chibi_goddess10

Tonight I decided to stay in and treat myself. I spend waaaaay too much at the grocery store in order to have a gourmet supper. Capri rollups, summer salad, and a nice wine spritzer. I went to the gym, then showered, put on a nice outfit, and made myself a feast. I've never had a better night or felt more beautiful.

Tomato, basil, mozarella, and balsamic vinegar.

All rolled up into a nice appetizer.

Summer salad of spinach, pineapple, and strawberries with a raspberry merlot vinagrette dressing.

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I used to be super amused when I would walk down the hallways at Emory, which are designed like a fishtank, with everyone's office and laptops visible to the world. At least half were on Facebook and a few were watching tv/movies. We all do it - browse the web at work. I do it while waiting on the rotovap or for a reaction. To be honest, sometimes I give myself a 15 minute mental break and stalk people on Facebook. Actually, recent studies have shown that taking small breaks like this actually makes people more productive.

So why is it that (myself included) as soon as someone walks in the office or near our desk, we immediately switch to another tab/window/application to make it look like we are actually working? As for most people in my lab, I have no idea what they are looking at on the web anyway because about 80% of the time it's in Chinese. A coworker confided to me that if I see him on a Chinese website, he's not working.

I think it's healthy to take a mental break every now and then and I try not to waste too much time on the web. So from now on I'll proudly display my digg.com or facebook page if I'm taking a break. But my chemdraw and a recent paper will be open too.... just in case.

So I've always been super-susceptible to sinus infections, practically as long as I can remember. I'm fighting another bout of it now and I decided to try out a neti pot to see if that would help. I was surprised to find that it did indeed relieve some of the symptoms. Today was the first day in almost a week that I didn't wake up feeling like my head was going to explode. Maybe the rest I've gotten or the vitamins and fluids I have been consuming helped. Maybe the infection is just running its course and will be over soon. Or maybe flushing out my sinuses with warm salt water and tea tree oil helped. Who knows? But I will be using my neti pot and taking my vitamins and drinking fluids and getting extra rest until I feel 100%.

http://www.webmd.com/allergies/sinus-pain-pressure-9/neti-pots

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neti_pot

Yes. We are actually going to play.

How dogs track you: the esters that are secreted in your sweat are hydrolyzed into carboxylic acids. Carboxylic acids tend to stink (rancid butter = butyric acid.... ew!).  Each person has their own unique blend that they secrete so the dogs can detect that blend.  To avoid them use some other kinds of acids to mask your scent.  Maybe bathe in rancid butter?

I made my own stencil and then carved the pumpkin!

Georgia is dumb.  Why does your car tag expire on your birthday and not at the end of the month like normal states?  It's now what I like to refer to as "the birthday tax."  The state of Georgia told me "Happy Birthday Sarah!  Now go pay $25 and get your emissions test done, then pay us $175 and some change to get a sticker to put on your tag.  Oh, wait, your check engine light is on?  Too bad!  Now you get to take your car to the shop and pay $1800 in repairs.  But now your car is in the shop and your birthday is on a Friday and you have to drive over 100 miles to get all the monitors to reboot before you can get your emissions testing done, which you have to get done before you can get your tag renewed, which you have to get done before your birthday.  And for a special little prize, we didn't send you a renewal notice in the mail like we were supposed to, so you don't have that RIN number you need to pay your tag fees online so why don't you just take more time out of your day and come sit in our office and pay in person?"

So I'm trying to work on a lab report rewrite, but I'm stuck on how to describe peak area normalization method of quantification in GC so I thought I would share some of my costume ideas for this Halloween.  I'm thinking either something pop-culture sci-fi/fantasy or something from the 80s.  Here's my top few:

• Sookie Stackhouse from True Blood
• Casey Kelp from the Snorks
• She-Ra Princess of Power
• Blueberry Muffin from Strawberry Shortcake
• Inara from Firefly/Serenity
• Buffy

I'm leaning towards Sookie since its fairly new and easy to do, but I want to possibly develop one or more of the others for possible cons in the future.  See, I figure if I actually have a costume ready, then I'll be less likely to back out of Dragon Con next year!

Any other suggestions?

Ok so I usually only post bad things here about my research experience so I decided to go for something good now.  For those non-chemists this post will make no sense, but since it's my blog I can only write what I know.

I have been frustrated with the technique of recrystallization, as are many beginning organic chemists.  I've done it plenty of times, but never achieved great success.  This most recent reaction was no different: I ran it on a small scale and when I went to recrystallize, I managed to drop the flask into the ice bath (actually I left it in ice and went to write up something and when I came back the ice had melted and the flask had slipped - yes there are reasons to clamp things down).  So I only recovered maybe 20% of my product.  No big though, CF assured me since I was going to scale up anyway.  1H NMR confirmed structure of my compound so I went on to the scale up.

After precipitating out ~28 g of product, I went to recrystallize, but I couldn't get it to dissolve easily in the 1:1 EtOAc/Hexane mixture I used for the small scale.  So I had to add lots of solvent.  Too much, in fact, because I got no crystals.  I rotovapped off the solvent and tried again.  Unfortunately somehow my clear solution turned yellow.  Some other folks in the lab are working on some highly fluorescent yellow compounds so I figured that there must have been some left on the rotovap.  (This is why I always clean the rotovap before I use it, but I was frustrated and in a hurry.)  This time, I added pure EtOAc and heated it with a heat gun (not my usual method, but was told it was easier to do this way) until it dissolved.  I added some hexane until I saw some crystals form.  Left it in the fridge overnight.

No crystals.  So I decided to do what any person who isn't sure of what to do would do - look it up on the interweb!  I rotovapped off all the solvent and decided to see if I could find any tips online.  I actually read the description on wikipedia and ended up reminding myself of years ago at Auburn when I actually learned this technique.  So I did what it said and lo an behold it worked!!!  Patience and precision worked well.  I added small portions of EtOAc and sonicated after each portion to try to get it to go into solution.  I kept it in a hot water bath to keep it warm.  After a few rounds of this, everything was dissolved.  I slowly added hexane until something began to precipitate out of solution.  I added more small portions until the precipitate stayed solid.  I then let it cool to room temperature and then let it cool in the fridge overnight and collected 13.8 g of pure product!

Ok so I'm sitting in the lab, all excited and ready to get started on my project when I realize that I don't know where anything is in here.  There's all sorts of other people's junk in my hood and I don't even know where the glassware is.  Or the chemicals.  Or even gloves for crying out loud.  Everyone is all busy getting ready for today's group meeting, but I have no idea where to start.  I don't want to interrupt my "mentor" because he's getting ready for his presentation today.  Maybe after the meeting I will be able to set up my first reaction.  Oh and did I mention that our meetings are about 3 hours long?  So I guess I better go ahead and eat lunch and prepare myself.  It's also 65 in here and I forgot my sweater.

Happy Monday.