through it so I could go to lab for 8 hours to set up and carry out my first polymerization for my research! I made a small 3 milliliter sample of poly(n-butyl acrylate) and was quite excited to see a gelatinous product stuck in the reaction vessel, which was what I was going for. Thursday was also the first day of hockey practice for the intramural league, so I went and played floor hockey at the gym for 2 hours despite my fever and impaired ability to breathe. I actually scored 2 goals within like 5 minutes of playing, but I quickly died out and I think scored only one other time in the ensuing 2 hours.

Yesterday, I went with Joe, Andres, and Nikhil to check out an open house of a 4 bedroom house about 5 minutes from here. We're checking out places for next year. Ideally, we'd like to find a big, cheap 6 bedroom a little further south that we can all live in along with Eddie and Nikhil's roomate. We've found a couple 3000 square foot houses for ~$1350-$1700/month with heat, but the problem is that mostly all the ones we're looking at will be gone by the fall. Blast! Then later in the day I played squash for the first time against Andres and Nikhil, and topped off the night by watching Children of Men. I think it was a good movie, but I felt like it could have been awesome if it were more believable. Anyway, it was a good day.

Today, I think I'll be doing my homework for the week so I can get ahead. It's always a good feeling. Until next time...

Christmas and New Years

Since I was subjected to dial-up internet while at my grandparents, I haven't posted anything in the past week or so since I was there. I'll give a brief run-down of what Christmas and New Years was like:

This year, we opted to have the Henderson Christmas a bit earlier than normal. We randomly decided on Friday night (Dec. 22) that we would open up presents to avoid the hassle on Christmas eve. I was a bit unprepared, not having wrapped any of my gifts, so all of my gifts were given out in plastic bags. Aside from Katie, Kristin, and Brian buying a few of the same gifts for people, I think everybody was happy with what they got and it was good to have the whole family together again. Also, that morning we took our family pictures. I'll post a few of them for those of you who haven't had the privilege to see our beautiful faces in a while:


I've got to say, the second one is my personal favorite. Just to keep the rest short and simple, on Sunday, we had Christmas with my dad's side of the family and attended the Christmas eve service that night, and on Christmas day we had a gift exchange with my mom's side of the family. I headed out on Tuesday night with Kristin back to Evanston as she wanted to come see where I lived and hang out in Chicago for a day.

Some highlights from Christmas: Rachel and I winning Trivial Pursuit at Grandma and Grandpa Sollars's house, participating in a huge round robin tournament of gin (and practically breaking even), watching like 6 DVDs with the family, going to Fazoli's twice, seeing Kendall's huge belt buckle, and of course getting to see everybody after a my absence last Christmas.

On Wednesday, Kristin and I headed to Chicago around 9:30 am (and missed the express train by about 5 seconds, but that's another story). I took her out to lunch, then to the Sear's Tower and Merchandise Mart, and then we stopped by both B. Dalton's and a used book store. We also just strolled around the city for a little bit, and I bought her dinner to take on the train with her before she left. We had a good time, but she had to leave by about 3 pm, so next time she visits, we should plan on more time so we can go see some sketch comedy or something.

For New Year's Eve, I just took it easy. I didn't really feel like going to any parties and watching people drink their lives away, so I hung out with Andres and his friend Naomi and went to see fireworks on the lake. It was basically just what I wanted to do, though I've got to say it didn't really feel like New Year's. Maybe next year I should go into Chicago or something. We'll see...

Tomorrow I've got to get back to work, and Wedneday my classes start. Then I'm pretty much booked until June.

I hope everyone's holidays went well, and I wish you all a happy New Year!