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September 18, 2006

My Mom is Here

I am very happy to announce that my Mom made it here from Tanzania this evening.  My Dad and I were able to go to KCI and pick her up.  She is very tired, and she is not too happy with all of the increased airport security and everything else that goes along with the new airport regulations.  It is really nice to have the whole family back together again.  I am not sure how long they will be staying, but it will be long enough to help me get back on my feet and used to all of the changes that have taken place since the nubulation.  I think this is all that I am going to write tonight as I need to get to bed so I can make 8:00 am and my Mom is here so I am out for the night.

September 16, 2006

Chemists and Softball

So in last night's softball game the Beer Barron Brigade played the who cares what their name is team and lost.  The fact that we lost both games was not surprising.  At this point the season we have a perfect record.  We are 0-8 or something like that.  Basically, we have never won a game.  On the upside, the guys came really, really close last night.  The score was tied at 10-10 at the end of regulation, and it took another two innings to determine who the winner would be. 

 I have already given it away by mentioning the fact that we lost, but it doesn't matter.  Everyone played a great game, and it was much more enjoyable to watch than the previous week's crushing by the Run Rule Recipients when we were beaten 40 something to 8 and then high 20 something to not very many.  Made for some very short and dare I say embarassing games? 

Before the nubulation I used to play right field for the team.  I enjoyed the games that I did get to play in, and sitting in the stands last night I was really wishing that I could be out there playing with them, but alas... my wounds are still too fresh.  I am looking forward to next season though.  We are going to knock them all out and show them how a team that should be playing in say H or I league ball plays C leagues ball, and I can tell you right now, it is not going to be pretty.  Look out, we are going to be crushed by you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Insert war cry here)

So I took some pictures last night while I was sitting in the stands so I think I will try to post them in the this blog as that is what I have seen a lot of people do.  The question is how do you do it?Let's see... 

Jimmie at bat

Ok, so I think I have a picture of Jimmie at Bat posted in this entry.  It it showing up as a dead link, so I am not sure if it will work or not.  I will have to wait until I get this entry published to see if it works.  If it does, then I have some other things I can slap in here as well.

So from watching the team and playing with them for a couple of games, it would seem that we as chemists are not very well suited to play softball.  There are things that we do well.  Synthesizing various molecules, both organic and inorganic depending on your tastes, analyzing said molecules, and then tellling world why we think that they way we made the molecule is better than anyone else's method of making the same thing.  And... consuming a large amount of a golden EtOH enriched liquid at deparmental functions.  Those are things that we are good at.  Softball really isn't our forte.  Good thing it is all for fun.  It is not entirely clear how much fun the players have during games when we are getting crushed, but our loyal band of trveling hecklers gets a huge kick out of seeing us get dominated every week. 

So allow me to leave you with a random really bad chemistry analogy.  Chemists and softabll appear to be a heterogenous mixture.  They sort of mix fi you really stir them up well, and reactions do occur, but seemingly more slowly then under optimum conditions.  Chemists and beer are a homogenous mixture.  Everything mixes together well, and reactions happen so fast they sometimes exotherm on you and there is absolutely no way to control them.  So maybe we can use the beer as a phase transfer catalyst to help boost the softball playing performance reaction.  Would that be like using a performance enhancing drug?  Someone should try it next week.  See if playing drunk increases a chemist's ability to play softball.

I am not really sure what I am doing!

The original date of this post was the 15th of September, but due to some drug related stupidity, I had to start all over again and so the date on this post is off by a little bit. 

Ok, so I am new, very, new to this whole being on the web thing.  In the past week I have bought a domain name, put up a not very good website, and then started playing around with it.  I have been trying to learn the in's and out's of webhosting.  So I came across this option for my domain and that is to add a blog to it.  I have never blogged before, but I know a lot of people out there who do, so I thought that I would give it a shot.

Recently there has been a lot of stuff going on in my life.  Most of it related to the motorcycle accident that I was in two weeks ago.  There have been a lot of changes too that have been brought on by that same incident.  It has been really, really good to have family friends around to support me.  Without them, this recovery would be a whole lot more difficult than it already is going to be. 

 One thing that I have found really difficult is the change in pace.  I went from working 60+ hours a week in the lab on my research, to sitting at home doing very little due to the limitaions placed on me by the injury and the side effects of the pain medication that I am on.  I find that when I am taking the meds it is really hard for me to focus on anything and get anything accomplished.  It takes me forever to update the website when I have just taken the meds as I also have to battle the drowsiness that they bring on.

Anyway, I just wanted to throw this out there and see what it looks like and how the blogging thing works.  I will use this to keep everyone that is interested posted on what is happening in my life, and how the recovery is going.