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...