the theme for tonight is LOUD

April 21st has come and gone, and now I'm a doctor!

At some point I will write up a lovely post about how meaningful this is to me and about all the wonderful people who have helped me get to this point in my life, but tonight is not that night.

Tonight is the night where I tell you never to fly Spirit Airlines, because it has led to me being trapped in LAX for 5 hours and experiencing the following:

a woman talking VERY loudly into her phone and standing bizarrely close to me in the security line, resulting in the sensation of someone yelling in my ear. I now know all about her recent job interview for some sort of early childcare position. IT WENT WELL.

while charging my phone, getting stuck sitting between a woman watching a tv show on her phone full volume without headphones, and a woman with smelly bare feet

purchasing and then opening a recently shaken bottle of sparkling water, which is now all over my pants

Right now neon yellow-vested men are dismantling the chairs in the area where I'm sitting, so I should probably wrap this up and find another miserable corner to continue debating whether this delayed flight warrants paying for a month of Hulu so I can distract myself by watching "The Handmaid's Tale." Wish me luck.

my current facebook experience: a steady barrage of MLM groups

Lately, whenever grad school sucks too much, I think to myself,

at least I'm not selling Lipsense,

and I feel a lot better.

compare and contrast:

this article "Turning Practicality into Passion" about a new male BYU faculty member and this article "Developing a Taste for Research and Mini-Muffins" about a new female BYU faculty member.

Stacey is awesome and a fantastic scientist, and I'm really happy for her that she got this position. However, I'm really disappointed in how they wrote about her. From the college's facebook description (how I found the article), "I'm not sure which I like more: Research? Or Muffins? For Stacey Smith, she may have found a way to combine both!" First of all, it's misleading. I thought she was randomly doing some sort of food science research at first, which would be strange considering her training is all in hardcore physical and materials chemistry. Second of all, it undermines her scientific accomplishments. Two thirds of the article is about her life outside of science, compared to maybe a sixth of the male professor's. What is she going to be researching at BYU? Who knows, but she does enjoy running!

It reminds me of the first paragraph of the New York Times obituary for Yvonne Brill, a brilliant rocket scientist:

"She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. 'The world’s best mom,' her son Matthew said."

Now, this is not to say that I'm anti-muffin or think we should ignore female scientists' lives outside of science. I'm sure that Yvonne Brill considered being Matthew's mother one of her greatest accomplishments, and motherhood should never be trivialized. I just don't like that whenever we talk about female scientists we have to remind everyone that they're female or make them cutesy and domestic. Muffins! Beef stroganoff! Can you imagine a NYT obituary for a male scientist talking about his cooking skills in the first paragraph? No, because the story would be about his SCIENCE. As it should have been for Yvonne and Stacey. As it should be about any scientist, regardless of gender. That's all I ask. 

"leave it, it fuels my hate fire"

I was going to write up a post about love and Valentine's Day and nice things, but instead, here is a list of things I irrationally dislike a lot (plus parenthetical comments!):

construction companies

"free printable" (I don't know why??)

"gluten-free"

"no chemicals!" (this one's rational)

quinoa (I've never actually tried it but am averse to the rampant quinoa worshipping online)

dealing with raw chicken (UGH it's so gross and I'm convinced I'm going to die of salmonella)

trucks

I think that's all I've got for now. Maybe I'll come up with a list of things I love to even out the tone around here. Hmmm.

a waste of trader joe's white chocolate chips!

It turns out if you add an extra egg* to your oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, not only will they be super crispy and not good, but they will multiply and you will be left with > 30 flat crackly cookies. Mmmmmm. I would also now not recommend white chocolate chips in oatmeal cookies...

You can come and take some off our hands if you want.

*I don't really know how this happened except I got really enthusiastic about cracking eggs?

you decide!

Which is stupider:

a) the fact that the show "Dance Moms" exists

b) the fact that my sisters and mom and I can't stop watching it

?

Also, I saw a pin today on pinterest (been too long since I've complained about that, huh!) showing frozen yogurt drops, as in, take your yogurt, pipe it onto a cookie sheet, freeze it, and eat it. Why do you need to freeze your yogurt in small drops? A 100 calorie thing of Yoplait light is too much for you to handle so you have to portion it out? Or you just think it's cute to waste 20 minutes of your life freezing little yogurt drops?

I'm kind of tired tonight. Can you tell?

moldy basil. now that's appetizing.

I was going to write this post about how awesome my plants are doing (2 basil plants + 2 cherry tomato plants + a generic IKEA houseplant that I resent because I wanted a succulent and Aaron said no). But last night I realized that the terracotta pots my basil plants are in are coated in a thin film of white mold. WHITE MOLD. It's disgusting. I'm actually getting pretty awesome at using bleach to solve all my problems, but I can't help but think that might be a bad idea to use on a pot that contains plants I plan to ingest? I actually dreamed about this last night, except in my dream I stuck a fan near the plants to improve the air circulation. Imagine my disappointment when I woke up and realized we don't own a fan. An emergency IKEA run for new pots might be in order instead...darn. I hate it when I just have to go to IKEA by myself so I can spend all the time I want in that huge building full of Swedish home goodness.

Lesson learned: no more terracotta.

even Diet Coke can't keep me awake!

According to Aaron, I am a type 1 sleeper. This means I'm really bad at handling sleep depravation. Looking at my falling asleep three nights in a row at 7 PM (and waking up two hours later...ugh), falling asleep in a class of 8 students on Monday (awkward), and falling asleep in a seminar yesterday, I'm going to have to agree with his conclusion.

The sad thing is, I go to bed between midnight and 1 AM and wake up at 7:30 AM. Can someone explain to me how I used to run on two hours of sleep in undergrad but now can't function with less than seven?
It must be my old age.

angry girlfriend mistook our car for her cheating boyfriend's?

Well, today we got scared that the random guy who towed our car after it got the windows smashed and tire slashed and keyed yesterday was in fact stealing our car.

Living in Utah County sounds really nice right now. Or, at least anywhere we can afford to own a garage.

bugged

I don't see the point of "liking" a pin on pinterest. If you "like" it so much, why don't you just pin it to your dang board, random stranger? (If you are my friend, this doesn't apply. Maybe we have some inside joke or some shared experience represented by the pin, and in this case it is perfectly appropriate to like it.)

Also, while I'm talking about things that bother me, how about the phrase "'nuff said." Would it kill you to type out "enough?" I hate it sooooo much, I don't even know why.

That's all I had to say. I know, deep thoughts.

this is not cool graphic design

I dislike it when people switch up the color of text randomly, and also the font size:

Red words read: ADMIT IT Floor Lava couches Survive

Right.

Also dislike: Keep Calm and [insert anything you want here] posters. I like the original, and I even liked the "Keep Calm and Eat a Cupcake" the first time I saw it. But after seeing about a million versions of this on Pinterest ("Keep Calm and Love Cows" really?!), I hate it.

The end.

the more i write, the more i think the whole premise of my proposal is flawed

You know what's a bad idea? Telling a professor that you're interested in a career in science writing when you're going to have to turn in a nice little 5 page paper of science writing and you know you're going to end up still writing it at midnight the night before.

Not my best science writing tonight, guys. Oh well, oh well! My concern for this is decreasing exponentially with time.

How's your school life been lately?

who only takes checks and money orders?! this is the 21st century, there's an app for debit card transactions!

I am really loving living here, and Aaron and I have done a lot of fun things, but the traffic/driving in general is just not fun. And after a particularly horrendous afternoon at the DMV (we had to find a place to get a money order, the money order wasn't for the right amount, a fight broke out in the parking lot and everyone started freaking out, we left without Pennsylvania drivers licenses), I have to vent.

There is a Target 1 mile away from our house. Guess how long it takes us to get there? Back in Utah, it'd be 3 minutes. Here, it takes us TWENTY. Basically, the lights aren't timed at all, so you stop at every single light at every single block. Because there isn't any street parking available, if people want to stop at a little shop or make a delivery, they just park their car with their flashers on in the right lane. This makes things even worse because everyone driving in the right lane all of a sudden has to get over to get around the dang car parked in the middle of the road! How is this legal, people?!

This is more odd than it is irritating, but because parking is so limited people park in the middle of the street, like in the median lane where people normally turn left. It was really weird seeing that for the first time. I expected to see drivers in all of these supposedly left turning cars, but nope, they were parked and driver-free.

Another thing that's sort of funny is that on really, really narrow streets all of the parked cars will have the rearview mirror on the street side pushed all the way in toward the car body so that cars that drive past don't smack it off. The cars that have the mirrors still sticking out have scratch marks and nicks all over.

That's all for now, folks. My mom is flying in tomorrow night, and we are going to go to the Rodin Museum! I am recreating my French experience here in Philadelphia, people. I can't help it.

we got ourselves allied with the wrong moving company. heh, heh.

I feel very materialistic right now, but you know what, I want my stuff back. All the things we put in the moving truck, all of our furniture, the rest of my clothes (dress shoes! where did you go?), our kitchen gadgets, office supplies/printer, my books,* our tv, even our welcome mats! I want them all to fill our very empty and echo-y house.
And we were supposed to get them at the very latest by next week, July 25th. Instead, we will not be getting anything until August 2nd at the earliest! HELLO. The entire reason we packed up and left Provo and our families and friends so early in the summer was so our stuff could get here and we could unpack everything and get everything set up before Aaron starts med school. Now we're going to have like 3 days to do that in the best case scenario.

We want some compensation here, Allied. And you do not seem concerned at all that the actual arrival date of our things is at least OVER A WEEK later than the date we originally got. We are concerned, and we are freaking ticked.

The end.

*I've been reading Sense and Sensibility out of the beautiful 7 novel by Jane Austen collection my parents gave me for Christmas. I love me some Pride and Prejudice, but I can't get into this book at all. I am neither entertained nor intellectually stimulated by it. And I want our five boxes of books to get here so I can read about something else besides so and so's social engagements and frolics in the English countryside. Jane Austen lovers-defend?


OOohh, I'm feeling choleric today.

childish rant.

I do not like psychology. I do not like my stupid ebook. I do not like my weekly quizzes. I do not like my detail oriented tests. I do not think it is a science, despite the lecture designed to convince us it is.
If dream analysis is still considered a valid activity, then I am so out of here.

Get out of my life, Sigmund Freud!!!!

library, i'm going to go all tiger mom on you.

Today I went to the library in search of aforementioned books (seriously guys, no recommendations?!). I was determined not to leave that place without a book in hand. Looked up controversial Asian parenting book in the online catalog, and they had it! Except they actually didn't when I got to the shelf. Annoyed. This has happened to me multiple times. Come on HBLL, get it together! Stop misinforming me! I keep wasting time wandering around your many shelves! Couldn't find the Barbara Kingsolver book I wanted to check out either (that they apparently had, sidenote: have you ever read The Poisonwood Bible or The Lacuna? you should definitely read the former, and you probably should read the latter).

In other news, Aaron found us a lovely Philadelphia condo. With hardwood floors, granite countertops, and three bedrooms. So hey, come visit us because we are doing this med/grad school thing in style, and we have a bedroom for you! (although sleeping on our really comfortable couch would not have been a bad option!) If you're friends with Aaron on facebook he posted photos of it (which I will eventually get around to posting on this blog).

Too many parenthetical phrases for one post + Y Chem meeting in 2 mins = see you later!
Have an awesome weekend!

dégoutant

I. do. not. want. to. write. an. abstract. for. a. paper. about. French. healthcare. and. the. role. of associations. in. picking. up. the slack. for. the government.

Ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh.

If it's this hard to write one page, how the heck am I going to get through 15?

Shoot me now.

can't believe i'm labeling this post with "school"! it is summer! i am not meant to be writing papers during this time!

not to brag, but

my little brother is a rock star.

For reals.

He plays drums in the band Marina and Some Boys

featuring...Marina...and some boys.

They are incredibly talented and adorable (he's on the far left).



And they got robbed this weekend by two severely musically challenged bands.

Dear Battle of the Bands judges,

Were you even LISTENING to ***** band?! Or were you too distracted by their guitarist's ill-fitting True Religion jeans and the choreographed head banging?! (HAIROGRAPHY? KILL YOURSELF!) Did the fact that they have a gig at the Velour next week (who's paying to see them? you ought to if you'd like to listen to some rhythm-less, melody-less, harmony-less crap for an hour) CLOUD YOUR JUDGMENT or was it all of the smoke and mirrors (literally on the smoke, they blew it right out of their mouths...slightly satanic/we wish we were dragons?) that left us with zero substance??? Or how about the utterly lackluster performance by Seinfeld obsessed *****? Really? How could you fail to notice their complete lack of synchronization in one of my favorite Relient K songs?! Their drummer was totally off, not to mention the singer's boring and out of tune voice! "Be My Escape" left us all wanting to escape right out of the auditorium!

I really hope that next time you decide to judge a music competition, you actually bother to listen to the bands.

Sincerely,

Katie

Side note: Readers, they might still have a chance to be the wild card in the state battle of the bands if they upload one of their songs and enough people vote for them. Should they decide to do so, I'm going to beg and plead with you with all my heart to vote. They really deserve this.

Anyway, I hope your Saturday night was thoroughly less enraging than mine. Bon weekend!

我很恼火

My phone, with its Chinese luck charm, is gone. It left me somewhere between visiting Shoshone Falls and dancing to "Jai Ho" while dressed in belly dancer costumes in Party Palace.

What sort of omen is that?

If you should need to contact me, send me an email or a facebook message.

Shanks.

Makes the world go round and makes me a little angry

$45 in insufficient funds fees later, and what do you get?

A New Year's Resolution to actually use that beautiful Excel spreadsheet you made six months ago to keep track of money.

AGOIahrnadhah!

More resolution posts to come. What are yours?