Sickness and Procrastination of Packing

Procrastinating packing is a bad idea, but I'm doing it. I waited until the night before to pack, and I'm further procrastinating by writing this post. I like traveling, but I hate packing. Anyone else feel the same?

My etickets have been printed and back-up copies have been sent to my cell phone. Oh, modern technology. What did I ever do without my iPhone? Remember things on my own?

I printed out a copy of my proof of car insurance, and it printed it on a full page. Now if I get pulled over by a sight-impaired police officer, he won't even need glasses to read the fine print. It is also quite obvious that it is simply a copy I printed on my computer, but I guess that doesn't really matter. It's better than what I had before, which was an expired proof of insurance with the agent's number printed on it for personal verification...

Ah, it feels good to get stuff done.

Procrastination is even worse when you get sick in between the time when you should have done something and the time when you have to rush to get it done at all. I keep telling myself it's not that bad, but I changed my mind while I was dragging my suitcase from the basement up to my bedroom on the second floor. I'm going to be okay. And about 24 hours from now I bet I'll be pulling up in my driveway at home.

Besides, another woman before me traveled to her Christmas destination large with child on the back of a donkey, and if I have to travel on an airplane with a head cold to feel a bit of what she might have felt, I embrace the opportunity.

Quiet Reflection and Affirmation

Christmas break has officially begun! Because I SAID SO, darn it! I went to work yesterday anyway, and ended up staying late running scans of samples I had made that morning. Rather than being bothered to actually optimize the optics for back surface, we just integrated each scan for ten minutes rather than the customary two. Probably the best thing that happened yesterday was that two of the samples I made (the only ones I actually finished before losing signal) were exactly identical. They were supposed to be exactly identical, but that's never happened before on our spin-coater looking at things from the front surface. It makes me think that maybe we are getting some funky diffraction stuff going on with the silicon samples.

For the last two hours, I was completely alone with the loud and persistent hum of the laser's cooling system. I tend to avoid being alone, and I am rarely completely by myself, but it was actually quite lovely to have some privacy and "quiet" for a few hours. While I ran the scans on the PC, I watched Glee on the Mac. During one episode, I just started sobbing, and I couldn't stop for half an hour.

I just started thinking about my life, everything that has happened lately, and where I hoped I would be at this point. Emotions I have been unknowingly shoving to the back of the metaphorical closet started pouring out. When I told my room mate Emily about it after getting home, she asked me how that felt. I paused a moment and said, "Like I just got out of the shower." I forgot how cleansing it can be to have a good cry.

When I left work all I wanted to do was be alone to continue my quiet reflection, but I got a phone call from Blair. He asked me if I would mind going through his pantry and cooking something with him, and I said I would. I ended up making this spicy okra and rice that we loved. I had told him about the string of disappointments that had made me cry, and he asked me, "Well, have you done any good in the world today?" I didn't say anything, so he answered for me, "You made dinner tonight, and this is the healthiest food I've had all week." We had a short but intense conversation about relationships. My biggest frustration is that I have a lot of really close male friends for whom I have developed deeper feelings and who tend to only have feelings for really "magazine pretty" girls they barely know. He said "But you know what, they're mistaken because attraction won't matter for long, and friendship is the most important thing." I was so grateful to have him to be sensitive to my emotions and say the only things that could have comforted me.

What am I going to do with these feelings? I am going to love myself and never settle. I will find joy, not in spite of the journey, but IN the journey. If I marry, I will be a wife and mother who appreciates what she has. If I don't, I will be one of those strong spiritual single women who nurture all those around them. I will be that woman today.

A Mish Mash of Comments from the Peanut Gallery

Posting again. This "blogging" experience is quite different from the experience of having an online journal. It may seem the same on the surface, but this feels more like talking to myself in an empty room with the doors open. No one is really listening, but you still can't say certain things because they CAN listen if they want. Which is the reason for my not doing it often, but here I am, posting yet again.

I have toyed again with the idea of doing a pop-science blog, but it just seems like too much work outside of school, and too similar to school work at that.

"Science is a fickle mistress..." I said to a friend studying ancient religion, regarding why I'm not exactly sure what my thesis will encompass. Right now I'm studying "adhesion," in the loosest possibly use of the word. Really, I'm studying spin coating and why the heck I can't get consistent samples when I'm using the same parameters every time on an automated system.

My advisor has this amazing ability to see the silver lining, which I think is really good for me. He used my frustrations to point out how great the technique we use is. According to everything else you could use to test my samples, they're identical, and yet our technique shows that they are NOT exactly the same, at least not on the surface. The LITERAL surface.

Anyhow, science is a fickle mistress. Hopefully I'll be studying something stickier soon, either because we've thrown in the towel with this spin-coating business and moved on or because we've solved the problem and moved on. I just want to get on with it.

Sometimes the best thing you can give to something is time. That's going with my personal life now, too. Again, the doors in here are open, and my voice resounds in this empty room, reminding me that you can indeed hear me, though I am the only one in the room. I am learning patience. But much like in my research I don't think I'm yet to the stage of really learning something of the patience, although with every day that passes in limbo my lack of patience does indeed become more evident to me.

In Kentucky, I always thought boots were stupid. I was anti-boot. I also always felt that tights were for little girls and ballerinas and had never owned thermals, not even as a child. A year in Utah finds me shopping with the specific goal of buying thermals, boots, and tights. I'm converted. I wore my new boots into the snow, and was impressed by the fact that not only did my feet stay dry, but they also stayed toasty warm.

That's it. That's all I'm saying. Now either come into the room and talk to me or go home, but get out of that hall!

The Parable of the Ink Pen

Today at institute, I realized that the ink pen that I had made a point of remembering to bring was actually not any good. I reluctantly asked an ink pen from the girl sitting behind me, which she happily loaned me. Then, I turned around, and on the desk next to me was an ink pen. It wasn't a retirement ink pen, but it wasn't a 10 for a dollar ink pen either; in my world, that's nice.

It made me think. We do what we can to be prepared, and often that offering comes up short, but if we have done what we could to be as prepared as we know how to be, everything else we need will be provided for us.

That's a good thing to remember in this time of preparing for final exams and end of semester projects...