Twentysomething... A Recent Read.

I recently completed reading a book that Emily got me for Christmas. I was quite surprised by the gift because I had forgotten that it was even on my list of books I wanted to read. The book is called: "Twentysomething: Surviving and Thriving in the Real World".

I knew the book would be about how to deal with the hardships and joys associated with living as a "twentysomething" but I did not expect there to be so much spirituality involved. A main emphasis of the book was the importance of faith (particularly Catholicism). There is much talk in this book about how God has a plan for all of us. A concept hard for me to accept because it lies contrary to free will over our future.

Yet sometimes I wonder...

For instance, I spent a year of graduate school at SUNY Buffalo that turned out to be a nightmare. I made some poor decisions regarding which direction I wanted to go academically and it turned out to be a nightmare for me. I realized this, made some tough decisions and transferred to RIT for my Masters Degree. While this was going on I thought, "Why the heck is this happening to me?"

A couple of years later at Nazareth (my Alma mater) while sitting on a informational panel for undergrads looking to go on to graduate school, I was able to share my experience. In doing so, I hopefully allowed others to learn something and avoid going through a similar experience as I did.

Without going through the tough patches I did, I would have been unable to share the experience and help others.

So does God have a plan... sometimes I wonder.

It's been a long time running

It's been quite a while since I have sat down and wrote anything meaningful here. There is good reason for that.

The month of May has been incredibly busy for me. In that time, Emily has graduated from Nazareth, Jeremy (my brother) has graduated from Cazenovia and I graduated from RIT (just this past Friday). That's three consecutive weekends of graduations and travels for me!

All three experiences were very special to me. It was a great feeling to see Emily and Jeremy walk across that stage to get their diplomas. I am incredibly proud of them both. My graduation was quite an experience as well. I was very thankful to have my grandparents there. In addition to the congratulations extended to me, my commencement was a great opportunity to express my thanks for the hard work from all the professors that I had the opportunity to work with and the friends and family that supported me throughout the whole process.

I also started my job with Johnson and Johnson. The job is enjoyable so far. All I have done in the first few weeks are read training documents (a rather boring process). This week however I am done with my training and will be starting to work in the lab doing more hands-on activities.

So as you can see, the past few months have been busy for me. Now that things are calming down, life should be much less stressful and enjoyable.

I will keep you posted!

As promised... New Orleans from my lens.

I promised... here is a recap of my trip to New Orleans in photo form!

Upon landing at Louis Armstrong International Airport, the A.C.S. aranged for this band of musicians playing "When the Saints go Marching In" and other popular New Orleans style jazz songs for all the arriving chemists.

Sidd and I stayed at the Astor Crowne Plaza Hotel. Located right on the corner of Canal and Bourbon Street.

Apparently hotel rooms in New Orleans come with their own beads! Beads are everywhere in the French Quarter. It's not just a Mardi Gras thing!The French Quarter is in great shape considering how badly damaged the city was from hurricane Katrina. However in the rest of the city there are numerous hotels, strip-malls and plazas under construction or awaiting construction. This is what appears to be a multi-story office building with all the windows blown out awaiting renovation. This is just outside the French quarter... and you can tell that the neighborhood quickly turns a bit more dangerous in those areas!
Here's the River Walk along the banks of the Mississippi River. It was pretty unique to see such a busy port city like New Orleans at work. Huge ships were constantly traveling up and down the river.
On Tuesday I had the opportunity to get together with my former professors from Nazareth at Cafe Beignet. It was here where I had my first experience eating beignets!I took a break to visit the National World War II Museum.

And Sidd and I enjoyed more beignets at Cafe Dumond.

We also presented posters and gave talks at the conference... it was not all eating great food, listening to good music and having fun!

Yes... even very busy graduate students follow politics.

I second that... the democrats are destroying themselves. That's the extent of my political commentary for the day.

Thank you.

I have survived... and made it to D-Day +4.

I SURVIVED! I am referring of course to my thesis defense. I succeeded in delivering a great talk that my committee enjoyed (though I thought it was lackluster at best). I faired well in the 2 hours of cross examination and critiquing that followed. I received a large mass of recommended thesis revisions and now have until April 21 to get it all in order. The whole ordeal was very exhausting and I am glad it is over.

I may have won that "battle", but the "war" still wages on. in the days that followed my defense I took Wednesday off (completely... leaving all paperwork at my office and going no where near it) and then I hastily prepared to present my research findings at the ACS national conference in New Orleans... which is where I am writing this!

Here's a picture of me on the River Walk in New Orleans by the Mississippi River. It's the first time I have seen it... and she's a mighty river I tell ya!

This is a picture of "The Spanish Plaza" (Sidd admiring the fountain). A few minutes before I took that picture we witnessed a guy go down on one knee and propose to his girlfriend... no joke! (She said yes and received applause from the passers by.)And of course, what would New Orleans be without a trip down Bourbon Street. Pretty damn cool how they let you walk right down the middle of the street (all car traffic is blocked off at night) from bar to bar with open alcoholic beverages! Sidd and I are fitting in very nicely.

This is going to be a fun week! Hopefully I will be able to keep you all posted as to what's going on. Wish me luck for my talk on Thursday!

Tomorrow is my D-day.

Recently I have been watching a few parts of "The Band of Brothers" mini-series. For those of you who are unfamiliar, this mini-series tells the stories of "Easy Company" of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. I have been particularly interested in Part 1 which shows the extreme rigorous training these soldiers went through and their anxiousness to participate in the impending Normandy Invasion (A.K.A D-Day). I feel a great inspiration from learning about stories like this.

Tomorrow I defend my Masters Thesis. I feel that I can relate to the anxiousness of the "Easy Company" soldiers given my own experience with the past 2 years of intense preparation for this event.

I know my experience is NO COMPARISON to these brave soldiers, many of whom lost their lives. But I gain solace in the idea that far more discomforting things have happened to many who have come before me and achieved even greater things than I.

The late nights with few hours of sleep, the heart-burn inducing stress, the seclusion from friends and family, hours upon hours of homework and reading articles... it's all a cake walk compared to the sacrifices others have made.

When considering things this way, I think I will do just fine tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

The zen of being a graduate student.

So in my day to day wandering of the myriad of knowledge (and trash) the internet has to offer I stumbled upon this page listing rules that will help you live more like a Zen monk. I used to be into Zen meditation and practicing mindfulness in my day to day activities but over the past few years I have gradually gotten away from it. I blame it on the fact that I have been a graduate student because graduate school life is pretty much the antithesis of the life of a Zen monk.

Allow me to elaborate. Here's the list from the site referenced above:

1. Do one thing at a time.
2. Do it slowly and deliberately.
3. Do it completely.
4. Do less.
5. Put space between things.
6. Develop rituals.
7. Designate time for certain things.
8. Devote time to sitting.
9. Smile and serve others.
10. Make cleaning and cooking become meditation.
11. Think about what is necessary.
12. Live simply.

Let's re-work this for graduate students:

1. Do at least 3 or more things at once. As a graduate student, multi-tasking is a way of life. Run at least 2 reactions while writing up results and reading a paper. If ever you are only doing one task... there is always something else you can find to be done. Do this as much as possible.
2. Do everything as quickly as possible. The set of experiments you are currently working on... well, your adviser needed the results for those yesterday even though he assigned the task to you today. Unless you know how to slow time down (or go back in time all together) speed is the key!
3. Do switch tasks and pursue tangents in research regularly. You will never manage to fully complete a set of experiments without stumbling across some bizarre finding or new question that will requite you to shift your focus and pursue a whole new set of experiments. If you ever do manage to fully complete a set of experiments… you likely did them wrong.
4. Do MORE. Pretty self explanatory, even for a lowly graduate student.
5. Put space between things... to do more things. So your NMR will take about an hour to run… set up a new experiment in the mean time. So you have a few hours until your reaction runs to completion… work through that pile of data on your desk. So your TGA will take all night to run… sleep while it’s running. (O.K. that last one it silly because you should not be sleeping while running an instrument… you should be running a second instrument!)
6. Develop [bizarre] rituals. If wearing your lucky lab coat, hopping on one foot three times and saying a prayer to the chemistry Gods before starting a reaction will insure a higher yield or better result in your experiment, go for it… just be sure to write those procedures up accurately in your notebook.
7. Designate time for research tasks only. Eat, sleep, and drink research. You only have time in the day for research… do not set aside time to clean your apartment, make your self dinner, spend time with friends, eating breakfast, leisure reading, etc.
8. Avoid sitting at all costs. Why sit when you can be standing in front of your hood setting up another experiment, or standing in front of an instrument gathering data? As a matter of fact… remove all chairs from your lab space and even get rid of the one in front of your desk. They are unnecessary.
9. Maintain a consistent frown and scowl. You are a graduate student, have been for years and you will continue to be for seemingly endless years… you have nothing to be happy about. Even when an experiment works… frown and scowl because you still do not understand what the result means.
10. Make cleaning glassware meditation. Unless of course you can pawn the job off on the undergraduate working underneath you in the lab. In that case take the newly freed up time to do another experiment.
11. Think about what is necessary [research]. Do not be caught thinking about what you are going to do over the holiday weekend, or when you will get to go out for a beer with your friends, or when you will be able to go out and enjoy the unseasonably warm weather… because all of those things are unnecessary and will be supplanted by research.
12. Live simply... because you have no choice. You get paid a yearly stipend… stipend is a Latin word that means you live off of Raman noodles and peanut butter sandwiches in a one room mold infested studio crap-shack apartment, wearing old out of style clothing and drive a rusted out sedan with +150,000 miles on it, a passenger door that does not open and it strangely smells of rotten cheese. You don’t need anything more than that (well… you get your notebook and laboratory space too).

"Life is just one damned thing after another.” (according to Elbert Hubbard)

Yeah... I think he was on to something.

So here I am looking pretty exhausted. My "thesis beard" is coming in pretty nicely. What is a "thesis beard" you ask? Well, when all you do for a couple of weeks is sit in front of a computer and write about the work that has consumed your day to day life for the past 2 years you begin to neglect the unnecessary things in life.

For instance, there's no time and energy for shaving these days (hence the unkempt facial hair). When you open your kitchen cupboards all you have left is a few packages of Raman noodles, oatmeal and a bottle of mustard because you don't have time or energy for grocery shopping (and you actually try to consider ways to combine those ingredients into something edible). Laundry... well, that only gets done when you are down to one last pair of boxers, that last pair of socks with the holes in just one of them and the shirt you never wear because it has a distinctly visible stain on the front of it (and even then you are thinking that it would be O.K. to wear that outfit just one more day).

Yep... this is the life I chose as a graduate student. Funny they never included this in the brochure.

***Also... I will have you know that upon the request of a friend I turned off the moderator feature for posting comments on this blog. Now as soon as you post a comment it will be visible on the blog. Let's hope that this does not allow for spam to be posted all over the place now (f&$g SPAMMERS!).

Ohhhhh... the life of a graduate student as the gears grind on.

I think I found my new favorite website to go to for procrastination. They have this amazingly funny (and sad to say... all too true!) comic strip about graduate school. I can certainly relate to much of the topics. The strip above caught my eye because I did the same thing my self!

I can also relate to these comics because RIT is in its second day of its spring break yet I have barely even noticed. All I have done on these two days is put in long full days of research in the lab just like any other day as the gears continue unrelentingly to grind onwards.

Problems with coil springs on 2002 Ford Taurus Cars? I hear ya... please read this!

(For the information about the coil springs... skip the next few paragraphs.)

Wow... it has been SO long since I have last written something here. You must accept my deepest apologies as I have been quite busy these days. The clock is ticking as I have the deadline of my thesis defense a little over a month away. My thesis is a little less than a half written and I still have a few lingering experiments to do! Every ounce of my energy right now is going into completing this goal. Not to mention, I have been trying to fit in a job search while all of this is going on!

Since my last post, I have celebrated Valentines day with Emily by exchanging gifts and making a home made pizza dinner. We also went out to dinner the day after to The Crystal Barn. This restaurant has been on our list for quite some time. VERY fancy place that we both enjoyed. Then I took a trip back to Buffalo to my parents house. That's where the story of my life gets a bit interesting...

Once again I am put into a position where I can use this blog as a "virtual soap box" to shout out to the world regarding a problem that must be fixed. That problem is the factory installed front coil springs on 2002 Ford Taurus automobiles.

While backing my 2002 Taurus out of a parking spot in my driveway I noticed that the car was making some odd sounds and not backing up normally. I thought I was stuck in the snow in the driveway so I looked at my tires. I discovered that the front driver side tire was completely flat and pretty badly damaged. Later I found out that the front driver side coil spring broke and punctured the tire. You can see a nice chunk of the spring in the picture below. You can also see a rather large gash in the tire from where the spring punctured it and did damage when I backed up. Thank goodness that this did not occur while I was driving at highway speed as I was planning to do while traveling later that afternoon!



Well... after replacing both front coil springs, both front tires and the front sway bar on the drivers side the repair bill totaled over $500 (including labor). That's quite a chunk of change!

It gets worse. To add insult to injury it turns out that this problem is not uncommon with my type of car. (Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C) A recall has been issued for Taurus model years 1999 to 2001. The dealer told me they could do nothing to help.

Well, I have saved all my receipts and filed a complaint with the NHTSA. I urge everyone out there who has googled "2002 ford Taurus" and "coil spring" and ended up here to take the actions I have taken. If enough people complain about this problem, Ford will likely extend the recall to the 2002 model year. Let's just hope it does not take a family on a highway getting killed in an accident from this malfunction.

Needless to say, I have lost much of my faith in Ford automobiles as this is the third problem that I have been told by mechanics is common for Ford Taurus automobiles. I will NOT be buying a Ford again until they can demonstrate to me that they are making a higher quality product.

My "Zero Hour" has been set in stone.

At last week's group meeting for the Smith research group at RIT, my adviser (Tom Smith) started the meeting by listing off the string of dates that the department seminars will be held on. He then looked directly at Sidd and my self and said that those department seminars will include the thesis defense talks of this year's round of MS candidates (that's us).

*Deer in the headlights look on my face*

Tom now addressing me: "Glen I am looking for you to defend sometime in the beginning of April. What do you think? That would be either April 1 or April 15."

*Deer frozen in headlights with trembling legs*

Me: "Uhhhhh... ummmmm... I suppose that could work. Yes."

Tom: "So what date would you prefer."

*Semi-truck bearing down on frozen deer!*

Me: "Uhhhh... I'll have to think about it!"

Tom: "O.K. You let me know soon."

*RUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!*
*Narrowly escaping passing semi*

So the weekend came, and motivated by the feeling of being scared to death over how soon this is coming, I began to write my thesis on Saturday! And after sleeping on it a few nights, I decided to set my defense date at *drum roll please* April 1.

So there it is. My "Zero Hour" has been set.

WOW! I have SO MUCH to do to prepare!

Figuring out how to re-light the fire (under my ass) on these cold cloudy winter days.

For what ever reason, much of my motivation and focus seems to have dried up since Friday. I am feeling frustrated with the whole graduate school thing at the moment. I do have just a few months left though, but am still feeling frustrated.

The pay is terrible, the hours are long and tedious and the benefits are meager. It is disconcerting every time I consider my finances for the coming months as I will be assuming a student loan debt that totals about half of an entire mortgage for a house! Getting a full time job as a chemist will help improve much of these things, but the job market around here seems pretty slim. At all costs, I just need to motivate my self to keep looking I guess.

In the mean time I have shown some initiative in starting a new training program. I am planning on running in a 5K at the American Chemical Society in New Orleans. Also I have been playing around (a little too much!) with this blog. New year and new look. I have to thank the “Tips for New Bloggers” blog for the step by step instructions on how to convert my existing two column template to a three column template. I am not well versed in understanding computer code… but I know enough to tweak things a little.

I like the new look! Thanks for bearing with me through the changes as things looked a lot worse before I figured it out and made it look better.

Happy Friday... oh yeah, and happy 2008!

So, one of my New Years resolutions should have been to post more thoughts to my blog! My apologies for not putting anything here for so long.

My last three posts have been a brief recap of my adventures I had in New York City. I did so much there that even those three posts did not divulge all of the minute details, stories, and experiences I had while on that journey. I hope you enjoy reading it. I will enjoy having those details written down before I forget them.

Since that last post, Emily has returned home from her study abroad program in Wales. :-) I am grinning ear to ear over it. Life has been wonderful since her return as I now have my "partner in crime" back. We have been spending a lot of time with each other and catching up.

Emily and I spent some time with each other before Christmas. I traveled to Buffalo to visit my parents for Christmas ans see my family. I spent New Years with Emily as we visited a few of her friends. Her friends Bethany and Stephanie are loads of fun! I rang in the New Year at their apartment, drank a little too much and was seriously hung over the following day. Not a good experience the day after! I think I will avoid drinking like that again for a LONG time (I'm serious this time).

In other news on the academic front, during mid-December, I wrote and presented my interim seminar to my committee for my Masters Thesis. It went very well. I presented and was simultaneously questioned and cross-examined for about an hour and 45 minutes! It was very grueling, but my committee was quite impressed with my work. I have been given the go-ahead to finish up my research and start writing my thesis. EXCITING!

Additionally, the paper that I wrote and submitted to the American Chemical Society national conference (mentioned here) has been accepted for an oral presentation! So, I will be traveling to New Orleans this April to give a talk on it. Once again... EXCITING!

There's more to talk about, but at the moment my time is needed else ware. I promise, I will write more in due time.

Lois: "You're drunk again." Peter: "No, I'm just exhausted 'cause I've been up all night drinking."

*yawn* Feeling a little tired out at the moment. Perhaps that's because of last evening's drinking and celebration. Here's the occasion.

First off... Chris has returned from Sweden. He was there for about 3 weeks on a company trip. Basically Xerox sent him there and worked him like a DOG! So we had a little welcome home party for the guy.

Secondly... I received my grades for the Fall quarter. In my last class I will ever have to take I earned an... A! That means that I have carried a 4.0 through all my coursework at RIT.

Now that's reason enough for me to celebrate! MacGregors... lots of food, pitchers of beer flowing abundantly, joking around with friends, checking out women, shooting pool, hitting on the waitresses, throwing darts... general guy stuff! Doesn't get much better. Plus we got Brad really drunk to prepare him for his day of substitute teaching today. That was definitely entertaining.

And now, the weekend's ahead of me. I have been busting my ass in the lab since the completion of my classes. After talking with my boss today, some more deadlines have been handed down to me. The next few weeks leading up to my departure for NYC are going to be awfully busy.

I am standing upon the precipice of a great period of enlightenment and productivity.

As the title of this post implies, I am about to embark upon a period of great enlightenment. A mini-renaissance if you will. A time when absorbing new and exciting knowledge in all aspects of the world around me will become a day to day norm. A period in which productivity will balloon to a degree in which two... three... or more days worth of productivity will seamlessly be fit into each and every blessed day.

What is spurring this?

Tomorrow is my last formal class ever!

Well... unless I decide to go back to school again to get another degree. But following tomorrow, and the subsequent final examination held on Monday, time will not have to be wasted in stale classroom atmospheres. Hours will not have to be frittered away on studying and preparing homework assignments.

My time will solely be dedicated to research and managed as I see fit towards fulfilling my goals. I will be more immersed in the arduous task of of job/internship hunting. I will be directing more efforts towards philosophical endeavors such as reading and learning about other non-chemistry related things. I will have time to tackle the formidable list laid out last weekend!

Two other things are contributing to this monumental occasion:

1. Sidd (my coworker) will be leaving for India until December 11. That means having an extra empty hood in the lab to use and pretty much free reign over all the lab's glassware! That's going to make for some productive times!
2. Emily is still in England! Review some of my previous posts for my feelings on her absence. As much as I enjoy having her around, I don't have to worry about making time for and planning dates for a brief while. I refuse to let that extra time and effort be spent on obsessively missing her but rather wish to direct it towards constructive endeavors.

This is going to be exciting!

Those bastard Austrian chemists!

One of the many things in life that gets me pissed off is when a laboratory procedure published in the literature does not work! I am repeating some previously published work done by some Austrian chemists that is closely related to what I am doing. I am working on making this molecule you see at your right so I can mess around with it my self under some different conditions. The molecule is ready for purification and according to their methods, the molecules they made were purified via silica gel chromatography with 50:1 cyclohexane:ethyl acetate.

My crude product however is not soluble in 50:1 cyclohexane:ethyl acetate!!! WTF!?

A simple 1-2-3 procedure that should take me no more than a day from start to finish is now complected. Bastards! Did I forget to mention that I am a little bitter towards these guys because they kind of published something slightly similar to my research 3 days after I proposed my research! Grrrrr.

My apologies to all those out there who have no clue what I am talking about. Just some inner rage at the moment.

The everlasting battle of graduate school and how life is kicking my ass.

Yeah, so it has been a while since I have posted anything. That is not to say I have not wanted to write. The present moment in time is very busy and stressful. I am reminded of a famous quote by one Marge Simpson:

"Bart, don’t make fun of graduate students. They just made a terrible life decision."

Well, let me tell you a little bit about what I do.

At minimum I put in 10 hours a day, showing up at the lab at 8 AM and leaving no later than 6 PM, and just for good measure I put in another 5 hours or more of studying, reading, writing or cleaning up the lab on Saturday or in the evening when my energy permits. I am almost done with the boring menial task of taking classes. I am down to only one this quarter. I am one of the lucky ones who is receiving funding from an external grant for my research (thank you very much Bausch and Lomb). That money keeps me out of the teaching laboratories where I would have to deal with the juvenile complaints and excuses from undergrad chemistry students. Instead I spend my time in my research laboratory doing as many experiments as possible. Some give me the desired result while others continually mock me and require seemingly endless patience as I try try again. It's things like that which contribute to a low level of natural inner rage* I seem to carry with me throughout the day.

After I work, I try to fit in a good solid workout because I still have this residual addiction to running due to my days of running cross country and track. That also serves as a good and necessary release for the inner rage.

Now if I ever have time after that... I try to do some leisure reading. Oh yeah... and all that other stuff necessary for running one's life, like paying bills, laundry, grocery shopping (see September 23's post for an explanation of my disdain for such activities). Those activities actually contribute to the inner rage so that brings me back to square-one!

Oh, and on top of that I am taking on the monumental task of finding and applying for a job to launch my career as I do not plan on being a graduate student forever. It's not much of a lucrative position.

And... I do have a girlfriend whom I like to spend time with. The inner rage really bites me in the ass on this one. The lack of time and extra stress adds up lately to one strained relationship with two frustrated people involved. :-( Not all things are for blogging, so that's about as personal as I am going to get with that topic.

*Inner rage: This personal phenomena (whose name I attribute to Tim) is best summed up with the fact that at any given moment there is something on my mind that is really pissing me off and if brought to light in just the right way will set me off very nicely. A healthy level of inner rage is often what pushes me through the really difficult moments of any given day.

Another work week commences.

It's been a while since I have posted. Personally I blame that on my job/school. Classes have begun last week and I have instituted a strict 10 hour work day (8AM to 6PM) into my schedule to increase productivity. I have been getting some very important high demand directives sent down from the chemists at B&L that are supervising my research and since they are also funding me... they are PRIORITY #1! I will give a bit more details about my job in time.

Yesterday Emily, Meridith (Em's roommate) and I ran the Bruegger's Bagels 5k Road race. The weather was a cool 65° with a cold rain. The weather was great for competative running. Much more comfortable than 90° and humid. I ran splits of 6:42 and (a surprising) 6:37 for the first and second mile then followed it up with a disappointing 8 minute third mile/finish. I still ran a season best by topping my Fishes and Loaves 5k by 9 seconds. Plus... I must give mega props to Emily (who admits she is not a runner) for topping her Fishes and Loaves 5k time by 2 minutes! GOOD JOB! This was only her second road race and she has already picked a third she wishes to do in late October. She is now a "runner in denial" as I say. :-) I am proud of you Em!

Now, very quick before I get to work, I direct your attention to the "Blogs of Note" section. "Jon's Exotic Adventures" is a relatively new blog by a former teammate of mine from Nazareth. This guy graduated last year and will be going to Mozambique with the Peace Core to teach science for 27 months! I find that very impressive. It is going to be quite an adventure to follow. Also, if you want to learn more about the city I live in, read Richard Shade Gardner's blog. This guy actually hiked around Lake Ontario, Lake Erie and dozens of other lakes in the Finger Lake region of New York! I also recommend The "Freakonomics" Blog is quite interesting and one that I read frequently. If you enjoyed the book you will enjoy the blog.

I'm out! Time to be productive!

I have not left the building!

Don't you worry. After a steady and consistent string of posts during the past month of August I don't want you to think I have already given up on this blog like my previous ones. I have been preoccupied with relaxing over the holiday weekend and starting work/new school year (extremely demanding and hectic). Also, I have had some problems with my internet connection at home... mainly being that it works only when it feels like working. The other residents and I are working on that.

In the mean time I will say I had a great holiday weekend (tell me about yours in the comments section!) even though my first day of classes was yesterday. Yes, no joke. RIT starts class on Labor day! One of the sucky perks that comes with attending RIT.

On the IL league baseball front, Rochester was defeated by Buffalo again on Saturday (in the 10th inning) thus eliminating Rochester from the playoffs. The following day Rochester returned the favor and took Buffalo out of the playoffs with a 3-0 victory. So much for rooting for Buffalo baseball in the post-season. Who cares! Next weekend is opening day for the Bills anyway.

Hopefully I will be able to tell a bit more about what has been going on these days once I get my home internet connection fixed.

I will leave with this. On the way to a Labor Day party on Saturday, Emily and I managed to see and spook a chipmunk at the foot of the wall to her apartment building. Now chipmunks are like mice on speed given the fact that they are the super-hyper skittish kings of the rodent world. This one was no exception. We meant no harm as we walked by yet he decided to flee from us by jumping head first into this drain pipe (you see his tail sticking out?). He did manage to escape after a moment, so no chipmunks were harmed in the construction of this blog post!

The Lemmings are back!

And by Lemmings I mean college freshmen around RIT. Fall classes start next Monday and the new freshmen have moved in. It's kind of funny how Lemming populations mimic the population of an incoming freshmen college student class on a campus...

"It is unknown why lemming populations en mass fluctuate, roughly every four years, before plummeting almost to extinction."^[2]

They are so fun to watch! All of them wandering around with that uncertain dear-in-the-headlights look on their faces. It's priceless. I almost miss it.

Don't get me wrong, I was a freshmen "Lemming" my self complete with dear-in-the-headlights look and all. I think I even had that as a sophomore too! It seems like SO LONG ago for me though. As a graduate student, on Monday I am starting up what I hope to be the last class I will ever have to take.

Last night I went to Acme's. Check the pictures below. Jon and Jen are in the top picture and I'm in the bottom picture with Emily sneaking a kiss. She will likely kick my ass for posting that!

I almost ended up in Washington D.C. today at the conclusion of last night. No joke! Jon and I were really into the idea of a random trip. He enticed me by offering to pay for air fair to D.C. to visit our friend Chris (another member of "The Four Drunken Horsemen of the Apocalypse"). We were so floored about the idea we actually stopped at the airport, which is just off the highway on my way home! Since it was 12 AM, and their were no flights until morning we kind of got bored with the randomness and called it a night.