radium

“Power"

Living in the earth-depositis of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power

-Adrienne Rich

****

Last week another woman won a Nobel Prize in chemistry, bringing the total number of female chemistry winners up to five. Five. Out of 180 total winners over a span of 117 years. 

We can do better, right? The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward women getting scientific accolades in equal numbers as men, right? Our pain and our hard work is equally recognized and valued, right? I used to think so, but then Donald Trump got elected president, and Brett Kavanaugh got confirmed as a supreme court justice, so who the heck knows. 

more unsolicited opinions, as usual

Hi! I live in North Carolina now, and so far am doing a good job of assimilating into suburban life if I do say so myself. Not that it's hard, because I'm defining this as I drive everywhere now and go to Target like twice a week and buy things from drive-throughs.

Some random thoughts, a strangely high proportion of which are about pants:

New Muse song! I can't decide if I love it or not, but I do keep listening to it, and it's catchy.

NO MORE ANKLE PANTS. Why are all the pants ankle length these days? I had to buy a bunch of new professional clothes for my new professional job, and they're all a little too cropped. I can't have any skin showing below my waist in lab, and I'm sick of wearing socks with ankle pants. I have not found a way to make this look cute. (You know your life is pretty great when this is a major problem.)

It is really hot and humid here, and I have given up on wearing skinny jeans. In fact, I don't wear any jeans at all these days except for one pair of "girlfriend" jeans from Gap. All I want to wear are wrinkle-prone linen pants from Uniqlo (let us all shed a tear that Uniqlo has no locations within 200 miles of here-I did not take nearly enough advantage of its proximity while living in Philly). 

"Crazy Rich Asians" was kind of a dumb book but a delightful and visually gorgeous movie, and I'm so glad that I went and saw it this weekend. I also watched "To All the Boys I've Loved Before" on Netflix, and it was a treat. Highly recommend them both.

Two not dumb books I read recently: Educated by Tara Westover and And Now We Have Everything by Meaghan O'Connell. The former was both horrifying and inspiring and the latter both made me want to have a baby and never have a baby. I'm curious what people who have had kids thought of that one (it felt like a no-holds-barred peek behind the mysterious curtain of motherhood to my uninitiated self).

Summer vegetable soups are currently my jam. I really liked this one:
Instant Pot Summer Soup (which I made on the stovetop, replacing the chicken with a can of white beans)
and this one:
Vegetable Soup with Basil Pistou (I did not make the basil pistou, and it was still great)
Unfortunately, Aaron declared himself "not a fan of soup" today, so I guess you can take these recommendations with a grain of salt. (literally? ha.)

Welp, I think that's it. Can you tell I don't have a lot of friends to talk to in person about all these things? Yay moving!

something something b52s roam something

After Paris we went to Rome!

It was fun to see how different Rome felt compared to Paris: a little more gritty, colorful, and way hotter. Neither of us had been to Italy before, and neither of us spoke any Italian (I failed Duolingo), so it was a bit more of an adventure.

Beautiful streets! Totally different from Paris. I don't know why this surprised me so much, but I'm going to blame it on my American naivete. 

The Colosseum! Following Rick Steve's advice helped us avoid most of the line-waiting and his free audio guide was entertaining and informative. I LOVE RICK STEVES.

Roman Forum! It's incredible to me how intertwined ancient and modern Rome are. I loved seeing ancient ruins all over the city.

Like in Paris, we took a cooking class. This time, we made a full meal: two different types of pasta dough (semolina flour + water versus flour + egg), two different pasta sauces (tomato sauce, broccoli goat cheese-I don't even like goat cheese usually but this was SO good), fried zucchini blossoms, artichokes, and chocolate pear cake. This was awesome, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes to cook and will be in Rome.

We also did a food tour in Trastevere and I'm still thinking about this cacio e pepe and amatriciana pasta. 

Also, still thinking about this suppli (fried risotto ball). I would eat this every day if I could.

The Pantheon at night. I loved how walkable Rome was, which allowed us to see a lot of the major sites both intentionally during the day, and accidentally at night, while we were heading back to our Airbnb for the evening.

 Day trip to Tuscany! This was fun but also not, because a lot of it was geared toward wine tasting (which I didn't realize based on the tour description online). Worth experiencing the beautiful scenery and seeing the Italian countryside, though, even if we spent our lunch getting the elderly ladies seated across from us drunk by giving them all of our wine.

The Trevi Fountain was worth the hype. Rome has so many beautiful fountains but this was in a league of its own. 

 We also day tripped to Pompeii/Mount Vesuvius. The view from the end of the trail on Vesuvius was amazing, and this was definitely a highlight.

Pompeii was also incredible. I had no idea it was so large, and I wish we had had more time to explore it.

This mega cheese/meat/fruit/spread board was our dinner one night and now I'm asking myself why do we not eat this for dinner every night? It was fantastic.

We spent a day at the Vatican, seeing the museum/Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica. These pictures don't do St. Peter's justice. We saw what felt like a hundred incredible ornate churches while in Rome (we'd pop in every one we saw while walking around) but this outdid them all. Absolutely amazing. Rick Steves also saved us hours of lines with a shortcut from the Sistine Chapel to the cathedral, so next time you're going to Italy, buy his dang book.

Pretty Piazza Navona, early in the morning before all the other tourists got there.

All in all, it was a wonderful vacation, and I feel so lucky that we had the chance to do this before I started working full-time and Aaron started fellowship. It's something I've been wanting to do basically since the last time I got on a plane to fly back to the US from France, and this trip did not disappoint. Thanks for having us, Europe!

midnight in...

Before moving to North Carolina, Aaron and I heeded Leslie Knope's advice:

"In times of stress or moments of transition, sometimes it can feel like the whole world is closing in on you. When that happens, you should close your eyes, take a deep breath, listen to the people that love you when they give you advice, and remember what really matters. And if you have the ability to go to Paris, by all means, go to Paris."

So, we went to Paris:

Our teeny studio Airbnb was right by the Louvre, so we walked past it every day. And one of those days, we went inside it and saw beautiful Winged Victory. We also saw the original painting of a 9000 piece puzzle that Aaron had put together, which neither of us realized was actually a famous Renaissance painting. Surprise! Paris, you're a thrill!

I don't think I appreciated how beautiful Paris was when I first visited when I was in college. Philly helped adjust my expectations for beautiful cities and MAN Paris is beautiful. I couldn't stop taking pictures of ordinary streets and buildings.

One of my favorite things we did was take a food tour of Monmartre, which culminated in us eating a meal of bread, cheese, meats, chocolate, and pastries in this cute little room, overlooking the street in the picture below. It was educational and delicious, my two favorite things!!

The other cool thing we did was take a macaron cooking class at a little cooking school near city hall. Once again, educational and delicious. Macarons are notoriously tricky, so it was awesome to have a professional show us what to do and what to look for. We came away with a box of ~40 cookies, which we snacked on the rest of the trip.

It was fun to show Aaron all the places I loved the last time I was here. Sainte-Chapelle was high on the list. While we were there, a boys choir was visiting and performed just one angelic song. We were so lucky to be there at the same time and get to listen to that little piece of heaven.

Couldn't pass up going to Versailles, even if it was chilly and rainy.

The opulence of Versailles was a sharp contrast to the elegant simplicity of the Mormon temple we walked over to afterward (of course our trip was during the two weeks of the year it's closed for cleaning, so we couldn't actually go inside. But the grounds were lovely!)

On our last morning, I made Aaron go to one last art museum: Musee de l'Organerie. I'm happy to report walking into that rotunda ringed with Monet's water lilies was just as moving 8 years later.

This is us in front of the I Love You Wall loving Paris with all our freaking hearts. Hope we'll be back someday <3

i'm trying to distract myself from the collapse of our country with all of the below

In addition to those recently linked recipes, here are a few other things I'm loving lately:

Reading: East of Eden by John Steinbeck
I finally read this (or should I say inhaled? I can't believe how quick of a read this was for me), and it was so good. Beautiful, moving, just the right amount of sad, I'm going to need to read this again.

Watching: Howl's Moving Castle by Hayao Miyazaki
I watched this on Mother's Day by myself, which sounds more depressing than it was. It was fun! This movie is magical and lovely and now my phone home and lock screen are pictures of Howl and Sophie so you know I'm a fan. It also reminded me that there are still so many Miyazaki movies I haven't seen (and aren't available on the holy trinity of Netflix/Hulu/Amazon), and I totally could've checked them out from the library, and I DIDN'T. Now my greatest regret from my time at Penn.

Listening: United States of Eurasia by Muse
I don't know why I love this song so much, but I've listened to it approximately 10,000 times and that Middle Eastern-y part never gets old.

More listening: The Bon Appetit Foodcast
I walk 25 min to/from lab every day, and this podcast makes it go a lot more quickly. The format is conversations among people from Bon Appetit (and often guests) about recipes, culinary techniques, the food world, etc. It's informative and funny and makes me really hungry for dinner when I get home.

MORE more listening: The Alison Show Podcast
I'm a big fan of this podcast, too. I initially thought it might be a little over the top for me (Alison is kind of out of control but in a good way!), but she actually gives a lot of practical, concrete self-improvement tips that put me in a better mood, even if I'm not intentionally focused on implementing all of them.

And finally, sidenote: I'm leaving for Paris and Rome in two weeks from yesterday. (Yay!!!) As a lover of spreadsheets and advanced planning I've already put together itineraries, but if you've been to either city, what was your favorite thing you did/place you ate? Don't want to miss something and have another thing to regret!

better than hot ham water

Hi! I found some good recipes recently:

vegetable soup
I didn't make the basil pistou or the garlic bread, but the soup alone is delicious. Light and healthy without tasting like deprivation.

curried shepherd's pie
This was a great twist on shepherd's pie, but we used our favorite mashed potato recipe (boil the potatoes whole! peel and rice, add butter first, then add way more milk/cream than you think you'll need, salt generously)

red lentil soup with lemon
So much flavor coming from so few ingredients. It's pretty amazing.

Also: I am currently in denial that we are leaving my beloved Philadelphia in less than three weeks. Even though all of my extraneous pieces of furniture are disappearing and my guest bedroom is filling up with boxes, it still doesn't feel real. It's not happening!!!! You can't make me leave!

canada goose mystery

Last November, when I was in Boston for a conference, I saw tons of people wearing coats with this logo:

I thought, hmmm, seems like a popular brand, and the coats look cute and super warm. Maybe I should get one? When I got back to Philly I started noticing lots of people with them here, too. So, I looked them up online and found out THEY COST OVER $900.

Look, I'm not opposed to spending a decent amount of money on a coat in the Northeast when you're going to wear it all the time, November-March (April this year!) but NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS???? That's insane. But the thing is, so many people have them! Aaron and I have an ongoing game called Spot the Canada Goose every time we're walking around the city together. It seems like a good tenth of the people in Philadelphia own one of these coats. My question is, HOW? Was there a free giveaway like the City Sports shirts everyone also seems to have? Was there a major sale at Boyd's? Is there a cart selling knock-offs outside Anthropologie at Rittenhouse Square? Is there a scholarship program for people in need of Arctic-level cold protection?

I feel like Erin on The Office after she met Holly: 

I just don't get it. 

matt bellamy is my style icon

I want to hire whoever is styling Matt Bellamy because his jacket collection is out of control:

I mean.

Guys.

I would wear every single one of these.

yes.

yes.

I don't think you understand how much I need a red suit now.

^^TRIANGLES^^

yes.

yes.

Though to be honest, I would love to wear literally any jacket that is not my down coat outside right now. (Thanks a lot, THREE March snowstorms. What is this, Utah?) 

odds and ends

I figured out what my ideal form of humor is, and it's computers writing nonsense:

a computer-generated list of new My Little Pony names via artificial neural network
We start at Sprinkle Cherry Bolt and rapidly descend to Deader Pony, Dunder Dort, and Tracklewock Packin. It's GREAT.

a Harry Potter chapter written with predictive text
I tried to pick a few lines to excerpt, but it's just all too good. You have to read it in full.

I made some food I liked recently:

These salted butter chocolate chunk shortbread cookies are really weird, but they're also delicious. Very similar to these chocolate sable cookies (and similar potential pitfall with crumbliness-don't despair, just use a sharp knife when cutting and smoosh it back together).

I also made this chocolate babka wreath over Christmas break, and it turned out just as beautiful as the website pictures for once (and so delicious people ate it stale the next day).

Here are some science-y things I recommend reading:

Most of my scientific expertise is knowing how to make and work with proteins. This was a cool article that explains why proteins are cool and how scientists are designing new ones not found in nature.

I also really liked this article, on keeping a cosmic perspective + the Voyager golden record:

"I don’t think it is possible to contribute to the present moment in any meaningful way while being wholly engulfed by it. It is only by stepping out of it, by taking a telescopic perspective, that we can then dip back in and do the work which our time asks of us."

Not really science-y but I've been thinking about this, too: preserving white space in your daily routine (found via CoJ). Almost all of my dead time is full of looking at my phone (waiting for/riding in the elevator, waiting for an experiment to finish up, standing in line at the store, eating lunch, etc.), and I don't think that's a good thing.

I'll add that to my list of things to work on in 2018, joining learn basic Italian phrases (we're going to Europe this summer!!!!) and bake more cakes. Only appropriate, given that zucchero is inexplicably one of the first words Duolingo taught me. 

books of 2017

I read more books this year. I somewhat arbitrarily decided that this should be the year I read more sci-fi, so I read as many Isaac Asimov books as I could get my hands on until I realized that I hated the Foundation series. I love Robots, hate Foundation. I don't know what that says about me, but there you go. Here's what else I read:

Non-fiction
Mormon Feminism edited by Joanna Brooks, Rachel Hunt Steenblik, and Hannah Wheelwright
The God Who Weeps by Terryl and Fiona Givens
I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield
Quiet by Susan Cain

Books I Felt Bad About Not Liking That Much
Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel
Persuasion by Jane Austen
The Orphan Keeper by Camron Wright
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Delightful Re-reads
Wonder by R. J. Palacio
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

I Went through an Asimov Phase
The Complete Robot by Isaac Asimov
The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov
The Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov
Robots and Empire by Isaac Asimov
Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Forward the Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Yay Sci-fi Short Stories!
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu

Yep, Still Obsessed with Brandon Sanderson
Arcanum Unbounded by Brandon Sanderson
Secret History by Brandon Sanderson
Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson
Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson

Odds and Ends
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Chemistry by Weike Wang
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden (this was really lovely–you should read it)
West with the Night by Beryl Markham
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

Favorite Books (Series) of 2017
The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin
Death's End by Liu Cixin

I loved The Three-Body Problem et al. It's a Chinese sci-fi series that is beautiful, and haunting, and so, so creative. By far the most interesting thing I read all year (and I read Stories of Your Life and Others, so that's saying something!). Highly recommended.

My goal for 2018 is to read 37 books, raising the bar by one book. Any book suggestions to help me get there? What was the best thing you read in 2017?

Here's what I read in 2016.

2017 highlights

January: Women's March in Philadelphia

This photo quality is terrible, but I love it because our regional church women's leadership is in it with us (Stake YW Pres and Relief Society Pres), and you can see the temple spire in the background. 

 April: Thesis defense!

April: Trip to LA! Met perfect baby niece Linden for the first time

Also ate a lot of good donuts and ice cream, visited a magical bookstore (hi, The Last Bookstore), and got to see the Broad. Met up with old BYU chemistry friend Naomi and my cousin Nick.

 May: PhD Graduation

Aaron's mom came out to celebrate with us, and we found a new favorite restaurant (Talula's Garden).

June: Roadtrip to North Carolina
Scoped things out to see if we wanted to move there (we did! we are!)

July: Trip to San Francisco and Sea Ranch

Sea Ranch is so beautiful it's unreal. Also, there are SEALS!

July: Saw Hamilton with my aunt Jenny

(10/10, would recommend)

October: Seminar at BYU & weekend in Seattle

I got to give my first ever "real" research seminar while at BYU, and we got to meet up with my beloved Bowen roomies Kristen and Amanda in Seattle.

 November: Surprised Aaron's family by showing up in Utah for Thanksgiving

(not our dog)

 November: Stayed with my cousin Sasha for a materials science conference in Boston

Also got to meet up with former labmate and dear friend Yanfei for ramen.

 December: Christmas in Utah with my family

MOA, Brick Oven, donut-making, Quiplash-playing ensued.

In spite of the terrible state of American politics, it turns out my personal 2017 was actually fantastic. I got to do/see/accomplish a lot of things I've wanted to do for a long time, and I got to spend my time with many of my favorite people.

Here's to an even better 2018!