CT vs. TX

Well, I've been here for almost a month now, and I would just like to say two things... 1) I *love* the weather, and 2) holy crap it's expensive up here! Now for details...

1) Yesterday was beautiful, and today will be no different. It's about 65 this morning, and it's not supposed to be much warmer than 80 today. The rest of the time, it might be 90 at most, which is still far better than 100+ down south.

2) Just... wow. I knew that things would be a little more expensive up here, but this is ridiculous. It's $5 for a box of cereal, and I paid almost $20 for a haircut yesterday! I think that Costco is going to be my good friend. All I can say is, thank God for student loans (minus the paying back part afterwards...).

On a separate but somewhat related note, I read yesterday that A&M and Chevron just made a deal for a 4 year research program in biofuels. Why couldn't they have decided this 6 months ago, I wouldn't be stuck up here in expensive-land.

Science Jobs

The ten worst jobs in science.

Work

Yep, instead of taking the summer off, I decided to abuse myself and get a real job. On top of that, I get up at 5:45 every day to be there at 7a. This allows me to do what I need to do before the really high-strung guy I work with comes in at 9, and also for me to leave by 3 to come home and study, work out, and play games (=

I work at an environmental laboratory in Manchester, CT. Now, if you know me (and what I think about individual branches of chemistry) you probably know that I hate analytical chemistry. Why then, you might ask, did I sign up to work at an analytical lab? Well, it was about the only real job that I could find that I was qualified for. Sure I could work at A&P or Stop 'n Shop(CTs big supermarkets), but that really doesn't do anything for the résumé or experience. I was also hoping that I would get to do more chemistry-like things than just weighing or diluting samples. And I do get to do a lot of stuff - I'm kind of the "Oh crap I'm really far behind" helper person.

So far this week, I've been learning one new SOP (standard operating procedure - i.e. experiment) a day. I'm currently trained to help about four different people, so when one person is done with me, I go check with the next. I still get stuck making dilutions of, well the last batch was 65 samples, but at least I don't do any titrations... the other new person does those.

School Stuff

Well, they finally sent out the study guide for quals in August. It's a bit frustrating really. It'd be nice to be able to take the summer off, even though I am working through the summer (see more about that above). Anywho, I have a study list, and absolutely no motivation at the moment to attempt to study. Getting up at 5:30a for work has something to do with that...

Starting this weekend, I'm determined to make a significant dent in half of one textbook. I figure that since I have about 8 weeks till school, then I have to get through at least half of one textbook per week. If I have to sacrifice a weekend to get caught up, c'est la vie. It'll be better off in the long run.

Also had to fight with the loan website so I could deal with that for next year. Apparently I had made an account on the Sallie May site forever and a day ago, but I was 99.9% sure that I didn't have the same e-mail address - provided I did actually have an account there. So it took a little creative work and a bit of frustration, but I finally got all of my information updated, and I am officially more in debt starting August 1st.

First Post (=

Well, now that I've moved halfway across the country from everyone I know, I figured this would be the easiest way for everyone to see what I'm up to... everyone who is interested at least. I'll be working on this during the weekend, and I'll post a real post sometime tonight. For the meantime, know that this is here, and you can see what I'm up to even when I don't answer my cell phone. (=