A crazy week so far

So this week has been a crazy week.  It started out Monday with us accidentally turning the alarm off.  When we realized that we had 20 minutes to get ready and get to the train station it got a bit hectic.  Way to start a week.  Anyway, since I have a less stringent schedule about when I have to be at work and we made it to the train station about a minute before the train did, I told Chris to get on the train, I'd just take the next one.  I ended up missing the train, but getting to watch the sunrise.  It was a pretty sunrise with clouds everywhere because we were slated to get snow and stuff.  I saw these ice crystals on the window of a shelter.  I thought they looked like the sun and was able to get the sun in them as it was low enough.  This was sunrise on Monday morning.  The burst pattern isn't one of the ice crystal forms I've seen very often so it was neat that I got to see it this way.

Today I took a biochemistry test.  It reminded me of doing the fact master tests in elementary school.  (For facts masters you had to do the math facts in a set amount of time) We had 13 pages of biochemistry structures to draw in 75 minutes.  I ended up being done in 45 minutes.  This means I did really well or really poorly.  I'm thinking its the first as it was pretty much the exact same test as previous semesters.  And it wasn't like it is possible to substitute that many DNA bases into the problem -- I had a 1 in 4 shot to begin with on getting the same one. 

Tomorrow night are the volleyball semi-finals and finals.  Hopefully we'll win again and be champions!  We can do it if we continue to play like we have the past few weeks.  We have to go in and know we're going to win, and have a LOT of energy.  We've got a lot of people so that helps because we've got sheer numbers on our side.  We'll see though.  Chris is going to go be photographer again so hopefully we'll get some more fun shots that I can post this week.

Baking of cinnamon goo

Well, in traditional weekend form, I'm attempting to make something I've been craving with ingredients that I can eat.  I normally sit down and look at about a dozen recipes, each leaving one of my ingredients out and then make up my own.  For instance, I look at a gluten free recipe, then a yeast free recipe, then one that doesn't involve shortening of any form, and one that doesn't involve a lot of milk, etc. and put something together.  Normally I've done okay, but today I failed spectacularly.  I failed in making cinnamon rolls, but succeeded in making something that right now smells very very yummy.  The dough was too wet to roll so it just kind of gooed up in the middle when I went to roll them.  Thankfully I decided that I wanted to make them in muffin tin, so I'll turn out with cinnamon goo infused muffins.  I do plan on icing them, but I definitely don't think that they are cinnamon rolls. 

Well, they did turn out okay.  They are like a cinnamon crumb cake more or less.  But I can eat it :)  Here are a few pictures after cooking and then after icing. Also, there is a reason that the cinnamon mixture in cinnamon rolls goes on the inside -- if it is on the outside it get burned!  Sugar at 375 for 10 minutes becomes a nice carbon char.  They taste good though! 

This week overall has been interesting.  Tuesday we got about a foot of snow.  Not that unusual except that Wednesday morning we had an earthquake.  It was a 3.8 quake in a suburb fairly close to ours.  It happened about 4 am and I felt it, but since the plows were out trying to get rid of the foot of snow on the roads and in the parking lot, I just assumed one had hit our building or something.  Wednesday morning was one for the books though -- we had the earthquake, we couldn't sleep because of the plows (they make the back-up beeping noise which is not very conducive to sleep), another train on our line hit a car that had slid onto the tracks and slowed us down getting into downtown -- and this was all between 4 and 7 am.  The sun did come out though, and it was a pretty day, but it was a long one for sure. 

School wise things are going.  This Thursday I have my first biochemistry exam.  We'll see how it goes.  I think I'll be okay as long as I don't freak out and remember to do things like count bonds to each atom. 

A bit of Volleyball

With the 20s-30s at church I've been playing volleyball.  We've been playing since sometime in October and the play-offs are upon us.  Last night we managed to do fairly well for the first game, got creamed the second game, and creamed the other team the last game.  At least going into the final game having won one and lost one we still had something to play for.  Chris went with me to the game (we braved the icy roads and managed to not hit any curbs, but did some car skating when no one was around.  It was a sudden storm and came with a lot of wind) and took along the camera.  He got some good shots, so here are a few.  He said it was a lot of fun, even if kind of frustrating to work on composing the frame well.  Most of the problems with blur are from the film speed being to slow, so I've got to figure out how to change that on the fly.  We did end up winning the match though so in two weeks we get to play again.  Hopefully in two weeks we'll play 2 games -- and win them both and therefore win the league. 

Carolyn and and other girl ready for play.

 

A good shot of a good serve.

 

We scored a point! 

 

Working with using all three touches, and someone successfully spiking the set from Carolyn. 

 

A team picture.  Since we had everyone there plus a few extras we decided having a team pic would be good.  These are the people we hang out with a lot -- they are our small group from church and so we see them several times a week.  

Any comments on any of the pictures -- from composition or what you think the problem with blur is, please let me know!

Easy Sunday

Well, we've had an easy Sunday so far.  It has been nice to kick back and hang out in pjs not doing much.  I'm about to go for a run -- we're up to the warmest part of the day as it nears 26 with a windchill of 13.  It is sunny though and deceptively clear out, so I'll go freeze for a run then come back in to a warm Chris.

This past week I went to my GI doc.  We discussed my visit to the allergist from the beginning of the month.  I was shocked when she agreed with me that the allergist was a jerk.  We talked about how science is constantly evolving and how the allergist seemed to think that the only allergy was an IgE reaction.  There are many many other players in the immune system though, so it is quite limiting to see only one as being the "true" allergy.  This coming week I'm supposed to see a new allergist -- one who does actual research with my GI doc on food allergy related stuff.  He apparently likes to draw blood for everything so we'll see how pricks it takes to get blood from Carolyn this week.  My GI doc is going to warn him about how much my body doesn't like to have blood taken from it, so we'll see if he listens. 

At work Chris continues to work on taking over the stockroom sometime this summer.  They are trying to hammer down all the details about the position and whatnot.  Hopefully we'll know soon so we know if we both need to be looking for jobs or not.  We're hoping they will be reasonable, but precedent doesn't suggest that.

This week was the first week of quizzes for me.  Since I only have quizzes and tests for grades this term, it was round one of getting an idea of questions and such.  Both quizzes were fairly straight forward.  I got a 9/10 on one of them and am unsure about the other one.  I don't think I did too poorly, probably just some spelling errors if anything.  I got all the chemistry right, just not the spelling.  The project I work on is coming along nicely and is slated to start in the classrooms the middle of March.  We will be holding training in the next couple of weeks so hopefully we won't have some of the fiasco it was last semester.  The professors have agreed to play nice for the most part and all seem to be very enthusiastic.  This will be a first so hopefully it will greatly impact the relevancy that the students see to the lab time.

One fun thing from today is that I made waffles that rose.  I've been having a VERY difficult time getting my breads and waffles to rise, but finally managed to do it.  I also made them with no dairy products, so that's cool.  They were quite tasty, but nutty, as I made them with almond meal and almond milk.  Like I said, they rose though so I'm excited.  I'm really trying to work up to making a bread recipe that I can eat, and getting the flours to rise has been a challenge.  

Not much else is new here so I suppose I should go run.  I need to take water, but am pretty sure it would freeze while I'm out running so it will have to be a short run.

The Lull after Vacation

This week has been fairly uneventful, especially compared to the last one.  After getting back from Phoenix we got through the rest of the week and made it to the weekend.  Then slept a lot over the weekend.  We also went downtown for our friend John's B'day.  It was an interesting time, as going out to dinner with me always is.  I know that each chef thinks they are going to be the ones who can make something for me, but really it probably isn't possible to be original with all the restrictions that I have.  I try and humor the managers and the chef's, but really when the main spices you can have are salt and pepper, the only thing to change is the ratio.  Also on Saturday I made brownies and snickerdoodles.  I made the brownies with hazelnut meal and tapioca starch and they turned out really really good. 

Friday I played volleyball.  We were messing around playing basketball (well, I was showing how poorly I play bball) and a ref was like, "You are in the other gym."  The gym was nice and big.  We think that big was the key because we were able to serve and get it in since we weren't so cramped.  We ended up winning and that was nice.  We've got play-offs in a few weeks now.

Sunday we went to a baby shower.  Several of our friends are pregnant and so it is about to be baby shower season.  This particular shower was interesting because it was co-ed.  As Chris said, "You say shower and it immediately implies that I don't need to be there."  I had made the brownies for the shower and everyone loved them.  Most people couldn't tell they were Carolyn-safe brownies.  Maybe I'll figure out how to box them and ship them to people.  

This week proves that school has started as I have quizzes in both of my classes.  They shouldn't be too bad if I can simply remember the DNA base structures.  My biochem TA and I are going to come to terms though soon.  It is just this feeling that I have.  She doesn't speak English well, and doesn't seem to understand people's questions so that makes it that much more difficult. 

Anyway, I suppose I should get to bed.  We've got blowing flurries (it would be blowing snow if there were more coming down, but I think we've gotten an inch of snow fall in the past five or six hours).  Its just enough to be obnoxious and not really do anything but drift.  Hopefully we won't get lots of ice on the walkways.  It did warm up over the weekend so a lot of the ice melted, so that was nice.  Overall I think things are going well here in Chicago land.  We'll see if it holds true when it gets bitter cold again this coming weekend. 

Snow Break 2010

We're going to play, "How badly can I bog down the internet connection." Its this game where I see how many demands I put on the internet and see how it reacts.  Currently I'm uploading pictures of our Arizona trip, a feat I normally do at two in the morning when I can't sleep because it takes up all available bandwidth.  Now I'm blogging while uploading the pictures.  We're talking it takes so much band width to upload the pictures that I can't even get the website to reload the pictures.  As part of my blog I want to upload pictures, so we'll see exactly how well that goes. 

For the more pressing matter at hand -- stories about the desert.  We left on Thursday after work.  We flew down and got off the plane into air that was at least double the temperature of what we left.  It was strange.  Naturally it was dark -- but it was really dark.  Apparently because of an observatory around Tucson they can't have street lights.  I loved looking at the sky!  It was great to be in a semi-big city, be standing in the backyard and finding constellations -- and not just the main stars in the constellations, the small ones too.  We could easily see most of the Seven Sisters and Orion and a few others that I never remember the names of.  Chris did though and was pointing them out with names.  We also saw cactus.  I hadn't ever seen a Saguaro cactus before.  In OK we had prickly pears and such, but never the Saguaro.  At least if I'd seen a Saguaro cactus it hadn't ever been as tall or as majestic as the ones we were seeing.

On Friday we went to the desert museum.  Basically they've cordoned off part of the National park there outside of Tucson (well, I tried to google the name of it, and I got that I couldn't find a server which means there's no extra bandwidth, one point for the internet apparently) and have made a living museum.  They have some animals in enclosures, much like a zoo, but they also have cactus gardens and things that explain desert ecology and stuff.  It was neat.  I liked it a lot, but that's just me.  I really liked the sea of cacti that went on in every directions as far as I could see.  It was wild to think about exactly how old some of the cacti were.  I mean, if the cactus grows an inch a year (roughly) and is twice my height then that cactus has been there a while.  It also takes 100 years to grow an arm, so those with several arms jutting out everywhere were how old exactly?  The skeletons were also really cool. There's a picture of one below.  I also went for a nice easy run on Friday -- it was in the seventies.  I was wearing a singlet and shorts while everyone else was in sweat pants and long sleeve shirts.  It was a CLEAR day and it was nice to run.

Saturday we went to Phoenix.  Emily's mom lives there and so we started by going by Em's mom's place and picking fruit off the trees.  I'd never picked oranges or grapefruits so it was fun to climb trees and pick fruit.  It took us about 15 minutes to get four or five large bags full of oranges.  We also had lemons -- they were HUGE!  It took 5 lemons to fill a regular grocery bag (just to give you an idea of size).  Linda and I climbed the back fence (well, I started to scale it then couldn't so Chris got me a ladder while Linda just went on over) to get grapefruit.  We only picked a bag of those, but that still left us with quite a bit of fresh produce.  After picking fruit we went into Phoenix proper to pick up my race packet.  That was a mad house -- only a small omen of what was to come.  That night we went to see Avatar in IMAX 3D.  Finally.  It was great.  Overall I felt it was more political than actually having a plot line, but the imagery and the language was really neat.  I think I may be a linguist at heart. 

Sunday morning I ran the race.  It was ugly.  There is no other way to put it.  We got to run down strip club boulevard early Sunday morning, and actually circled around parking lots.  I will not be giving it a favorable view rating when I get to rate it.  It was pretty to see the sunrise before the race started, but overall it was an ugly race.  Temperature wise it was great -- it was even cloudy.  I did okay, I think it is my second best time for a half marathon.  Seeing as I hadn't really been eating much except meat and carrots for a few days I did well.  The post race madness was crazy.  It was entertaining to try and get several people who didn't have a clue where they were together.  Then getting back to Em's mom's house was funny too.  We kept following arrow signs pointing in the right direction, yet they never put us on the freeway.  We had talked about going hiking up to some wind caves, but that was vetoed because my foot was hurting as was another person's in the group. We drove back to Tucson and got to see a georgeous sunset.  It was flat with the mountains in the distance.  The mountain rings were everywhere and really cool.

Monday I woke to the sound of rain.  Yes it was sprinkling in the desert.  We didn't do much, just chilled and got ready to go back to snow land.  We didn't really have any troubles once we got on our plane, but it had been delayed for weather problems in Las Vegas (where the plane was coming from).

Today we went back to work.  It was warm here (about 30), but much cooler than the past weekend.

The first week of the year back at work was, well the first week of the year back at work.  We both accomplished quite a bit and mananged to not go crazy.  The biggest thing I suppose was that on Tuesday of last week I went to the allergist.  I had asked to not see this particular allergist as he doesn't think that what I'm eating is causing all my symptoms.  As a scientist I'm pretty sure that they are because when I eat certain foods I get sick.  When I don't eat those foods that make me sick then I don't get sick.  It's a pretty simple experiment that anyone in the third grade could probably do so seeing an allergist for it seems a bit excessive.  I did see him though and am now looking for a good allergist in the Chicagoland area.  I'd prefer someone in the Naperville/Aurora area, but am willing to do a lot for a good doc. 

School started today so it was a hectic busy day for Chris.  I start classes tomorrow as I managed to get Tuesday and Thursday classes again this term.  I've got biochemistry and biotechnology on my plate.  We'll hope it goes well.  I've heard that both of the courses are easy so that makes me kind of nervous.  I tend to not do so hot in classes that others think are easy, so that means I'm on my guard against letting the material get away from me. 

It continues to be winter.  It has been warm enough to snow recently though so it isn't too bad yet.  The two bad storms that have been predicted (one for snow back in Dec, and this one for the "cold" snap we were supposed to get) haven't really been bad.  We did get about 8 inches of snow last thursday though.  Everything has a nice white blanket -- except for the roads and sidewalks.  It is wonderful to be back in an area that deals with the snow well, and snow removal.  They aren't as on top of it as they previously have been so we're thinking that it is probably budget cuts.  We just have to wait for a while for them to clear the snow -- they aren't doing it as instantly as they have the past two winters.