Good Old Mr. Kissel

A lot of stuff has happened since I last posted, and most of it is stuff that even the phantom readers of this readerless blog won't actually care about. In summary, sophomore year is over. That includes organic chemistry, which I couldn't be happier to be over and done with (though, as my mom likes to remind me, I can't forget about it quite yet thanks to the impending MCATs). I'm looking forward to junior year.

As I've mentioned before, I'm spending the summer on campus doing research, which should be interesting. In an attempt to stave off any potential burn-out or homesickness, my parents were cool enough to fly me home for the weekend, so I'm sitting in the airport waiting for my flight back to Claremont. On my way to my terminal, I stopped in a restroom to, y'know, fix my hair...and was all of a sudden struck by how automated to the whole place was. Now that toilets, faucets, and even soap and towel dispensers are motion-sensitive, you don't have to touch anything. It's pretty wild.

This is something that I feel like my old science teacher, Mr. Kissel, would have appreciated. When I was a kid in his second grade science class, he had me living in fear of the bacteria that hangs out on toilet flushes, door handles, and everywhere else. "What's the point in washing your hands after using the restroom?" he would ask, "When the next thing you do is touch a door handle that's covered in bacteria?"

To keep us germ-free, Mr. Kissel used to have us dip our hands in a bucket of chlorine-treated water that he kept outside of the classroom before and after class, and then shake the water off so we wouldn't have to ruin our cleanliness with a bacteria-covered paper towel.

Mr. Kissel is the same guy who taught us how to count in binary, froze ping pong balls in liquid nitrogen, and gave us a very good mnemonic device for remembering the planets of the solar system (My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas...though I suppose it's moot now, what with Pluto not being a planet anymore and all). I credit him with much of my interest in science, so way to go Mr. Kissel!

I hope he's doing well.

EoE Progress

Since returning to school my progress on reading East of Eden has been...zilcho. Predictable. I don't have free time, and when I do have free time I tend to spend it doing brain-dead things. So sad. TV>Steinbeck? Well, no, but it's easier to zone out while watching TV than it is while reading. I'll have to get back into it soon...

Sunday Flowers

Today I bought what Mr. Florist calls "fragrancy lilacs". I'm absolutely delighted by them. They smell lovely. :)

The process of getting them into a vase was pretty involved. Mr. Florist's assistant told me that I should crush the stems of the flowers so they'd pick up water better, and he said to use a hammer to do so because the stems are pretty woody. Unfortunately I don't have a hammer here at school so I just used the wrong end of a screwdriver. I've never made use of such an involved kit of tools in arranging a bouquet of flowers before...

There's also the snag that the friend of mine who lent me his vase needed it back, so I'm currently out one vase. Luckily for me a freshman of mine was kind enough to donate a giant water bottle to my cause. Thanks, Marco!

The only unfortunate thing is that apparently the ants think that these flowers smell delightful too, so they invaded my room this evening to take a whiff. Happily, my RA has sprays of death and destruction readily available outside of her room. Needless to say, the invaders have been routed. Woo!

Such lovely color contrast! Thanks, Mr. Florist! Now my next mission is to get a real vase...

Summertime

I've received a grant to do research on campus for the summer.

This should make me happy, but it sort of doesn't. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm kind of sick of Claremont. Sophomore year for premeds is notoriously difficult, and even though I've done pretty well, it hasn't been easy. I was hoping to spend a quiet couple of months at home with my family, continuing research at the lab where I worked last summer. In all honesty, the research would've been pretty secondary to everything else I had planned--the epic reading lists, the backpacking trips, cooking, playing with my dog, and finally learning to use my dad's fancy camera. I won't be able to do a lot of that if I'm spending the summer on campus, and I guess that has me a little down.

The obvious thing to do is talk to my advisor about my options ASAP and see what she thinks. I do feel like I'd be a fool to turn down a paid on-campus research opportunity, though... We'll see.

In other news, I participated in a murder-mystery dinner this evening that was put together by one of the lovely freshmen on my floor. It was quite the adventure (though there was no dinner actually involved...)!

Seven Weeks Left...

Spring break's over and it's my first night back in my dorm. Classes start tomorrow morning at 8AM.

I miss home already.

Good night.

Life Update 3

It's been raining around here for the last few days.  Of course, "raining" is a relative term in Southern California.  In the past 48 hours, we had approximately 3 minutes of torrential downpour.  Other than that, the sky was gloomily but innocuously cloudy.  We barely even got drizzled on.  

And, of course, I woke up this morning to perfectly blue skies.  It's supposed to hit 95 degrees tomorrow.  Claremont weather is so completely on drugs.  I hear it's supposed to be an El Nino year.  Maybe that means we'll get more than, um, half the national average rainfall this year (National average = 38 inches per year.  Claremont average = 18 inches per year.  Awesome.  That's what we get for living in a desert).  

I have to admit, I miss rain.  Even though we don't get a terrible lot of it in NorCal either, it's better there than it is here.  I love ferocious rainstorms.  We saw a grand total of ONE of those last year in Claremont.  Good times.  

I've been considering getting some of those ridiculous rainboots that all SoCal girls seem to be rocking around this time of year.  They're so adorable, but I'm pretty sure I'd only get about 3 uses out of them in the year, so it would be a pretty impractical purchase.  -sigh- 

I'll be putting my life in OChem's hands once more tomorrow, since our third midterm starts bright and early at 8AM.  Having only 9AM classes last year made it easy to forget the horror of having to get to class at 8:00.  Now that I have to do it again, I can't for the life of me remember how I managed it in high school.  I am convinced that high school students (and, indeed, any students who wake up at 6:30 on the daily) are superheroes.