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May 31, 2005
swinging around revolving doors / maybe I don't know where they'll take me
This morning started as a blah day at work. Mornings are not my most productive time, so I like to have testing stuff lined up from the day before – x-ray spectra to take, friction tests to start, deposition to begin, step height to measure, so I don’t have to think as much. 11 is really when I feel engaged enough to do that sort of stuff.
This morning, because a short Friday blew my vacuum and therefore my film synthesis, I was left with out half of the usual things. And the current hypothesis I am investigating with mr. Friction tester requires it to run a least 2 hours. I found myself starting at the corrosion book I need to read (for another project) with little motivation. So I decided to write my weekly update which is never weekly (as I don’t send it if we have a group mtg that week or if I don’t really have anything to say). It is a good exercise as it makes me feel like, oh, I do get things done, even though some days seem like a total waste of time when everything seems to go wrong. Another good thing – one of my hypotheses was just proven in my chamber. A small hypothesis that weak magnets where causing the plasma to not be sustained at low pressures.
One pride of last week is my beautiful picture of the clean nanoindentor tip.
http://andsafetybelts.net/cblog/images/tip.jpeg
Here’s a story. Weekend before this past one when I was cosmo sitting, Gallup called. I was quite excited and assured them that I was not a visitor (heck, tom was the only other person there, he was more a visitor than me) so I could take their survey on the Chicago media market. I was quite happy to give my listening points to the local NPR station. Unfortunately, I was not a good resource on the local newspaper market cuz all I really read in the New York Times. Though it was a choice in the survey, so the New York Times got my reading points. The guy was super nice and super grateful that I was so nice and taking his survey. At the end he said, we’re going to send you 10 dollars in cash for completing the survy. Of course, I was amused he said in cash and assumed it was a check. Low and behold when I got the envelope at work today there was a ten-dollar bill in it. How crazy is that! Also there is another glorious survey, which I am totally going to do. I like the opportunity to support the things that I love – the times, npr.
Posted by christina at 2:54 PM | Comments (0)
May 30, 2005
i need you to me here with me
Well, we are officially nerds. Not that this was an unknown fact about me, but I have brought Ben over to the dark side. Ha ha ha. He is all into our new space. As I spent the majority of saturday getting gallary installed and moveable type, he spent it working on our opening pages at andsafetybelts.net . If you haven’t figure it out, and safetybelts is from a cake song – stickshifts and safetybelts – one of my favorite songs of all time.
It has always been relaxing to me to mess around with this kind of stuff. I’ve had a perfectly blissful memorial day weekend with my laptop with ben across from me with his laptop. I was going to go into work this afternoon, but Friday I forgot that that was the plan and therefore didn’t set up my chamber to cool down so I cam make a sample this afternoon. And I don’t want to do the hour round trip for nothing. I worked all last weekend and the Saturday before, therefore I am justifying in to myself that I can enjoy this beautiful memorial day with my lap top. The izzy househould shall be grilling out, have no fear. We’re all-american like that. Izzy has taken to laying out on the balcony. I am a little nervous about this new habit, even though I know that there is no way ever she could fall off.
Today is one of those day I can’t wait until I have a “real” job where I can leave my work at the office and take holidays off without feeling guilty about what I am not doing. Every day that I don’t work (weekends, holidays, vacation), there is always a part of my mind that thinks about what I should be getting down at work. I think this is more of a function of graduate school, with a small sprinkle of my personality. Graduate school is a competition in a way, of who is getting more research done, of who’s research is more “sexy”, crap like that. I dream about jobs that I can leave work at work. Though I wonder how much of it is my personality and how I have to be careful of not getting into job where I get consumed until my kids are old. I do get consumed by things, as evidence of this website.
Posted by christina at 2:03 PM | Comments (0)
May 28, 2005
moving on up
well, i've finally jumped on the bandwagon and gotten our own domain name. after much debate amongst the ben/christina/izzy household, we've decided to go with andsafetybelts.com . of course, it is from a song. gold stars to those who start singing it in there head.
and so therefore this blog shall now be published to http://andsafetybelts.com/cblog/
though it might be the end of the weekend before it goes live.
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Posted by christina at 3:05 PM | Comments (0)
May 26, 2005
pride like promises can let you down
this week we've had the harper's favorite contracter around to fix stuff like the fan that hasn't worked since ben moved in and some random design flaws in the condo, which make life annoying like some wires behind the dishwasher that prevent the dish washer from being installed correctly and anchored so the thing tips around when open and the fact that the kitchen has as much light as a cave, so he's installing lights under the cabinets. i'm quite excited about finally being able to see in the kitchen. ooooo and the garbage disposal he is also putting in. that's exciting so the trash will quit getting so stinky.
i'm sad that he wasn't able to figure out what is wrong with the dryer which takes 2 hours to dry stuff. i was hoping it was something easy like the outside vent wasn't installed correctly, but i think i'm going to have to harass the store they got it from over christmas. stupid dryer, but i cannot live with the dryer taking so long NO MORE, especially cuz the thing is brand new and never worked!
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Posted by christina at 1:41 PM | Comments (0)
May 25, 2005
but I can only / give you love
I see lots of dogs when I run around our place. I run during that first thing in the morning take the dog out to pee time period. I like to rate my runs by how many pugs I see. I don't ever stop and get them. I'm usually running and don't want to stop. And some owners aren't all about strangers petting their dogs. So I usually just smile and say hi puppy. Sometime I compliment them on their cuteness.
This morning I walked out of my apartment building to see the cutest thing I've seen in a long time - a true puppy, an 8 week old english bulldog puppy. it was so cute and it bounded toward me, I couldn't resist asking if i could pet it. Of course, the nice lady said. and I fell in love. so in love am i with this puppy that lives next door. If it would stay that size forever, I would be looking for breeders as we sit here reading. Of course, it will become an 80 lb dog soon enough. i hope hope hope i see it a bunch.
of course this makes me want to get an actual puppy instead of our current plan of a dog that's already housebroken. We don't have the time to house break a dog and I want to get one sooner than later. Therefore we have to get an adult. Plus, I feel like it is service as lots of dogs need homes. There is as boston terrier (the kind of dog we shall be acquiring this fall) rescue in the area. I had banned myself from looking because it makes me so sad, but i can't resist today with my heart yearning to steal the bulldog puppy from next door. and now i'm sad. because the hardest things is that as much as i want to rescue one of these boston terriers, the existence of slim shady (a.k.a. izzy my love) and a kiddie (yet to be, well, conceived, much less named) makes it very hard to adopt a dog that has been abused. so i look every so often and hope that a dog will need adoption that is good with cats and small children.
enough about puppies. i've made myself so sad by looking at petfinder.com.
Hunk o' man and I went to the cubs game last night with ben and julie, our favorite getting married in a month couple. you can see julie and i and the group thanks to their newest money maker, fanfote. ben's a big astro's fan for no particular reason besides having been born there, yet not raised there. I totally thought we were going to lose b/c Roger Clemens (sp?) was pitching against some no named pitcher we just brought up from triple AAA to sub for Wood. But Mr. no name did a good job, and once Roger doger had thrown his 70 pitches, we got 4 runs off their closer, who was sucking. and the strangest thing was is the astro's manager just left him in. weird. so the game turned out to be exciting in the end, and we got to leave a half inning early which was welcome because i was freezing my ass off. tales of 95 degree temps in houston make me wonder if i am on the same planet as them.
p.s. makes PERFECT sense the mr. christopher would defend the sting's music. him and his old timey piano loving.
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Posted by christina at 2:11 PM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2005
i'll make you banana pancakes / pretend like it's the weekend now
I house/dog sat this weekend. All of the harpers were out in rainy cold Amherst for Pete's graduation. I enjoyed a beautiful weekend complete with 70 degree temps and blue skies. About damn time, stupid chicago weather. It's almost June and I just now feel like spring has started. I had great run in Wilmette. The lake is so beautiful sparkling in the sunshine, and the houses are more beautiful than I ever could decribe. And the Bah House of Worship is amazing. The white glistening in the sunshine against the blue sky is breath taking. I run by it every time I run in Wilmette and it never fails to take my breath away. I learned this weekend that it took 40 years to build. It was completed in the 50s. Must be time for some maintance as this morning the air around the temple was filled with jack hammers and all of the steps (and there are many) up the sides of the temple were gone. Crazy.
I worked some both day. Played some. Tom, the mooing Cosmo, and I watched The Sting, an old Robert Redford/Paul Newman flick. It was quite good, except for the music.
Cosmo is so cute. He is this giant golden lab that just love love loves to have his paws petted. it is like me and my back...instant calm. He also likes to sleep curled up in this chair that he doesn't quite fit in. It is awesome. i really need to take a camera and capture his funniness on film.
I must admit that I am a big fan of Gray's Anatomy (the show) and thought shepard was so so so hot. and am so so so sad that he's married. though not surprised. he's still hot.
now all of my shows are off for the summer. (In case you are wondering what I watch - Arrested Development (which better not be canceled!), Scrubs, and Gray's Anatomy. The best shows on TV if you ask me. Ben watches the simpsons, so i usually watch that. and baseball is usually on, but i usually read or do the crossword, though i do look up for the good plays and mistakes.)
i am SO TIRED of having to baby sit my deposition. Can't do anything else but sit here and watch my partial pressure of oxygen. Of course, i can read stuff and write stuff, but the stuff i really need to be during involves being elsewhere. currently i look, see what the trend is and adjust the flow rate accordingly. of course mostly i just threaten the signal in my head to go back up if it is tending down. it works, as it usually goes back to the pressure i want it at. of course, when i got to turn something off and am not here to threaten it, off it goes up up up pissing lots of things off, including me.
tooooo much to do. thank god i've manage to get several things working in the past week. if only this last thing would work....though i know if that works, something else won't. my research must maintain its balance of hating me. tee hee hee.
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Posted by christina at 3:19 PM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2005
all you need is love
Okay. at some point i just realized. i must post for karma reason. yes i'm busy, but i have lots of small chunks of time where i am waiting on something, so i read other people's blogs. and so i must return the favor.
My conference in san diego was great. If you couldn't tell, I'd been feeling a little blah about my research leading up to it. The conference is a bunch of people that make thin films and it does two things:
(1) remind me that i am not the dumbest kid in the class.
(2) remind me that though my research isn't sexy (like nanotubes, nanowires, SAMs, electronic devices), my research is going to have a bigger impact that many sexy projects are. I can reduce energy consumption and material consumption (two things dear to my heart) with my coating in cars, in hard drives, in biological implants (if only i had the stomach that would be some cool research to go into).
I came back with a horrible head cold, but was all refreshed and inspired on a research side.
it is amazing what my personal guilt level can do - i feel so guilty when i don't run, or if i forget to return something i borrowed, or i forget who i owe dinner. There are three friends i routinely eat out with (one on one). One of them, i have this memory of picking up the tab one dinner and me saying that i'll get it next time. I cannot remember who. and it is so bothering me. I can just ask around, but i don't want it to seem like I'm asking to try to get out of it. So i feel guilty. i often wonder what it would be like to not feel guilty even when my brain says that there's nothing to feel guilty about. i wouldn't run most days, that's for sure. About half the mornings i get up to run, i'm driven by pure guilt to go. I know if i don 't run that morning i'll feel guilty for the rest of the day.
stupid magnetic fields. they play a large part in my research (larger that one would think) and the field dies off so quickly that i got new material target to sputter from, the surface is further from the magnets (~1.5 inches) and therefore the field and therefore plasma is weaker and thus my deposition conditions change dramatically causing me all sorts of frustrating issues. i replaced some of the magnets that were definitely loosing their magnetization (due to heat) and now i wonder if i shouldn't have just replaced all of them. i might go ahead and just do that or i can polish down the thickness of the target. that is the quick fix, but then that effects how it sits in the holder. sigh.
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Posted by christina at 2:47 PM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2005
i am
I am Christina. I am a graduate student in materials science and engineering closer to my phd end than the beginning.
I love ben, izzy, reading, laughing, sleeping, my family, my friends, and learning.
This blog was created when i moved away from my college friends. we all scattered across the country, and this is the best way to keep up. There are many many people that i would not have kept up with, but have through our blogs.
Most days i either rant about my job or the weather. Sometimes I praise my job or the weather.
Posted by christina at 12:48 PM | Comments (0)