Don't Die a Stupid Death: Part II

The first dish I made after moving into my apartment in hilly was some sort f pasta. I remember because upon draining the pasta the resultant steam set off my smoke alarm. I made a note to self that the smoke alarm was ultra sensitive.

Shortly thereafter I attempted to bake something in the oven. Upon turning on the oven to preheat, again the smoke alarm went off. This would not do. So I solved my problem by installing a curtain between my kitchen and the hallway where the smoke alarm resides.

This all worked well until this past weekend. I try to resist turning on the heat for as long as possible because gas heat in Philly is wicked expensive. A problem that is exacerbated by living in a house that is 100+ years old and poorly insulated. But Sunday morning I reach my limit and decided to switch on the heat. A few minutes after the heat started flowing my super sensitive smoke alarm sounded again. I followed my usual drill of fanning the alarm with a cookie sheet since my alarm is located out of reach near my high ceiling. This time, my trick failed however. Thinking the alarm might have been caused by the burn off you get upon first turning on the heat I switched the heat off. And waited, and waited. “Fine, sound all you want,” I thought, “it’s got to stop eventually.” I tried to go about getting ready for church while the alarm wailed, but started to wonder, what would I do? Let it blare for hours while I was away at church?

Finally I called my landlord in desperation. I explained that the alarm would not stop and I didn’t know what to do. He instructed me to open a window immediately. You see, my smoke alarm is also a carbon monoxide detector. Say what? Gas heaters can make CO? How had I missed this in school? He told me to crank the heat up after opening some windows, then call him back.

After hanging up I cracked the kitchen window open and the alarm stopped immediately. Hmmm, should I feel relieved or alarmed? Next I turned the heat back on. Sure enough, within a few minutes the alarm was sounding again. So, I opened more windows and I googled gas heat and CO.

CO is produced as the result of incomplete combustion, which I knew, what I foolishly never realized is that when a gas heater doesn’t get enough O2, it makes CO. Oh. Gas ovens can produce CO too if not properly ventilated. Ooooh. So this is why my oven sets off the smoke alarm. I then realized that for the past three years, every time I pulled the kitchen curtain so I could bake I was trapping myself in with the CO. Brilliant. This is the sort of thing that inspired my former coworkers to nickname me ‘genius’.

The story ended with my landlord coming by to change the filter on my heater so proper air flow could be restored. And me resolving to crack a window when I turn on the oven. And me thanking Jesus for keeping me alive these past 3 years.

The Rules of Dating - for Men

Ever since I turned 25 I have held certain expectations for my dates. I felt that, by the age of 25, men should KNOW certain things about dating. However, my current string of extremely bad dates has taught me that apparently a majority of guys (or at least the ones that date ME) don’t have a clue. So I have composed the following list with the intention of educating such men. However, I don’t know that any men actually read my blog, so I recognize that mostly, this list is just about me venting. Here we go!

1. Before you ask a girl out on date, ask yourself, “Do I actually WANT to make a good impression on her?” If the answer is, “No,” save her and yourself the trouble. Stay home. If the answer is, “Yes,” then read on.


2. Do not lie about yourself prior to meeting. This means you are not allowed to lie about your: age, height, weight, income, marital status, or appearance. Your photo can be considered a lie as well. Two years is the limit on photo age, and it may need to be more recent than that if, since the taking of your photo, you have: gone bald, gained weight, lost an eye, or in some other way significantly altered your appearance.


3. Ask her out on a real date. No playing it off like you are getting together as buddies while secretly telling yourself it’s a date and hoping she’s thinking the same thing. Be a man and be straight about it. If you want to impress her you can’t play games and mess with her head.


4. Do not presume she shares your interests. Surprises are nice when say, you know she loves a certain author, so you get her that author’s newest book. Surprising her with tickets to see a band she has never heard of, say, maybe, Hall & Oates. In the second row. At center stage. Surrounded by 40-something women in their finest going-out attire they picked up at Kohls. Not a good surprise.


5. Shave. Stubble might be sexy on an Abercrombie & Fitch model, but on you it just looks lazy. Same deal for hair. If you are overdue for a haircut, get one before you meet her for the first time. And BTW, that haircut should cost you more than $20.


6. Dress like you care (if you don’t, go back to item #1). If you own one new shirt, wear it. Women can tell. The exception to this is if your newest shirt has something printed on it, like say, wolves, or tree frogs, or Metallica. If you are reading this list, you are not permitted to choose printed shirts. This is also the time to bust out the one pair of jeans/pants that make your butt look good. Add a belt. If you are unsure on any of this ask a close female friend what to wear. Don’t have one of those? Ask your sister or buddy’s girlfriend. She will be thrilled to help. We never really outgrew our Barbies and real lifesize Ken dolls are way more fun than the little plastic ones.


7. Do NOT insult her or yourself. This should be common sense. Then again, so should all of this. Actual lines I’ve heard:
   “Wow, you must be REALLY smart!” This is wrong because it only implies that you think you are not as smart as me. Not a turn on. Not sexy.
   “Unlike you, I have people skills.” This was actually his opener. He had never met me, so where this came from is beyond me. Maybe he thought it was witty? I don’t know.
   “Do you have really bad BO, or what?” This was in response to my revealing that I find good smelling men sexy.
   Instead try repeating this in your head, “I am smart and fabulous. She is smart and fabulous. Together we are even more smart and fabulous.” This attitude: sexy.


8. Better yet pay her a compliment. However, it needs to be the right one. Keep it simple and be honest. “You look nice.” “I like your perfume.” “I really enjoy talking to you.” Avoid the following:
   “Your hair smells good” Comes off stalkerish. Why are you sniffing my hair?
   Avoid comments based on specific features, like feet or ears, it smacks of fetish.
   “Those are great shoes.” Some subjects are in the girl domain. Fingernails, shoes, and handbags are in girl jurisdiction. We don’t expect men to notice or comment on these. If you do, we are apt to suspect you are gay.


9. Do not overshare. Again, some real life examples from within the first three dates.
   “Sorry I had to cancel our date. I’ve been having trouble with my colon.”
   “I have a tough time with women because my ex-wife used to beat me.”
   “I think God brought us to Philly just to meet.”
   Edit. Say it in your head first. Remove the creepy, pathetic, and sad comments.


10. Pay. Yes, it’s old fashioned, but you still have to. Suck it up. If this seems horribly sexist and unfair to you just remember, for our entire lives we will make less money than a man for doing the exact same job. Feel better? Perhaps you don’t make a lot of money and are concerned about affording this. In this case, take her out for coffee. You should be able to swing $2 for her. If you can’t, you’re not ready to date.


11. Clean your car and/or bring cash for a cab/the bus. You need to offer to help get her home and you need to be prepared to follow through. All of the romance of opening the car door for her is instantly killed if she finds old coke bottles and your gym shoes waiting for her in the front seat. (Yes, this happened to me too)


12. Do NOT force her into a kiss. Grabbing her head with both hands to preclude her escape is not acceptable. Neither is inviting yourself into her house under the guise of needing to use the restroom. If you want to kiss her you lean in half way, let her close the remainder of the distance. This gives her the chance to opt for a hug instead.

Come on fellas. Prove me wrong. Show me just how fabulous you really are.

And my real age is...

Since I’ve come to grad school, I haven’t been 100% honest about my age. When asked about my age, sometimes I outright lied, other times a played coy, “How old do you think I am?” Although, occasionally, the later approach backfired.

Why all the denial? Grad school was a tough shift. All my life I’ve been the baby. I am the youngest in my family and amongst my cousins, and the majority of my friends and boyfriends have all been older than me. Being the baby suits me well. I like being the entertainer and peacemaker. And I like the low expectations. Really, you just have to not screw something up entirely and people are impressed. And, if my appearance showed signs of age, they didn’t matter, because everyone else looked older.

All that changed when I came to grad school after working for 7 years post-undergrad. Suddenly, I was the oldest. Not just amongst my classmates, but among most of the graduate group. Suddenly, I was the one with experience, the one people went to for advice, the one that people expected to be prepared. What? Me? The baby? I also became the fat old one. Not glamorous at all.

And it didn’t help that I saw 30 as the end of life. Literally. Growing up, I never believed I would live past 30. I guess I figured I would get hit by a truck or have a heart attack (I’ve always loved bacon and butter). I just never thought this day would come.

I have also regretted the loss of some years in my 20s that I wish I had lived better. I thought by claiming to be the age I regretted, maybe I could erase those years and rewrite them. But the thing is, as you try to relive those years, you lose the ones you should be living now.

So, recently, something has changed in me. I think it might actually have to do with turning 30. I have found a peace with who and where I am. And my age. No more lying. I’m 31. There, it’s out there for the entire internet to read. For those of you in your 20s, aghast at the thought of being so old, let me assure you, it will happen to you, too. Let me also tell you, it’s not so bad. Here are some things to look forward to.

Yes, your body ages. However, fortunately, this happens at a time when you get some perspective and realize that all those little imperfections you spent your 20s worrying about, don’t actually matter. I can’t believe how much time I wasted fussing about and fighting against being pear shaped. I finally see, curves are hot. (The black men in Philly remind me of this daily.) And men are more impressed by a girl that likes herself and is comfortable in her own skin then some overly made-up hungry-looking girl. If some dude doesn’t find my full hips sexy, he’s gay.

I also wasted a lot of time in my 20s worrying about what people thought of me. I flipped out whenever I felt judged or if someone implied I was stupid. I guess I have to credit grad school with helping me get over that one. If I kept getting upset over those things, I would never calm down. I now see that only my opinions, and those of my closest family and friends, really matter.

Now that I’m in my 30s, I also feel more satisfied. I needed, or thought I needed, so many things in my 20s. Okay, my thirst for shoes has only worsened, but in other ways, I’ve come to realize, less is more. I don’t need an exotic vacation; I feel more rested after spending the weekend at my grandma’s. And the entertainment value of video games and movies pales in comparison to watching my cat chase bugs in the back yard.

I’ve finally got the basics figured out. I can cook a decent meal, mix a cocktail, and pick a wine to go with dinner. I can finesse most people at work into doing what I want and I don’t mind telling service staff what I expect. I’ve learned how to work with my hair instead of against it and how to pick flattering clothes. I can hem my pants, insulate my windows, and rid my home of various vermin. I can choose my friends and break up with a guy, though getting dumped still stings pretty bad.

I also see now, that it’s going to be okay. If this Christmas, or vacation, or football season sucked, that’s okay. There will be another one. If you don’t have your career perfectly planned, that’s okay, you can take another direction. If you fall on hard times, God will provide friends, or family, or even sometimes strangers to help lift you up. If you make a mistake, you can try again. If your life doesn’t go according to plan, you don’t own a home or have a husband or babies, you can make your alternatives work and be grateful for them.

So, in the end, I think I’m okay with my age. I can do this, and maybe even do it well. Just don’t ask me to think about 40…

Don’t die a stupid death: Part I

This story is at Em’s request. Her version might be different. In which case, she is wrong.

A few years back, due to some unforeseen events, I wound up staying at my family’s rented beach cottage alone with my good friend Emily. I had known Emily since high school. We were a part of the same social group that hung out mostly because we didn’t fit anywhere else. Over the summers, Em was a life guard. I shelved books at the library. We possessed slightly different levels of athleticism.

Emily was also the adventurous type. Willing to pet bees and ready to touch the washed-up jelly fish. Emily liked riding the waves. I liked sitting on the sand watching crabs endlessly toss sand out of their little tunnels. Okay, and sometimes I liked kicking sand in their tunnels. Why am I mean to crabs? I don’t know. Maybe because I can be.

One day, Em came back from the water, completely drenched as usual, and announced that during her frolicking she had located a sand bar out a little ways from the shore. By her account, it was really cool and I needed to check it out.

I am not a fan of sea water in my eyes or mouth. When it gets there, I turn into an even bigger baby than usual. I am also always cold. This means that the sea water off the coast of NC, though cool to others, to me, is cold enough to make my feet ache. But Emily said I must. And I confess, I had experienced a sand bar once before and it was magical indeed. I agreed, I would go out with her to enjoy the wonders of the sand bar.

The next day we set off. It was mid-September and the beaches were mostly deserted. We walked a ways down the beach to where Em remembered the sand bar. We set off. “How deep does it get before you reach the sand bar?” I asked, as we crept into the water. “I don’t think it gets too deep,” she assured me. “Will my feet touch the ground?” I asked. “Um, maybe not. You have to swim a little, bit it isn’t far,” she said.

Okay.

So we swam. And swam. “It’s just a little bit further,” Em told me. I was getting a little nervous, but I trusted my friend. Swimming, swimming. Every so often Em would go under the water to see if she could touch the bottom. No sign of the sand bar.

Eventually I looked back to the shore. “Um, we’re pretty far out.” I told her, starting to lose faith. But we swam a bit more. I don’t know how much time passed, but to me it seemed we had swum for a very long time. Finally Emily relented. The sand bar was not here. She agreed, we should head back.

I was relieved to be getting out of this. I was tired and cold and ready to feel sand under my feet. So we swam toward the shore. And we swam, and we swam. But we weren’t getting any closer. I said so to Emily, but she insisted, yes, we were getting closer to shore. Swimming, swimming. It was beginning to dawn on me that we were in a rip tide. I remembered those stories on TV about strong swimmers drowning in rip tides. I’m not a strong swimmer.

Then it occurred to me, I thought, “This is it. This is how I am going to die. I’m going to be sucked out to sea. The end. Brilliant Angela. Your mom is going to be so pissed. Your dad is in the coast guard. He makes life jackets for a living, and you are going to drown. Nice.”

I told Emily, “I’m scared.” She replied, “Don’t panic, that’s the first rule.” Right. I thought the first rule was ‘don’t swim in a rip tide’, but whatever. And somehow, someone telling you not to panic, kind of has the opposite effect. Now I really was scared.

We kept swimming, putting everything into it. Emily started getting somewhere. I, still, was not. Soon she was several feet ahead of me. “Emily, I can’t keep up with you.” I called. “Okay, I’ll pull you,” she offered. Yes, Emily is a lifeguard, she’ll save me I thought. So she grabbed my arm and pulled as she swam. However, with dead weight Angela in tow, we couldn’t make any ground. Still swimming toward the shore, still not any closer to the shore, still not a good situation.

At some point, I can’t remember whether it was before or after we started swimming back, a lifeguard showed up. On the OBX of NC they don’t have lifeguards at posts, they just ride four wheelers up and down the beach, apparently hoping no one will need saving until they happen to drive by. Or maybe thy just hope no one will need saving. You'll see.

Anyway, I remember watching him watching me. He stood on his four wheeler and used his binoculars to watch us. I watched him debate, “I don’t really feel like jumping in and getting wet. Then again, if those girls drown, people will probably blame me. I am getting paid to do this. Hmmm, what to do what to do?”

I debated in my mind, which is more embarrassing, dying as a result of getting sucked out to sea or being rescued by a lifeguard? Tough call. Either fortunately or unfortunately the lifeguard wasn’t making any moves toward saving us, so option #2 wasn’t looking very likely. Sucked out to sea it is.

My mind moved back to the TV show about rip tides. (20 years of school and the most useful thing I know I learned by watching TV.) The way to get out alive they said was to swim parallel to the shore until you are out of the rip tide and then you will be pushed back to shore. At that moment, I wasn’t sure how much faith I had in the TV program, but it was all I had.

I told Emily I thought we were in a rip current and we should swim parallel to the shore for a while to see if we could get out of it. She agreed we should try it. It felt like a gamble. I was pretty tired, what if I wasted energy swimming parallel and couldn’t swim to shore after?

So we swam north for a while. The lifeguard still stood there with his binoculars, not acting the least bit Baywatch.

After a while, the shore started to look closer. We decided to swim toward shore again and sure enough, we quickly closed the distance. ( Apparently, everything they tell you on TV IS true.) Halfway to shore Mr. Utterly Useless Lifeguard sat back down in his four wheeler and drove off to watch more swimmers drown.

The sand felt beautiful under my feet. I don’t remember much about the rest of the vacation, but I’m sure I slept well that night and we didn’t go searching for anymore sand bars.

I do recall some kind of fun with a flashlight and chasing crabs at night. What can I say? I do it because I can.

And they lived happily ever after

Some friends of mine received as a wedding gift a plaque with that phrase on it.

I just found out and old acquaintance of mine has gotten engaged. She is 22, lovely and sweet, and has just graduated from college. He is 25 (when they met he was a senior and she a freshman), tall, broad shouldered, handsome, dependable.

And I kind of want to gag.

It is so cliché. They don’t need a plaque, they have ‘happily ever after’ written all over themselves. They are straight out of some romantic comedy. Some crazy hijinx occurs along the way, but in the end (thank God!) they come together, blissfully happy. La-de-dah. On their way to 2.5 kids.

I don’t mean to sound bitter. I am happy for them. And it’s not that my life isn’t like a movie. My life is just more like one of those dramatic chic flicks, where the girl gets screwed a lot and realizes all she has are her girlfriends. I prefer those movies anyway. But maybe that’s because I can relate to them. Is that art imitating life or life imitating art?

I find myself wondering, “Where is mine?” I’m not looking to be rescued, but it would be nice to have someone help me unload the groceries or clean the grill after a cookout.

I used to think I was single because I was too nice. Am I now too hard? Is it me? Or is it him? Or is it both of us? Why is this so hard for some of us? I stare at couples of all ages in wonder. How did all these people manage to get together? Is there something flawed in me that prohibits me from joining their club? Or, as some friends have suggested, are all those couples simply not picky enough? I don’t get it.

Don't let the city make you hard

This is what my dear friend Joanne said to me when she helped me move to Philly. We both got a good laugh out of it. Angela the door mat? Hard? Whatev.

And yet, I realized this weekend, that it has happened. Gone is the girl who handed out free blueberry muffins to a homeless man. (Turns out, when you do that, he’ll try to steal kisses and go home with you. Then you have to call the police on him. And in the end, both you and the homeless man would have been better off without the muffin.)

This weekend, I went camping with some friends from grad school. I had invited along my good friend Katie who I know from church. At the time I hadn’t thought anything of it. I never thought that I was any different at church than I am anywhere else in life. I was wrong. Grad school Angela is a lot meaner than church Angela.

It’s not just the city that made me hard. It was the city, combined with the hell that is grad school. You get it from every side. The faculty, post-docs, and fellow grad students are all out to prove to you that you are stupid and worthless and you don’t belong there. Students respond to this in various ways. Some pretend to be too cool for everything. Some internalize it and agree with their tormentors, “Yes, I am stupid, I don’t belong here,” letting their spirits get crushed. Some drink. Heavily. Some may actually deal with it in a healthy way (though I’m not sure what that is). Me, I used to belong to the camp of, “Yes, I’m worthless” but have since gone on the offensive. At my previous job I was the sweet helpful girl, always looking to lend a hand. Now, at work, I wear the face of, “Look at me wrong and I’ll cut you.” I will tell you how you can and cannot treat me. I’m not taking crap from anyone.

I was proud of the new me. I felt I had finally developed the thicker skin my mom always spoke of when I was growing up and given to crying too easily. Grad school and Philly made me tough. Nothing could stop me now, I thought.

Today, in lab meeting, my boss referred to something I had done as ‘stupid’, the first time he ever applied that word to me. A year ago this would have crushed me, leaving me in tears. Today, in my mind, I responded, “Yeah, well, you don’t know what you are talking about.” In this instance, I think my hardness is good.

But what about when you don’t know how to turn it off? What about being stingy and harsh with your friends when you are supposed to be having a good time? What about turning the other cheek? How do you balance it? What is the saying? “Thick skin, tender heart”? How do you get there?

Lockup: West Philly

I am a huge fan of prison documentaries. I tell everyone, “I can’t explain it, I’m just fascinated.” I also tell them that in the event I become wrongfully imprisoned, I’ll be prepared. I now know how to fashion a shank out of my toothbrush then safely stuff it up my bum so I can get it into the yard where all the riots occur.

I’m only half-kidding.

There was a period a few years back when I was starting to question where my life was going. Growing up I assumed I would have a certain life, one like my mom’s. Get married, have kids, buy a house, raise a family, the basic American dream. But that wasn’t happening for me. People at my church said things they figured were affirming and harmless. Things like, “You are trying your best to serve God. Because of that, He is going to bless you,” and “God wouldn’t put desires in your heart if He wasn’t going to fulfill them.” Hmmm. Those sure do sound nice, wouldn’t it be nice if they were true? The thing is, the more I studied the Bible, the less true those nice statements sounded. I got really stuck on Paul. Here is a guy that went all out for God. He sought to hear God and do His will. And Paul wound up in prison. In fact, through out the Bible a lot of God’s servants wind up in prison wrongfully. I couldn’t help thinking, “If God’s best for me is prison, I can do better than that on my own.” It also didn’t help that all my non-Christian friends seemed to be living charmed lives, realizing all the dreams I had held.

So I started doing things my way, by my rules. It wasn’t long before I was engaged to be married, my career was taking off, and I had fabulous friends to go out with. Except that it wasn’t perfect. I discovered that my fiancé was controlling and angry and the farther my career went, the more my coworkers resented me, and the going out gets old.

This was not going right. I had to fix this. I deserved better than this. I broke off my engagement, but that didn’t set things right the way I thought it would. Then my company got bought and they were rumors we were all going to be laid off.

“This is it,” I thought, “my way out.” I’d always wanted to go to grad school. Here was my chance to get out of town, start over in a new city, get things going in the right direction.

Again, it all looked so good, but it wasn’t. I had lots of new friends to go out with, and the parties were fun, but after the party I was left with endless hours of emptiness. I had managed to force my way into the lab I wanted, but if my previous coworkers had been an outer level of hell, my new labmates were four stories down. On top of that, nothing I tried in lab worked and I felt like the village idiot. My former success as a chemist felt like a distant fantasy.

After two years of this I was at the end of my rope. None of my happiness plans had panned out. I had lost all confidence, personally and professionally.

And I started watching Lockup.

I could relate. I felt trapped. I was stuck in a city that now felt dirty, cheap, and unsafe. My former job was gone due to the sale of the company, so there was no turning back. As for the future, well, my multitude of failures in lab were not pointing toward graduation.

On the show, an inmate spoke about learning not to look forward to his release date. At first it feels good to imagine life on the outside. But then you can see all the things you don’t have now. So you start to count the days, but then you realize you have a long way to go. A really long way to go. And the weight of your sentence crushes you. It’s better not to think about the future, just keep your head down and try to make it through another day. Except, in grad school, you don’t get a release date. Your sentence is indefinite.

Shortly after this realization, that my life was striking similar to that of an inmate, my pastor gave a sermon on the life of Joseph. Joseph had some older brothers who were quite jealous of him, so they sold him into slavery. Then, due to more bad luck, Joseph wound up wrongfully imprisoned for a long time. Toward the end of the sermon, my pastor said, “Some of you may feel like you are in prison.” Does this guy read my mail, or what?

Finally, it dawned on me, I was in prison, thought not wrongfully so. I put myself here. Forging my own path and running away, had led me exactly where I was trying to avoid, prison. You can run the opposite direction from God. He’ll let you keep running as long as you like. Until it gets hot enough for you. Or you wind up in the belly of a fish. I realized, I’m not Joseph, I’m Jonah. And I’ve finally gotten the point. It’s time to stop doing things my way and start doing them God’s way.

I’m trying to do the things my pastor advised during a prison stay. Stay active by taking your opportunities, using your gifts, and being focused on others and point people to God. I think it’s working.

I now feel more like an inmate given special privileges for good behavior. Looking forward to my release date is still depressing. However, spending my days trying to be useful to others makes them more bearable. I feel I have a purpose now, that God put me in this situation for a reason. And some day, when I’ve learned what He planned for me, He’ll let me out.

The rise and fall of my utopian mass spec society

A month ago something amazing happened. A lab mate called me into a room down the hall. “I want to show you something,” he said. He led me next to the newest mass spec our PI had bought and said, “This is yours,” gesturing to the new ion trap. I couldn’t believe it. “Seriously?” I asked. “Yup,” he confirmed. “No, seriously?” I asked. “Yes, I’m totally serious,” he assured me. “You’re lying to me,” I accused, certain this was some mean trick. “No, it really is yours. Take good care of it,” he told me and left me with my new baby.

This was too amazing. I had waited three long years for this moment, certain I would always be considered the idiot grad student, too stupid to be trusted with the pH meter. But now my moment had come. And she was all mine. I kept her a secret for two days, reveling in the excitement of uninterrupted instrument time, a first in my graduate school career.

I had plans for this mass spec (MS). You see, most of the instruments are ruled by surly grad students and post-docs who offer unlimited instrument time to their friends, but screw over everyone else in the lab. If something goes wrong with an instrument, they instantly point fingers at whomever they like least, regardless of whether that person had anything to do with it. And if you should make a mistake with their instrument, look out. The whole lab is going to hear about it and they will never let you forget it.

But not my mass spec. It would be different. Everyone would get equal opportunity to use it. I would train anyone who wanted to learn. We would all work together and the result would be increased productivity and a boost in lab morale and my PI would finally be proud of me. This was my chance to show them all how it’s done.

Things started out well. We were sharing and getting data and we all got as much time on it as we wanted. See, I thought, and you all said it couldn’t be done. Look at me changing the world (my world anyway, a little bit). I should have known that kind of perfection can’t last.

After almost a full month of mass spec utopia a chemist in the lab asked me if he could use the instrument. He said he had run his compound on another mass spec before but that MS was in use and my instrument was idle so I figured, What’s the harm? And look at me being so accommodating, I share with everyone. Carried away by my own kindness I showed him the basics then left him to his work, neglecting to ask what was in the sample he planned to run. He had run it before, right?

Dun, dun, dun…

I received an e-mail the next morning from the lab mate who had bequeathed to me the MS. He questioned, Did I know the source was crusted over with salt? Something bad must have been run on the MS. Crap. Maybe he’s wrong or exaggerating.

I hurried to the MS to see for myself. Holy crap. I’d never seen such a source in real life. It was like the scary pictures they show you in mass spec courses of how bad it can get if you use the wrong buffer. What was in his sample? By now the chemist had heard about his foul up and he entered the room. “So, what was in your sample?” I asked, trying to sound calm, and not-surly. “I had my compound dissolved in PBS,” he replied. Oh. My. God. For those not in the lab, PBS is Phosphate Buffered Saline. I will always remember the early days of my mass spec training with my boss warning me gravely, “Never, ever, put phosphate buffer on a mass spec.” Right. To drive home the point for those of you who have no clue what an MS is, this was akin to sticking a metal pot in the microwave; everyone KNOWS you don’t do that. I mean, do you ask your guests when they enter your kitchen not to put anything metal in the microwave? No, because you assume they know better. All I could think was, How could you do this? But that’s not nice. Angela is the nice compassionate grad student who doesn’t yell. “Okay, I’m gonna need to clean this and replace some parts,” I told him in the nicest most not-yelling way I could muster.

So, for the rest of the day I cleaned and sonicated, and cleaned and sonicated, and switched out parts, trying to get the sensitivity back to where it was before. As I took apart fittings salt crumbled out onto my bench. As I used a fine wire to scrape out white chunks of who-knows-what I though, Fine, the surly grad students have a point. I went to them for advice. “You just have to be a bitch about it. Tell them they can’t use it,” they told me. While I rebelled against such notions, having been the victim of them before, I have to admit it was tempting. Simply banish the offender. Maybe, but I wouldn’t do it without my boss’s approval. So I fired off an e-mail to my PI, asking what he wanted me to do, praying he would recommend banishment.

Days later I got his reply, “I admire your collegial attitude. We should maintain a system that is open to all. You simply need to be more careful in monitoring its use.” Great. Cause I have nothing better to do than monitor other people’s work. What a giant suckfest I have created.

So, in the time since Saltfest08 I have been trying to come up with a system that will work for everyone. It’s not going well. And I feel like a huge jerk. Partly for getting upset with the offending party. And partly for believing in utopia, which, almost by definition, is doomed to fail.

So the record is: The System: 1, Angela: 0. But I’ll be back. And hopefully next time I’ll have a happier ending to my story.

I am so frickin' perfect, who wouldn't want to know my God?

Back in college I had an atheist friend who was somewhat disillusioned with relationships. He told me one day, "Every friend I have ever had has let me down." This initiated the expression of my fix-it gene that I inherited from my mother. I made a vow to myself that I would never let him down. I figured in this way he would see the love of Christ and be moved to accept Jesus and then we could spend eternity in heaven together being BFFs. You can probably guess how this turned out. I disappointed him and as a consequence of my imperfection Jesus could not save him. Just kidding. I did let him down, but he wound up coming to Christ later on when he met his future wife. He now has babies and is happy, or so I hear. I figure we'll catch up as BFFs in heaven.

Anyway, you would think that with time I would grow in wisdom and maturity and recognize the naivete in such quests. You would think.

I recently found out a (former?) friend has been telling people that I am lousy. That I hurt her (which is true) and therefore no one should trust me or believe anything I say (I hope that's not true). I did hurt her, more than once. Each time, when I realized what I had done, I apologized and asked her forgiveness, hoping we could still be friends despite the fact that I can be a twit. Each time she assured me that we were cool and everything was fine. So finding out that she has been telling people I am a creepizoid really upset me. But maybe not for the reason you might think.

My fear is, what if she's right? I mean, she's got a point, I screwed up more than once. I have a long history of really hurting the people I love most. Why should anyone trust me? Worst of all, what kind of Christian does that make me? In Christian circles we like to complain about the bad hypocritical Christians that give us a bad name. The whole,
"The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable." - Brennan Manning

Yeah, that bad Christian, that's me. I'm the jerk. Even worse, I've participated in the bad Christian bashing. That makes me like a double hypocrite, which has gotta be the worst kind. Why should my friend want to follow Christ when, instead of showing the love of Christ, I'm letting her down? Over and over again.

But maybe (probably?) there is a flaw in my philosophy. What brand of Christianity am I trying to sell here? I pretty sure that, "Once you get saved you will be perfect," is not in the Bible. The Bible does tell us to confess our sins to one another (James 5:16), which kind of implies there will be sinning going on.

So maybe it's not about being perfect so that others will be saved. We know we don't get saved because we are good enough, no one is. So why should someone else's salvation be based on whether I am good enough? Maybe it was small-minded of me to think that God's ability to impact people's lives would be limited by my flaws. Maybe I should look back at what happened 10 years ago and learn something (i.e. grow in wisdom and maturity): God saved my friend because of who He is, not because of my foolish attempt to earn someone's salvation.

So where does this leave my dear friend? Well, I'm sorry she feels so hurt by me. I didn't mean to hurt her. I do still want to be her friend, but I get the distinct impression she doesn't want to be mine. And that's okay. I just have to trust God to take good care of her. Maybe she will come to Christ in spite of me. And then we can be BFFs in heaven together.

The Rabies Story

For those of you who missed it the first time around, here is the rabies story.

So there is a homeless guy we'll call 'Oscar' who lives on my front porch part-time. (If he lived there all the time he technically wouldn't be homeless, right?) Oscar is French, generally harmless and, when he is sober, is almost lucid. He gets along with women pretty well, but is somewhat less tolerant of men. For example, one time my friend Steven replied, "Oh yeah?" rather innocuously to something Oscar said. Apparently this was highly offensive to Oscar who gave Steven quite a tongue lashing about respect. So my basic plan with Oscar is to keep him happy. Smile, nod, and go along with whatever he might say, even though I usually don't understand him.

Sometimes I'll see Oscar daily, then he'll disappear for weeks or months. Once, after being gone for a few months I saw him on the porch again. "Oscar! I haven't seen you in ages! Where have you been?" I asked. "Oh," he replied in his gravelly French accent, "I've been in the suburbs. I stay with my girlfriend out there. I can't take the city anymore. It's too dirty here. Trash everywhere. And you know what?" "What Oscar?" "There are too many crazy people around here. I can't take it anymore." Two things in this conversation struck me. 1) How sad has my life gotten that Oscar can find love and I can't? 2) Oscar is complaining about the crazy people? Hmmm.

Anyway, this past January I was walking to school when I saw Oscar with a dog about a block from my place. "Oscar, is this your dog? I've never seen him before," I say. "Yeah, I found her in the street. Pet her," Oscar tells me. Okay, in retrospect, I know that following Oscar's directions doesn't sound bright. But I've never had a run-in with a dog before, and the only rule that comes to mind at the moment is, "Keep Oscar happy, go along with it." Plus, there is the fact that my entire life I have been obedient to a fault.

The first example I have of this occurred when I was in the first grade. The rules were specific, you do not move, talk to your neighbor, or in any other way divert your focus when it is time to pledge allegiance to the flag. Unfortunately, I was not feeling well one day and got sick. During the pledge. So, I stood at my desk, with my hand over my heart, and threw up on the back of the shoes of the kid in front of me. (He never forgot this, reminding me several times throughout the rest of the school year that I threw up on him. I honestly never understood why he was so upset, in my mind it wasn't my fault.) My teacher asked me, "Angela, if you were sick, why didn't you run over to the trash can?" I innocently and sincerely told her, "We aren't allowed to move during the pledge." She revised the rules that day. From that point forward students were allowed to leave their desks during the pledge if they should get sick. But I digress.

So, naive, obedient Angela reaches out to pet the little harmless looking yellow dog. Within seconds the bitch (she was female, I'm being accurate) has clamped down onto my fingers and is not letting go. Oscar is completely unfazed by my situation. "Okay, she's mean!" I exclaim and finally manage to yank my hand back. I tell Oscar that I've gotta go now and hurry on my way. Oscar helpfully tells me to have a good day.

As I'm walking, it occurs to me that my fingers really hurt. Eventually I look down and notice I am bleeding. Crap. I hope it doesn't get infected. What is first aid for a dog bite, I wonder. Then my mind starts to replay the conversation. "I found her in the street." What are the odds that the dog was current on her rabies vaccine? Probably not good. But, I'm not panicking yet. I get to work, check my e-mail, get things started for the day, then figure I should call student health and see if they have any advice on dog bite first aid. The girl on the other end of the phone sounds less relaxed though, "How long ago did this happen?" "About an hour and half," I tell her. "How fast can you get here?" she asks. "Um, I guess I can come right now," I say. Great.

At Student Health they set me to work scrubbing my wounds while my doctor Googles rabies. BTW, it doesn't inspire confidence when your doctor Googles your illness. "How did this happen?" the doctor asks me. Moment of shame. Yes, I am the idiot white girl from the suburbs who did what the homeless man told her to do. I tell her the story. She gives me the look I expected. This plays out over again every time a different nurse wanders in. They ask, I explain, the look. I'm beginning to think of changing my answer to, "Because I'm thupid. Still tarded!"

"Well," my doctor says, "it doesn't look like there were many cases of rabies in dogs in Philadelphia last year, so the odds of you getting the disease are low. Then again, if you do get rabies and don't get treated, rabies is always fatal. It's up to you, do you want to be treated?"

Honestly, there was a part of me that though, eh, what are the odds? Then I thought about how the conversation would go the next time I talk to my mom and inform her that I chose not to be protected against a fatal but preventable disease. I tell the doctor this. "Well, you don't have to tell her,' she says. True. But now I start thinking about Murphy's law. I'm thinking, if I don't get treated, I will most definitely get the disease. And then I will wind up breaking one of the few rules I live by, "Don't die a stupid death." It's not that I am afraid of dying. I just don't want everyone as my funeral thinking, "What kind of idiot gets sucked out by a rip tide/doesn't leave a house full of toxic and flammable fumes/ gets back in the shower after passing out in it once already?" (These are all scenarios that have invoked the Don't-die-a-stupid-death rule before.)

So, for the sake of preserving my reputation after death, I chose to be treated. The several mils of interferon gamma in the finger hurt like hell, but the vaccine shots (which they now administer in the arm) weren't so bad. So, I'm happy to say that I have not contracted or died of rabies, yet. And I have a new rule to live by, "Don't pet dogs, especially those owned by homeless people." I'm making an exception for Alfie though.

The sun is actually shining today

Imagine that you have a great job that you enjoy doing and pays well and is located in a city that you thoroughly enjoy. Then imagine that you walk away from that for a job that pays a third as much such that after you pay your bills you've got $5 left over, so this requires you to live in a city where your safety is compromised daily. Oh and you suck at your job and get told you are an idiot on a regular basis. Think about what you might wish for in this situation.
The immediate thing that comes to mind would probably be for your previous lifestyle. That's not an option though, so you wish for things that might make your current situation more bearable, like a nice dinner out, or a trip home to see your old friends. Maybe you would wish for a vacation or some sexy shoes or, best of all, some good wine. Or perhaps it would be something as basic as Mom's cooking and a full night's sleep.
Oh, I've wished for them all. And I've had all those things. And, at the time, they definitely raised my level of satisfaction. But I want something more. Even when things were good, I wasn't happy. That's why I forsook my perfect life and came here. I told everyone my plan was this: earn a higher degree so I can get better a job and afford a place with a backyard so I can drink wine outside with my cat and my friends (clarification, I would share my wine with my friends, not my cat).
I realized though, I've already got that. Even now I am writing you from my backyard, sipping wine (AmRhein Sauvignon Blanc, nice balance of fruit and butter, perfect for early summer and blogging) while my cat throws up the toxic vegetation he just ate (his favorite pastime). And you know what, this isn't enough either.
What I really want is this: I am sitting here barefoot in jeans and a tee-shirt, my favorite attire, and I want to be accepted and loved the way I am. I don't want to be loved because I spent countless hours at the gym perfecting my rock hard bod (I didn't and I have what I describe as 'a natural body'). I don't want to be loved because I am so cultured and know just what to say at parties (Virginia wine and Hokie football is the extent of my culture and I spend most parties in the kitchen trying to be useful). I don't want to be loved because I'm so darned nice and giving and I bake amazing chocolate cupcakes (okay, I actually do these). I want someone to just think I am enough the way I am. I want someone to see the celulite and not mind so much. I want someone to hear me butcher the pronunciation of something French and not give me a look. And I want to be able to have a crabby day and say something I shouldn't and still be forgiven for it.
But, as I was making my list of wants, something occured to me. These are all the things Jesus offers. I am reminded of a song (can't remember the title, see, not cultured) that sings, "Sometimes the very thing you're looking for is the one thing you can't see." Romans 5:8 (I had to look this up, not one of those dedicated types who has scripture memorized) says, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." God looked at me and said, "You've got flabby thighs, you can't speak a second language, and you are a selfish sinner who breaks my heart all the time. But I love you anyway."
You know, I titled this blog in the way that you nickname your fatest friend 'slim'. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe it is sunny in grad school. Maybe it took losing everything to see what I had.

Welcome to West Philly

Dear Readers,

Thank you for taking the time to check out my blog. I was reluctant to start this because I felt that it was somewhat narcissistic, "Oh, I have so many insightful things to say I simply must share it with the world!" But I rationalized it this way, this will help me to document a significant time in my life and keep my friends and family up to date without spamming them regularly. Plus, no one has to read this anyway if they don't want to.

So, when you are reading this blog while bored at work, I hope that at best you will find some redeeming value in it, and at least you will find some humor in it. I'm trying to.

Cheers,
Angela